Bummer, good entertainment ended.
Pertaining to Naish specifically, almost all the used ads are MORE expensive than what can be found new on sale from various shops.
I got scammed on it. I didn't read the link above. But I assume they shut it due to scammers.
Bought and sold probably 2 dozen items over the years. No problems. A few easy rules to not getting scammed on online classifieds. Make sure the listing photos aren't manufacturer stock photos(photos show the item in someone's yard or living room or whatever), talk to someone on the phone about it(easy to conversationally determine that they are a kiter or foiler or whatever), always pay for the PayPal protection, and don't buy Moses(scammers love the moses stuff!)
A little surprised, as they had the dominant used listings for kite stuff globally at one time ... just had to get some strategy for dealing with scammers, seemed like they had no interest in trying though, and became a bit of an unreliable joke. But also, facebook marketplace is really taking a big chunk out of the web based classifieds I think.
I saw emails that they have gone public recently, I assume this is related to that extra scrutiny.
Select to expand quoteBigSeppo said..
I got scammed on it. I didn't read the link above. But I assume they shut it due to scammers.
me too
The listings there had a high degree of scammers. Since the beginning of December, I dealt with 5 different sellers that all turned out to be frauds. It was easy to weed them out but that really made for a lot of wasted time. I asked one guy to use and escrow payment for a foil. His response was "Nah, I'm old school, we ain't messing with any of that".
Some of my newfound process for weeding out the bad guys:
Ask for current pictures in a local context of the product
Ask for an Escrow transaction
Ask them for a phone number
Ask them to share a couple social media accounts
Verify the email name on the classified matches the email user for follow up
When they ignore your questions and ask how/when you will pay
I bought used foil gear through their site when I was getting started, then used to resell. In past 12 mos, a few deals did go bad. Most of the money transfer sites have insurance, so when buying I always told seller you have 4 days to show proof of shipping or deals over. I'm sure others buyers did the same, and the banking sites told them to get their act together after doing several investigations on bad deals. It's too bad, I used to constantly look for gear and occasionally find good deals.
