First, this is just to warn people, and I understand it was ENTIRELY my own fault. That being said, any advice will be gladly taken if there's something I'm missing.
I listed an excellent condition 2011 MBA on Craiglist early last week for $600. Someone texted me from a local number and asked if I could meet her roommate locally and use Venmo to accept payment ($550). My first and biggest mistake was not doing the requisite research on Venmo. I am a long time paypal user and have done tons of local meet ups for cash only on CL. I should have stuck with those options. Anyhow, she said she worked long shifts until 3am and would send her roommate, but they were both small females not comfortable carrying that kind of cash. I wiped the laptop last week and reinstalled the provided software. Thus, I don't think any of the Find My Mac features for (lock/wipe/notify) will work for me. She sent the $550 before I met her friend, and I immediately transferred to my bank account. I didn't see the cancellation by Venmo until the next day, and they didn't even email me about it. It just shows up in my account as "bank transfer cancelled". My reply from them this morning was a quick and easy reminder of my biggest error:
"Business transactions are not currently permitted on Venmo - this is why your account is frozen and you're seeing what you're seeing. We don’t offer any buyer/seller protections or merchant dispute resolution services at this point.
In this case, it appears that the user posing as Brittney-Hawkins was using stolen payment information to pay for your Macbook."
Hopefully no one else gets caught in this kind of scheme. Both of the cell phones I spoke to both of the girls on are now going straight to voicemail.
I listed an excellent condition 2011 MBA on Craiglist early last week for $600. Someone texted me from a local number and asked if I could meet her roommate locally and use Venmo to accept payment ($550). My first and biggest mistake was not doing the requisite research on Venmo. I am a long time paypal user and have done tons of local meet ups for cash only on CL. I should have stuck with those options. Anyhow, she said she worked long shifts until 3am and would send her roommate, but they were both small females not comfortable carrying that kind of cash. I wiped the laptop last week and reinstalled the provided software. Thus, I don't think any of the Find My Mac features for (lock/wipe/notify) will work for me. She sent the $550 before I met her friend, and I immediately transferred to my bank account. I didn't see the cancellation by Venmo until the next day, and they didn't even email me about it. It just shows up in my account as "bank transfer cancelled". My reply from them this morning was a quick and easy reminder of my biggest error:
"Business transactions are not currently permitted on Venmo - this is why your account is frozen and you're seeing what you're seeing. We don’t offer any buyer/seller protections or merchant dispute resolution services at this point.
In this case, it appears that the user posing as Brittney-Hawkins was using stolen payment information to pay for your Macbook."
Hopefully no one else gets caught in this kind of scheme. Both of the cell phones I spoke to both of the girls on are now going straight to voicemail.
