Seriously, I sold a car to a Nigerian today. And he’s going to ship it to his mother in Nigeria so she can drive it around her village. I had the car listed on Craigslist. Anyone think I was the victim of a scam?
So, here’s the story. I received a phone call from a guy about the car, but I couldn’t understand him. So, he put his wife on the phone. I could understand her - she explained that the reason I couldn’t understand him was because he was from Nigeria. She was American. We haggled over the price over a couple of phone calls, and today settled on a price. I confirmed that they would be paying in cash. She told me that he was buying it to send to his mother in Nigeria. Because I was a little leery of the circumstances, I went online and found out how to detect counterfeit money. If the money was all crisp new bills, I knew it would be a red flag.
Oh, his middle name was Innocence. I can’t read his first or last name.
They live in Tallahassee, so they had what should have been a two hour drive to get to me. She called me on the way, but they were taking forever to get here. She told me that she kept having to take restroom stops because she was pregnant.
So, they get here and I ask her if she would like to go inside the house since she was pregnant and it was so hot outside. I’ve sold a lot of things via craigslist, but have never allowed anyone to come inside my house. She was the first.
He liked the car because it was exactly as I described it (I find that always works out best for everyone). So, I invited him inside and we join my wife and his wife inside. We talk for a while and discover that they met in Korea. They’ve been married for seven years. She works at FSU as a linguist professor, and has four master’s degrees.
After talking for a while, we completed the paperwork and they paid me. By this time I had built up trust in them, and I liked them. The money was well used and I didn’t want to insult them by checking the bills in front of them.
When we were talking she commented on how people from his culture like to haggle over all the prices. Though once he got here, he didn’t try to haggle anymore. When we had finished everything he looked at me and said “We had an agreement and we both fulfilled it.” I saw that even though we hear about Nigerian scams not all are are scammers; this man was pointing out (as was probably his custom) that we were both honorable because we stuck to our word. It was obviously important to him.
Today was a nice experience. I saw that not all Nigerians who buy cars on Craigslist to ship somewhere are not scammers. Hopefully this man and his African-American wife saw a redneck who treated them with respect without thought as to their race.
Kidding yes you cant go by steroetypes but that does not mean you dont need to be leery. Glad it worked out.