Selling saddle on FB marketplace? Scammers?

[grandprixer]

Hi everyone.

I’m selling a saddle on FB marketplace right now and I’m not sure how to protect myself against scammers.

I’ve had 2 people now message me and ask about the saddle, offering to pay full price no questions. They both asked nothing except if the condition was good and if I was the first owner. Immediately offered full price through PayPal and everything.

But neither of them has mutual friends with me or horses on their profile. One has literally nothing on their profile, the other is just not horsey that I can see.

What’s the scam here? I know about fake emails, but if the money actually shows up in my account is it legit? How can I protect myself?

Not interested in having someone else sell the saddle, the commission will cut into my new saddle budget.

[candyappy]

I have never accepted money via PayPal but I know as a buyer using it I am protected. Why would it be different for a seller ?

Might be that the saddle you are selling is priced really well and you have 2 buyers that want it. Once the money is in your account and cleared then ship the saddle . How can they scam you?

[grandprixer]

I know PayPal has awful seller protection, they almost always favor the buyer. So its safe to buy with PayPal, but you can get scammed selling.

Friends and family though doesn’t have any buyer protection. In theory if they pay with that, they can’t charge back or something after I’ve shipped it.

In theory at least. I just get weird vibes from both, it’s an expensive saddle, and I don’t know any horse people without a single photo of horses on that their profile. But I can’t think of how it’s a scam either.

[candyappy]

Then trust your instincts and wait for a buyer you feel good about. If it is a nice saddle it will sell.

[SweetMutt]

I could imagine the scam here might be that they pay, you send the saddle, and then they file a claim with PayPal that they never got it. I imagine you can get away with a couple of those before PayPal catches on and shuts the account down. Trust your gut!

[BayRider2]

I would suggest using a well known saddle consignment service, you might get a little less money but you won’t be scammed. Saddle scams are very rampant on FB pages for both seller and buyers.

[BAC]

I think its worth the commission to let a reputable consignment organization sell the saddle, I used Old Dominion who had the lowest commission at the time. Do you have a local tack shop that takes saddles on consignment? Another option is to advertise locally, if you live in a relatively horsey area you could advertise it either in your local newspaper or the local equestrian organization (ours has a classified section), then no commission is involved.

[Jo]

I have given up trying to sell saddles online because of all the scammers. I recently sold my BO’s saddle to Highline Tack and was 110% pleased with the transaction. I cannot recommend them enough - they do consignment or outright purchases depending on the item.

[BAC]

@Jo

I cannot recommend them enough - they do consignment or outright purchases depending on the item.

Old Dominion will also purchase outright, that’s how I handled my friend’s saddle (I sold it for her). You get a little bit less money for it, but you get paid right away, and the saddle doesn’t have to keep going out on trial to potential buyers.

[Equestrian24]

From what I’ve seen, it’s common for fake profiles to try to buy tack on Facebook, and it’s very common for them to ask if the saddle is in good condition and if you’re the only owner. Typically, it is a profile in which the name in the link will not match the name on the profile, and if there is a public friends list, it is mostly foreigners (and non-equestrian ones at that). There may even be old photos of a different person on the profile. If the photos that are posted have clocks next to them, that means whoever created the profile changed the dates in order to make it appear to be an older account, so that people wouldn’t be put off by what is really a newly created account.

There are about a million different scams it seems, and about a million different ways they might word things. There are some groups on Facebook for scammers in the equine world (or bad buyers/sellers groups) that show a lot of very similar interactions.

I’ve never sold anything online and I’ve never bought anything off of Facebook, but have loved eBay and their customer service. I’m not sure how it is for sellers on there, however.

[Paint_Party]

Haven’t sold a saddle on facebook, but sold two on craigslist last summer. With both saddles, I got odd emails. Neither asked any questions about the saddles. Both just wanted the saddle RIGHT NOW. Oddly enough, in both emails the senders were out of town at a family wedding, so they wanted to send me a cashier’s check and then have me ship it to them. Uhm, no.

[grandprixer]

They take an 18% commission though. That means I have almost 1/5 less budget to replace the saddle. Heck, there’s a fairly good chance that the proceeds of this sale will actually go to my student loans and I’ll use my crappy saddle for a bit.

It might come to that eventually, but I know that whatever I lose on the sale comes out of my next saddle. So I’m going to try pretty hard to sell it myself.

I decided to sell to neither, just off gut feeling. I haven’t had a single message since those two right after listing, and they never followed up, so I’m pretty sure they’re fake accounts just skimming for new posts. I’ll probably only sell to someone with mutual friends on FB, or at the very least some kind of reference.

[AAHunterGal]

@grandprixer Yep, you did the correct thing. I’ve sold multiple saddles on Facebook. These are the pieces I always look out for:

1. Person has an actual Facebook profile.
2. Person reaches out with an actual question or inquiry, not just the title of my listing or the automatic options.
3. Person has at least two mutual friends (with the horse world, that’s usually easy).
4. OR…person has legitimate traceable connections to a trainer (i.e. images of their horse on their page that tags a trainer).

It’s still possible to get scammed, but those things usually keep me safe. In addition, I usually sell to people who are on one of the saddle specific groups I use (High End English Tack, High End English Saddles for Sale, etc).

Good luck!

[StormyDay]

My entire business is selling online. Some tips I have are:

• Only use regular PayPal, never friends and family. If someone asks you to use friends and family it’s a big red flag it’s a scam.
• never use cash app, Zelle, Venmo, etc. they even state in their user agreement that they provide no support for buyers or sellers. Even as the seller it’s just too much risk.
• Facebook pay is usually safe in that the money can’t be refunded, but never use it as a buyer. If you send someone money using Facebook pay and they never send the item, you are SOL.
• Facebook marketplace shipping is very safe for both buyer and seller (better than eBay) but they have a capped amount that an item can sell for with shipping. The capped amount depends on your seller ratings and your location. The seller pays a small percentage of the earnings (still less than Mercari or eBay), but there is a lot more guarantee around being paid and the item actually arriving.

I personally have had disputes on PayPal over high ticket items and the buyer claiming there was something wrong. In both of my cases it was a scam, I provided the tracking information and other pertinent info to PayPal, and they sided with me. But it only works if you use regular PayPal, not friends and family.

[Tha_Ridge]

You’ve gotten good advice and I’ve bought/sold plenty of saddles on FB… No need to give an absurd percentage to a consignor. Anyway, the best way I’ve found: ask them for their PayPal email and send them an invoice via PayPal for Goods & Services (not Friends & Family, as someone pointed out). Once that’s paid, log in to your account via browser, confirm the funds are there, print the shipping label directly from PayPal to their confirmed address, and then transfer to your bank.

The biggest “scam” at the moment is fraudulent emails from PayPal that say you’ve received the money when you actually haven’t. They are not that hard to avoid if you’re remotely savvy and certainly don’t make me want to loose $600 of my saddle’s selling price to a consignment service.

[candyappy]

@SweetMutt

I could imagine the scam here might be that they pay, you send the saddle, and then they file a claim with PayPal that they never got it.

I have noticed most everything we use PayPal to buy ( like eBay purchases ) has a delivery conformation email. I wonder if they do it so the purchaser can’t claim they never got it. The delivery service has proof of delivery?

[candyappy]

@Paint_Party

Haven’t sold a saddle on facebook, but sold two on craigslist last summer. With both saddles, I got odd emails.

I have gotten those emails just about anytime I put something on CL. I have sold a few saddles there and had good luck doing so. I have 2 old ones I have had for years that I am going to try to unload in a couple months since I bought another saddle last month.

[Paint_Party]

I ended up selling my saddles, too. Both to very local people, which was simple and safe. But those emails are strange. I suppose the scammers just send them to a wide range of sellers of all sorts of things in hopes of ripping off a few here and there.

[enjoytheride]

The scam is they send you an email with an invoice then say it won’t show as deposited until you ship.

The email is fake.

You should always log into your actual PayPal account and verify the money is there.

[Dressage8812]

I had the exact same thing happen to me. Immediate purchase, no questions, wanting to pay full price via PayPal. I called PayPal and they said the buyer can rescind if item is not “as described” - meaning any reason and they refund the money when the buyer gives a tracking number. I said they could ship back an empty box and PP said I could appeal?!? I never heard back from buyer when I asked for another payment method. And, be aware, pay apps will have to issue 1099s this year