sofa scam or good deal?

August 15, 2006 9:47 AM

If you search for sofas or sofa sets on Seattle's Craigslist, you see a lot of new sofas--many leather--being sold "out of the box," "original packaging," etc. for well below retail. Though the sellers are different, often the pictures are similar, like a scan out of a brochure. Anyone have any experience with this, or know what the deal is?
posted by _sirmissalot_ to Shopping (4 answers total)

This sounds like stolen or inferior merchandise to me. I found this link which suggests that those leather couches may not be real leather. This sounds somewhat similar to a white van speaker scams -- merchandise that's advertised as one thing, but turns out to be another. I'd say that if you really know what you're looking at when it comes to couches, you might want to check them out, but otherwise run!
posted by vorfeed at 11:17 AM on August 15, 2006

I wouldn't but the item sight-unseen, but I wouldn't question its authenticity based on the image that was given in the advertisement. If it's a 2nd-hand shop or other low-income, low-profit enterprise, they're probably all getting their images from the same place: Teh intarweb.
posted by thanotopsis at 11:24 AM on August 15, 2006

Down here in San Diego, there are similar sounding mattress sales going on on Craigslist. They all advertise a really cheap queen sized mattress, like $80, and all require an appointment. Then when you show up, they have a really terrible $80 queen sized mattress that noboyd would ever consider buying, and push you to buy one of the many more expensive, ($600 and up) mattresses that they do have in stock. I think that anything on Craigslist that has the faintest inkling of "too good to be true" should be approached as just that.
posted by conorlastowka at 11:30 AM on August 15, 2006

There is the same thing here in Mass.
They sell with little ads in out small city paper..
"Retailed for 2400,must sell, selling with the plastic still on 400".

They have about 5 ads often and they use different numbers. They are remote call forwarding lines (number that only exists in the central office of a town) that all get forward to one main number.

It seemed real sneaky and I really questioned a guy that called to order some more from me (I work for the 'phone company') because I recognized the whole thing from the paper and he was very shady and evasive. Fake names, etc.


Here's one from todays paper
A Absolute Bargain Beautiful Queen Double Pillow Top Set Orthodelux 21" Thick, still in factory box. Paid $899 Must sell $289 will deliver
posted by beccaj at 4:35 PM on August 15, 2006