Hi Bill - A lot of us on this list have "known" one another since the days of usenet. I can think of at least a dozen people who I'd just send something to and know I'd get a check back from them.
By the same token, this is also a publicly searchable group, and there is a possibility that someone with nefarious intent might contact you who has not actually been active on the list. That being said, there are many more lucrative ways to run scams than posting a for sale listing here, (including wait for it to be passed through the queue if you aren't active on the list) and then bilking the sender. It's one of the reasons I don't mind a slight bottleneck in the system, and it's also one of the reasons I don't upgrade anyone's status if all they have done is post FS/FT listings. The first thing I'd do as a buyer would be search for the person here on the group archives and see how long they've been active and the types of posts they generally make. If it's the only post a person has ever made, I'd do some things to protect myself. Protecting myself might include using paypal - because they do give you recourse. It might be getting someone else on the list to go look at an item, so you can get a general feel for the deal. It could be as simple as agreeing to talk on the phone at a certain time, seeing if they are easy to get ahold of and trusting your gut response to their trustworthiness in the conversation. Getting photos you know are real (have them take a photo with a specific page of the newspaper shown). Fast and complete responses to questions. Those will give you a pretty good insight into who you are dealing with. Finally, having a clear understanding of what kind of right of refusal you expect would be important. If the quality doesn't match the photos, what happens? If you kinda-sorta-wanta see the bike in person but might ship it back, you should figure out who pays for that - and what level of shipping insurance should be included. If it shows up at your place after the shipper drove a forklift over it - what happens? And giving one another the benefit of the doubt helps too - sometimes a seller gets bogged down with work, health, life and other stuff and just doesn't get the package out the door in time. It doesn't mean they are running a scam. I get about 1 or 2 emails per year asking if I know so and so who hasn't shipped something yet. In every case, it's self-resolved The one true scam I can recall sounded like there were all kinds of warning signs right from the get-go. And - you know it was coming, right? - just to be clear: any transactions you engage upon are done so at your risk. - Jim / group admin cyclofiend.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
