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My wife and I are moving and trying to sell a couch. Some weird poo poo went down/is going down with a potential buyer, stop me if you've heard this one before... My wife put our couch up for sale on OfferUp and a guy messaged her asking for more pics, saying that his stepdad might be interested. We get in touch with Stepdad and after a bit of back and forth we say we'll sell it to him for $350. He agrees on the price and claims to be sending a mover over to check the couch's condition and to pick it up when ready, which itself isn't that weird I guess. What is weird however is that he insists on mailing us a cashier's check to pay for it, even after we suggest PayPal or similar services due to the need to finish the transaction quickly (needed to have it gone by last Saturday at the latest). I believe he also asked to notify him when the check cleared, but my wife has most of the correspondence here so I'd have to confirm with her. We give him my name and address for the check as requested, but we get a little suspicious about his insistence on paying by check and he goes quiet for a while, so we give him a deadline to confirm that payment is on the way before we go with another waiting buyer. Stepdad fails to meet the deadline so we sell the couch elsewhere. After finalizing this other deal (late Th or Fri?), we hear from Stepdad Friday or early Saturday that he has already mailed the check. We apologize and tell him that the couch has been sold and that we will void/shred his check when it arrives. He then tells us to instead cash the check so that he "doesn't lose [his] money", take out $100 for our troubles, and then Western Union or whatever the remainder back to him. The check arrives Saturday afternoon; I check the mailing label and it was sent Thursday before our deadline, but he didn't tell us right away because ???. Now the weirdest part: not only was the check printed by a real estate company in Ohio and mailed by a company in Cali, but I finally opened the envelope tonight and the check itself is written for nearly $2000 (vs. the $350 we asked for)  At this point we realize something definitely doesn't add up, we haven't heard from the guy since his first request that we cash the check anyway but we're not touching that thing until we do some homework first.Any idea what the hell might be going on? I find it really weird that he wants us to cash the check despite not selling him the couch, I've never ordered a cashier's check before but I'm guessing you pay up front if you're not doing it through your bank or something? What's more, the fact that he wrote the check for way more than we asked is a huge red flag, unless he meant for us to pay the movers with that money when they came for the couch as well (but why would they show up without being paid first)? I'd like to say I'm a big enough prick to cash the check and keep it all for myself, but I was cursed with a conscience and the guy has my name/address/phone # (which he claimed to need for the check, which matches the couple of times I've had to get money orders for work) so that's maybe a bad idea. But I'd love to know what's going on, as I have the suspicion that doing what he requested (cashing the check, skimming a bit for ourselves, and sending the rest back) can only mean trouble, especially because he was so insistent on paying by check AND it's worth way more than what we asked for. Is this some kind of scam I've never seen before? 
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May 31, 2017 07:26
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 16:03 |
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Yeah now that I'm no longer sleep-deprived from moving that all looks even more suspicious.
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May 31, 2017 16:20
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