First three rows show 21 results, 17 vehicles and 4 sponsored ads. Out of the 17 vehicles, 12 are scams, 71%.
Reporting these seems to do nothing. Is FB that powerless to stop this?
There was a story on this 6 months ago but maybe got worse? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28676973
"I'm in the military deployed / in Africa doing charity work."
99% of scams can be avoided by seeing it in person. That said, you can definitely look for apartments online, but just go out and see it first. With both apartments and cars, I found it significantly easier to just deal with and established company. Individuals tend to be super sketchy even when they don't want to be, for example, when I was looking for a used car once I had a guy try to sell me a vehicle that hadn't been legally registered in like 10 years.
I was on a thread here the other day and there was some person talking about how you can get a rust bucket for cheap, when you try to get a cheap car. You'll have so many people trying to rip you off. It's ridiculous. People who don't legally own the car in the first place, people who don't actually have the title to the car.
Then again, I've had friends tell me that you don't need a license to drive, you don't need to register your car, and you don't need any insurance.
A significant amount of America just lives like that
I brought an OB2 reader off Amazon and it lit up the moment I plugged it into this used car I was looking at.
Buying a used car off a private seller is outright scary if your not a car person. At least at a car dealership I can tell how much I'm getting screwed
The cynic in me suggests that the two are one and the same - the scams make the scalpers look comparatively appealing.
If there was one place on the internet I would go to buy low to sell high elsewhere, it probably be facebook marketplace.
Some of the listings are very funny, I recall one person selling a TV which "comes with Netflix" i.e. he'd just stolen the TV and hadn't bothered to reset it to cover his tracks.
For example: https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/497875541786220
or: https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/635418997520898 This shows same make a model, there is only one listing is NOT a scam in a 20 mile area: https://imgur.com/a/LSvw42t
Both of the people you listed have accounts from pre-2010, and the first lady at least (Jodi) looks undeniably like a real person with real friends.
EDIT: OK, the fact that they both have the same car listed in 20+ areas across multiple state boundaries is absolutely suss. I'm still confused as to where these accounts came from, though. They can't be fake. Were they maybe hacked?
Sellers seek the highest price the market will bear. If the price is unusually low, it's either a scam or there's something wrong with the item. There are some rare exceptions, but it doesn't average out in the buyer's favor.
Many people sell for just above trade in value because that’s what they are being offered by a car dealership. That’s often 80 percent or less than private sale price.
Other times they just need a specific amount of money, which happens to be substantially less than the item they are selling is worth.
Other times, the seller is not the one that has to purchase the replacement. Phones are good examples here. A lot of people get a new flagship phone every year. Sometimes it’s just because they are bad with choices, boyfriend, etc. these people often sell their old phone for substantially less than market value.
People are frequently not rational actors.
50% doesn't strike me as exceptionally low. I've sold things for much cheaper because it's better than throwing it away, and still I get faced with tire kickers who keep trying to negotiate it then insist on some other pound of flesh when I don't budge on price. It's why I avoid used item marketplaces.