I didn't anticipate that selling the bike for "twice".
When you are planning to leave and you can only bring limited items with you, you are making hard decisions.
One of the hard decisions was to sell the mountain bike. With the bike, I cycled the Tech Trails, several road routes. It accompanied with me for three summers.
However, it is time to say bye~ bye~.
I posted the bike sale ad on Cragslist on May. It was great that someone replied me that night. I was kind of very exciting that people like the bike. But thing went to a little bit strange. The guy said that he is out of town and will send me a check. I can deposit the check and then give the bike to someone else (who as a mover to move the bike).
It looks normal. But when he mentioned he will send a check with a large amount of number. I felt not so comfortable. He sent me around $3000, which is far more high value for the bike. That means almost 90% of the money "send to the mover". At the beginning, I thought the guy was a student, and moved to another states for work. The day that I reviced the check was Friday and I deposited the the through the bank app. It will take few days to be deposited. And the guy frequencely conacted me about the deposit situation and want me to send the rest of the money out. I felt it was high possibiliy a scam. So I waited after the weekend and talked with banker. They told me that there is 99% that this is a bad check, which I can not receive any money from that guy. Good thing is I felt things was not right, and stop contacting with the guy.
Acutally, searching by Google, there are many similar cases, like this scam. They shared few commons: (1) The buyer is out of state; (2) use the check; (3) the buyer will only contact you with the email and will not share you with his phone number; and (4) the most important, the buyer will send a large amount of money, that is much higher than what you sell.
So these scams take advantage of the gap that bank need weeks to check the true situation. If you send the money during the gap, you may never get your money back. Well, $2000 ~ $3000 is a large number. For example, you can usually buy round-trip flight tickets from US to China for two times. The most important point is DO NOT BE GREEDY. If the extra money is not yours, do not think of it. Avoid it.
After that scam, I did not sell the bike for one month to calm down. The second time, I learned. I required that "Trade locally, prefer cash".
Take a glance at the old moment!
