There's another red flag I've seen: buyers ask to pre-pay on the spot without having seen the item. They usually want to use Zelle or Venmo, and say they're going to have a relative come pickup the item.
At that point they’d send you a fake Zelle/Venmo phishing email, saying you need to upgrade to a business account, or “login” and do something else to accept the payment.
Profile pictures are obviously American, and often show more breast than face.
Instant replies.
Quickly ask for an unusual payment method which no local would use.
Write in the local language (machine translated) and don't switch to English if I write in English.
I almost got scammed by a couple on Facebook Marketplace. They had a Mac Mini they were selling for about $20 less than the going rate I had found on ebay so I initiated contact and we agreed on the price. I asked how they do payment, Paypal, Venmo, Stripe?
None of the above. The husband kept telling me sob stories about why they don't use any of them - only Zelle. I was like, I don't have that, and I'm not setting up another payment app just for one purchase.
That's when the scam and the sketchy feelings started creeping into my brain. They told me to go get a prepaid card, and then send it and they'll ship the Mac Mini when they get it. They were a few cities over and just like OP said, they didn't want to arrange a pickup. I was like, "Yeah, fuck that, you send the PC first and THEN I'll send the money." Then the husband told me if they were going to do that, I can just scratch off the security label and send then the code for safe keeping, and then they'll send the Mac Mini when they get the code.
That was the last straw - I told them to fuck off and go scam someone else. I got few nasty texts from the husband before blocking them.
Scammers use Zelle because nobody else uses it, which then forces people to go to great lengths to get something and will start to jump through hoops. I was wondering how many other people this couple had scammed before I contacted them.
I'm surprised you consider Stripe widely used among small, part-time sellers.
But if I were buying something to be mailed I would insist on either credit card payment or Paypal.
Scammers know it’s hard to judge sometimes. Heck there’s always the risk someone just comes and runs off without paying.
Now on marketplace I say cash only in person in public and when the person shows up then I offer Zelle or cash whatever. That seems to have stopped most of the automatic scam attempts.