Digital delivery of a gift card

December 31, 2019 10:53 AM

I advertised a gift card on Craigslist, and have a buyer (I think). She wrote that she will take "digital delivery" after payment to my PayPal account. I responded, asking her to explain to me how digital delivery works with a physical card, and she responded, "Digital delivery is to send picture/details of the gift card claim code after payment... What's your PayPal email so i can make the payment?" Does this sound legit? It's a $100 gift card, so not really small potatoes and I don't want to lose it.
posted by Dolley to Technology (3 answers total)

Best answer: There's a lot of scams on Craigslist. She could be legitimate, she could be pulling something. The typical scam is to use a compromised account to pay for the card and then immediately cash out your valid gift card into a clean, untraceable card. Depending on the exact terms of service, either you or the person with the compromised account are left holding the bag.

I would not consider doing this unless you can contact the person via multiple forms of communication (phone, Twitter/Instagram DM, e-mail, etc.). There's just too much risk at with this sort of thing.
posted by Candleman at 11:11 AM on December 31, 2019 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks. I wrote back and told her that, as I indicated "cash only" in the listing, I will only do a cash/card exchange.
posted by Dolley at 11:18 AM on December 31, 2019 [4 favorites]

Totally a scam, also learn how to check for a valid 20 and never even think of taking anything larger.
posted by sammyo at 11:51 AM on December 31, 2019 [4 favorites]