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Recently I contacted a seller who has duplicate ads on pianomart and craigslist. This seller has a few pianos for sale. But there are some puzzling questions.

1. Seller appears to be unfamiliar with the pianos. Was not able to answer very basic questions about them.

2. Seller lied about keeping one of them. There is an ad for it running in another city which was easy to find at a listing date that coincided with my inquiry date.

3. One duplicate ad has several details but seller appeared to have no knowledge of such details.

These seem to be nice pianos--Tier 2. I don't know quite what to make of it. I have no wish to publicly incriminate the seller and have deliberately omitted some specifics. But I don't know what is going on here. It seems a little fishy.

It seems that the seller does not actually own these pianos though I don't know for sure. I suspected that seller might be acting as an agent for somebody but would you not want your agent to have a clue about what he/she is selling for you?

If anyone wants to know the specifics or might have some insight, please PM me.

Actually, it seems a LOT fishy.

Run, Forest, run.

Why bother pursuing this if it smells fishy already?

This is a typical reply to a bogus craigslist piano ad that was fishy:

Hello,

My name is Amy Parton, I'm emailing you regarding the Yamaha Baby Grand GC1 that I have for sale. The piano is in impeccable condition, inside and out! Absolutely gorgeous polished ebony GC1 (5’3’’). It plays beautifully, wonderful sound. It has been well taken care of. Purchased new in 2005, it comes with bench and brass lamp.
I am selling it at this price ($2,000 last price) because I just went through a divorce with my ex-husband and when it has finished, I remained the owner of this piano. I have some financial problems right now, so I want to sell it asap and a fast sale can be done only at a low price.
The transaction will be made through Amazon protection program for the safety of both of us.
If you're interested to purchase just email me with your full name and shipping address(street address,city,state and zipe code), so I can notify Amazon that you are selected as my buyer and they will contact you to explain the entire procedure.

Sincerely,
Amy

Details:

Key Surfaces -
White: Acrylic resin
Black: Phenolic resin
Lid Prop Positions: 2
Music Desk Positions: 5
Center Pedal: Bass sustain
Cabinet Finish: Polished ebony

MEASUREMENTS:
Length: 5’3’’
Widest point: 59’’
Height: 40’’
Weight: 627 lbs

I would say be very careful using Craigslist. You can definitely buy and sell legitimately, but there are scammers and thieves using Craigslist too. We are selling a high end piano on there, and we were contacted by someone who sounded very serious about buying it. After being contacted twice via email, on a hunch I searched his name on Google, and a whole bunch of posts came up about him. He is a scammer, and some people had already gotten burned. Luckily I checked it out before going too far.

Mychal

I'm not pursing the pianos, but the situation is like a puzzle. I want to know the story behind this bizarre situation.

It's a scam.
There probably is no piano.
The scammer will take the money and disappear.

I've bought a couple of pianos and sold a couple of pianos on Craigslist.

The key is to make contact and get a feel for who you are dealing with. If the seller/buyer has some odd reservations, restrictions or funky rules governing any pending transaction, that is a red flag.

If the piano is located at an unknown or undisclosed location, that is a red flag. If they want to exchange money before you see and inspect the piano, that is a red flag.

It has been said that Craigslist is a mine field... that may well be true. In that case, use a mine detector (good intuition and common sense).

Rick

Yes, it's a scam. Since posting this thread, I found yet another piano advertised in another city with the same contact number with these epithets:

AWESOME!!!

STORE WOULD SELL FOR TWO TO THREE TIMES ASKING PRICE.

FAMILY EMERGENCY!!

MUST SELL!!

The rest of the ads were far more subtle than this. Most described pianos that were older but "restored" to "meticulous showroom condition."

Also the contact person's name is either a masculine or feminine version of the same name, depending on the ad.

We have issues with some local dealers who advertise consignment pianos as "for sale by individuals" rather than as dealers. It's not illegal or sketchy, but does make one question their ethics.

It's almost humorous, because they will constantly flag each other's postings, which they both complain about when they do post.

I just bought a 1926 Kimball 5'7" baby grand on Craigslist. I met the seller face to face (third generation original owner's family) and inspected it. Nothing fishy, just a straight sale that went all for both parties. Sadly, the worst things about most of the Craigslist ads for pianos I saw were either the seller had unrealistic expectations for the value of the instrument, or it was misrepresented as far as condition.

You could say much the same for a lot of things for sale on Craigslist....

Dan

Dateline recently did a show on the wild, wild web focusing primarily on the insanity and scams of craigslist. Chris Hansen found every kind of undesirable lurking there and even interviewed a guy who will beat people or "make them disappear" for a fee.

Dateline NBC investigation of Craigslist

This is the craigslist community. These incidents are not rare. Scammers get smarter, so some will be loud and attention getting and some will be subtle.

And then there is this extreme. Unemployed people lured by job offers and murdered.

Craigslist Killer sentenced.

This was yesterday.