My Last 3 Days Ever Using the OfferUp App
OfferUp was once a great place to buy and sell used items. When I moved from the Hillsborough to Pinellas side, OfferUp is how I got rid of a lot of stuff I wouldn’t need at my new place. I liked how they used ratings like eBay does to weed out scammers. I hate using Craigslist to buy or sell anything. There’s no accountability for dishonest sellers. So in the early days, OfferUp was my first choice for buying or selling used stuff. And then this week happened.
I had good, but not great, seats for that concert in Orlando Sunday with Motley Crue, Def Leppard and Poison. I was on the field but about 40 rows back so I knew my cell phone pics wouldn’t be great. I shopped around to find one of those little point and click cameras that have a good zoom lens since you can’t bring in big cameras. Best Buy was all sold out of the model I wanted, the Canon PowerShot SX740 HS. You can’t find it ANYWHERE. Target, Walmart, camera shops… nobody has it. I’m guessing Canon is dealing with chip shortage issues because they don’t even have any on their own site to sell.
I opened OfferUp to see what I could find. This particular camera has been around for about 4 years so I looked for a good used one. The camera sells new for $399 so when I found one advertised as “like new” for $100 on Offer Up, I thought I hit the jackpot. I hit purchase and the seller got right back to me… not to confirm the purchase but instead he said he couldn’t take my payment and that I would need to Venmo him the money. SCAM ALERT! Never use a 3rd party payment system with strangers – only people you know. Go read all the horror stories about apps like Venmo, Cash App, and Zelle on the Clark Howard website. Even the bots that monitor activity on the OfferUp app warned me when they saw the word Venmo in this guy’s message to me. Knowing full well that my purchase wouldn’t be covered if I paid this guy on an app like Venmo, I moved along and cancelled the purchase. I reported the user to help OfferUp do away with scammers like this guy. I awaited their response and kept shopping.
I found other sellers offering the same camera for about $200-$250. Again I used to the option to not haggle on price and just clicked purchase. Every time, the purchase ended up being cancelled. Either the sellers don’t even use the app anymore or wouldn’t answer straightforward questions about the camera they were selling. Scammer after scammer.
Yesterday, I finally got a message back from OfferUp support about that scammer I reported… or so I thought. I got the alert on my phone about an account being deleted. I thought, GREAT! Good job OfferUp – you DO care that scammers are using your app to steal people’s money… right? WRONG. They deleted MY account! I had a 100% positive feedback rating with 3 or 4 dozen nothing but 5 star transactions over the years… not ONE single bad review from buyers or sellers. But because I reported a scammer, they deleted my account.
Figuring it was a robot that did this, I replied to their email in hopes that an actual human being would reply and take care of the mistake. Instead this morning, I got the same robotic copy and paste reply that I violated some guideline and they will not fix the mistake they made. So buyer beware. Those mobile apps like OfferUp seem like a good way to buy and sell, but take the advice of the YouTube user above and avoid these scams that OfferUp doesn’t seem to have an answer for.
So even though I was not able to get my hands on that camera I wanted, the good news is our Q105 photographer got some GREAT shots of the concert!
Front Row Photos: Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Poison and Joan Jett In Orlando
