Maybe it's the money culture of this country or maybe it's the bad economy.
But put up an ad to sell your car and you have a bunch of other people who want a piece of the action. Like sharks attracted to blood in water.
I know that everytime I put a classifieds ad in the San Jose Mercury News, I can expect to get a call or two from people from the other classifieds rags (PennySaver USA etc).
I recently put a series of ads in craigslist.com to sell my Camaro and received a couple of responses from people who were "very interested in the car" (to quote one of them). In fact, they were more interested in "helping" me sell the car, presumably in exchange for some $$$, than the car itself.
As a working man, I have no trouble with people wanting to earn money.
What I have trouble with is the fact that I was NOT looking for help to sell the car. If I want to sell the car on Ebay, I can do it myself. If I want to list the car on Yahoo.com, classifieds2000.com or any other classifieds website, I can pretty well do it myself and I don't need anyone to do it for me.
Also, on all my ads on Craigslist, there is a line that says :"it's NOT ok to contact this poster with
services or other commercial interests". So if a person can't read and understand that, I have doubts as to
whether that person would be able to sell my car for me.
In any case, these people are seeking to take advantage of your average car owner who, for various reasons, is desperate to sell his/her car and doesn't quite know how to do it.
This is dishonest.
A list of people who have "offered to help":
kari @AOL
Tricia @yahoo