So, this obviously looks fishy. I cannot find a company with the exact name of Continental Freight Shippers but there are a few with very similar names. My wife, who is an excellent researcher, could not find a person by the name the seller gave me in the area that the Craig's list posting originated from except for someone who is deceased. Craig's list also says only to buy face-to-face. The part about trying it for 5 days and sending it back at the seller's expense sounds ridiculous too.
Curious if others have seen this sort of thing?
There are tons just like this on craigslist. Here's how it works..
1) somebody died, and somebody else is in posession.
2) it's an unbelievably good price (typically $1000-$3000)
3) the location that they say that the tractor is at is very different from the location where the post came from. (I had one tell me it was at an airforce base in AZ.. yeah right)
4) they want to put you in contact with the "shipping company"
5) they want you to pay in store gift cards (like lowes, home depot, Target, amazon, etc.) And they want you to send you a picture of the cards as proof before they ship it.
6) the numbers in the pictures are all they need to claim the gift card value, and then they are gone like the wind.
I used to report them at about 10/month. They tend to target Kubota and John Deere because there are plenty of pictures of these.
Another way you can typically tell is that the picture clearly doesn't match the forsale location listed. Like, I saw one that was supposed to be in Kearny, NJ, which is super urban. It had trees in the background and was on about 10 acres of land.. Yeah right.
Another said east coast location but was clearly taken from an arrid climate zone.
(Sometimes you can also download the pictures and look at the geographic tagging information in the picture that was left by the camera that took it, Lat/Lon to corroborate things.
