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Posted by on Feb 11, 2014 in Blog, Las Vegas, Personal | 5 comments

I Got Scammed on Craigs List!

 

craigslist

 

I got scammed on Craigs List.

Scammers!  Cheaters!  Lying bastards!

Marieta warned me.  But I didn’t listen.  Husbands never listen, right?  I wanted to find a “good deal.”

The crooks looked honest.  They seemed nice.  They seemed to know what they were doing.  Then again, con artists always seem honest and nice, don’t they?  Hey — that’s why they’re con artists.

The scam began with a broken water pipe between the house and the street.  In the last couple few months, our monthly water bill has tripled.  Plus, the driveway looks like it’s ready to cave in.  I’m just taking a wild guess here, but I think we might have a water leak.

Time to call a plumber.

Trouble is, have you priced a plumber lately?  It’s like hiring a tax attorney.  They don’t come cheap.

Well, there’s always Craigs List, which has become the clearinghouse for every town and city in America.  CraigsList is a giant garage sale gone viral where you can buy or sell just about anything, from a hooker or a slicer to a used set of golf clubs.

Marieta did most of the work.  Well, all the work.  I just answered the telephone and later went to the front door when the scam artist came-a-knocking.  Knocking for dollars.  She initially placed an advertisement on Craigs List asking for someone with plumbing experience to come and look at the water leak.

The guy I ended up hiring had experience, all right.  Experience screwing people.

A man showed up.  He made his bid.  Another estimate was going to charge me about $1,500.  But this guy agreed to do the job for $800 — which included everything including parts and labor.  That was to fix the broken water pipe.  They said the driveway would be like four grand, which I was also considering.  So, for the time being, I agreed on the $800 price to fix the pipe, and then maybe later do the driveway.  It’s not caved it quite yet.  No one has fallen in and died.  So, what’s the big rush?

A few days later a guy who looked like he lives out in front of Home Depot showed up.  Alone.  I don’t want to make the wrong assumption here, but I suspected he might have been from another country.  He might have even been illegal.  For one thing, he didn’t speak English.  He also took a lot of breaks.

The “worker” dug several holes and pretty much ripped up the entire front yard.

Then about an hour later, I received a phone call.

“It looks like we’re going to have to replace the entire water line,” the man said.  “I need money to go buy the supplies.”

How much money?

“I need half — that’s $400,” he said.

Sounded reasonable.  I mean, the guy was digging.  They needed pipes and sealer, or whatever.  Maybe their credit sucked and they had to pay cash for everything.  I could certainly identify with that.

So, the lead guy drove by the house and requested $400 in cash.  I offered to go to Home Depot with him and charge all the stuff, which seemed way easier.  But the man insisted he used his own supplier and would get a better deal.  What did I know?  Sounded good.

Marieta heard all this and made it abundantly clear not to turn over any money, especially without knowing the workers.  Of course, I refused to listen.  Husbands never listen.  Trouble is, people don’t trust one another anymore.  They seemed honest.  They seemed nice.

So, I gave the man $400 in cash.

Next, Marieta and I went out to lunch.  We were gone for about an hour.  When we returned back home, the front yard was vacant.  The worker who was digging had vanished.  Piles of rock and dirt were piled up everywhere.  They were several huge holes in the ground with exposed cracked and leaky pipes.  The place looked like an archeological dig.

Hmmm.  I guess the workers took a little break.  The lead guy must be still at the store buying the new pipes, I thought.

Another hour passed.

Two hours later, it was dark outside.

Gee, I wonder if they’re going to come back and at least turn the water in our house back on, I wondered.  It’s going to be pretty rough going without water in the house for the next 24-hours if they don’t come back.  It’s miserable enough not being able to take a shower.  But at some point, someone living in this house will have to go to the bathroom and flush the toilet.

I called the cell number of the lead guy.  Several times.  He never answered.  Shocker.  Oh well, maybe he’s just busy.

More phone calls.  Straight to voice mail.  And the man digging never came back either.  Imagine that, not just one guy running off, but two.  Not only that, but he ran off with my tools.  I lost two shovels and a pickax.  How I got hoodwinked into supplying the tools, I’ll never know.  I guess that should have been a warning sign that they weren’t really skilled workers when they didn’t even have any tools.

Three days have passed since I last saw the workers, or my $400.

They looked honest.  They seemed friendly.

Oh well, maybe they just decided to take a really long break and needed to borrow my tools.

READ: What happened when I tried to buy a MacBook Pro off CraigsList.

5 Comments

  1. Unfortunately, you fell for the oldest scumbag contractor trick in the book. The ole “Pay me 1/2 now 1/2 when I finish grift”

  2. It’s sad that these con artists always seem to pick on the older, more vulnerable, folks on our society.

  3. Ever hear of Angie’s List?

  4. They are probably hiding out at the Venetian cause they know you would never set foot in the place to look for them.

  5. I got scammed to once from the site on a New Orleans rental for about $400. Thought it was legit and I was real stupid looking back at the way I handled it. Besides putting up my wife’s real estate listings and rentals, I never use the site anymore.

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