these days you have to be really on the ball with phony money. these days they wash the real stuff and reprint over it rendering those bill marking pens useless. mark the bill and it shows good. then when you p*** it someone notices that the watermark on the fifty is lincoln not grant. just busted a group here last week doing this.
Post count and length of time on the board mean nothing. Click on the users name and select "view more posts" and read through some of their posts. You should get a better feel for who they are. Google their user name, look for info in those hits and google it. You'd be surprised what pops up. Remember that scammers are lazy and they are hoping to find people who are too lazy to find out their scammers. Don't be that guy.
Take the best photos you can give an honest discription, point out every flaw, the winner will see it so don't hide it. Collecting the money is not a problem if you are selling good stuff. PayPal, Money Orders, wire transfers all work fine. If you are just starting out selling on the internet there will be a lot of buyers spooked about you. Don't scare people away with HANDLING FEES, nothing pisses people off like extra costs. If you have to spend money on packing & boxing materials you are doing something wrong, tape is the only cost you can justify. If you are shipping USPS everything is FREE, boxes, tape and address lables. PayPal will allow you to sell internationally, and take care of the money exchange. Have fun, make some money and new friends!
you wrote: How many days does it take for a check to clear? Checks never actually "clear," they just don't bounce. The longer they don't bounce, the less the chance that they will. Most banks will tell you that your checks clear in one business day, but that's only the time required before you can access the funds from your account; if it bounces, you're still stuck! I have been told by the tellers at my bank that if a check doesn't bounce in five days, it's probably good. Of course it may take another week til you get a letter telling you it bounced, so for all practical purposes you either need to call the bank or wait two weeks before you send out the merchandise. You just can't beat the Post Office as a buyer or a seller. Uncle Sam has this little thing called "Mail Fraud." If you paid with a Postal Money Order and don't get your merchandise or shipped through the Post Office and don't get your payment, it's a felony, punishable by big fines and time in the slammer. The independent shippers and banks can't top that Paypal has it's down side. You loose the dispute resolution options offered by VISA/Mastercard and have to go through Paypal's process. It's a faceless online monster and as a seller, all they want you to do is give back the buyer their money. I agree, most folks are honest, but deal with one rat and you'll smell him for a year.
I think I read somewhere that, since the whole Patriot Act/anti-terrorism thing, they are doing any transaction of 9 grand or larger. They didn't publicize it, in order to get people who are trying to avoid that. Anyone heard this also? Tucker
You're right, and it's amazing that bad checks take two and three weeks to come back Banks, by Federal law, must process or decline a check within 24 hours of presentation. I know, because I sold an early Corvette to a douchebag Corvette dealer many years ago and it took 3 weeks for it to come back. Lucky for me, my Dad spent his life in the banking industry and knew the ins and outs, and after looking at the dates and routing sequences, he called the douchebag's banker...who admitted he held back the check, "waiting for his customer to make a deposit" Got my money, thanks to my Pop
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