Ricardo Sebastian still has a bookmark on his phone of the shiny red Toyota pickup he thought he would be driving now. "This is the truck I was supposed to be getting," he said, showing the app he used to find it.
Instead of having a new ride, however, he has lost more than $1,000.
Sebastian found the 2002 Tacoma on the LetGo app. LetGo is one of the newest ways to buy and sell merchandise, along with Facebook Marketplace and Wallapop (which is now affiliated with LetGo in the U.S.). They are much more mobile phone-friendly than Craigslist.
"The pickup looked really nice and had a great price on it of $1,500," he said. That was half the Kelly Blue Book value.
While these new services are more professional looking than Craigslist, reports are popping up that some items for sale don't exist. Since most correspondence is done by text or Gmail accounts, it's easy for sellers to disguise who they are.
That's what happened in Sebastian's case.
He says the seller claimed she was a widow trying to unload her husband's truck at a bargain price.
"I texted her back and asked, why so cheap?" Sebastian said. "She said her husband had died, and she just wanted to get rid of it because it had a lot of painful memories. So I said okay."
The woman told him Amazon would be handling the transaction. "She told me to go buy Amazon gift cards, and I went and bought three Amazon cards for $500 each and sent them to her," Sebastian said.
At that point, she was supposed to arrange for delivery, but that was the last Sebastian heard from her. Further texts and emails to her number went unanswered, and when we emailed her at the address in the ad, no one responded.
Here is a great way to know if a car ad you see online might be bogus:
- If it's listed at half the price (or less) of what you'd pay at a local used car lot, there is a good chance it is a phony ad.
- Lots of photos of the car? Be careful: it may be copied from a legitimate used car ad, then re-posted at a much lower price.
- Beware of used cars well below Blue Book value.
- Beware of cars that you can't see in person.
- Beware sellers who want a deposit by Western Union or untraceable gift cards. You will never see that money again.
LetGo says it successfully has handled millions of secure transactions, but like other trading sites, the app can be used by scammers.
Sebastian emailed Amazon for help, but says "they informed me that Amazon doesn't ship cars and that it was all a scam."
As for the bogus 2002 Toyota Tacoma pickup for $1,500, we found it still for sale on the LetGo app in almost a dozen different locations from a dozen different sellers.
The easiest way to protect yourself: never buy a car without seeing it and test driving it first, so you don t waste your money.
