Recently, I had a friend call me for help with selling some furniture.

I suggested using Craigslist, since I have had good experiences using the free online service, but I made sure to give her some tips and I oversaw the wording in her ads. If you think this story ends up with someone being ripped off, you’re right to be concerned, but you’re wrong in this case.

She had a number of emails, including at least one sketchy one, which she avoided and she successfully sold her items. But it is possible to have a bad experience on Craigslist, and so if you’re considering using CL to sell something, I will condense my comments to help you have a good result.

To begin, Craigslist is simply an electronic version of a classified ad that, in the past, was the mainstay of printed newspapers. With the advent of the internet, it was inevitable that electronic posting would lead to the selling and buying of things, and the experience is no different, except that you do it with a computer instead of a printed notice. Unscrupulous people are out there, however, and some have devised ways to part you from your money.

Protecting yourself starts with common sense, and if a response to your CL ad sounds fishy, it most likely is, so I will give you some examples.

One of the more common ploys is this: ‘Hi, I’ll sell you the tickets but I’m stuck overseas for the whole month. Please send a money order which I promise will not be cashed until after you use the tickets.’

Another scam is when a potential buyer offers you a cashiers check in excess of the asking price for your item. The scammer offers to trust you, and asks you to wire the balance via money transfer service back to them.

According to Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, the percentage of postings that end in significant crimes is low when compared with the legitimate use of the site.

Buckmaster claims that Craigslist is unable to track the number of crimes involving the site, as the task would be too daunting, pointing to the 50 million monthly users, 35 million listings and 12 billion monthly pageviews. "The incidence is not zero. We'd like it be zero, but it's not zero," Buckmaster said.

Further advice from Craigslist’s ‘Avoid Scams’ link:

DEAL LOCALLY WITH FOLKS YOU CAN MEET IN PERSON – follow this one simple rule and you will avoid 99% of the scam attempts on Craigslist.

Use common sense .. if something sounds too good to be true, it likely is too good to be true. Some of the measures we take to prevent crime include:
We ban all illegal activity on the site.
We place prominent notices on our posting forms warning against illegal
activity.
We place Preventing Getting Scammed Warnings on every single page of Craigslist.
We provide a community moderation system whereby our users flag
inappropriate ads for removal.
We place prominent notices asking users to flag inappropriate ads.
We block ads containing language that in our experience has a high likelihood of violating our Terms of Use.
We remove inappropriate ads that come to our attention.
We block persons violating our Terms of Use from posting.
We maintain information pages regarding user safety on Craigslist on every single page.
We respond promptly to inquiries and requests for assistance from law
enforcement officers.
We give periodic briefings for groups of law enforcement officers on how to efficiently obtain information from Craigslist.

As a side note, auction services like Ebay and Ubid.Com, Overstock or Bidz.Com are not the same as a simple ad database like Craigslist, and the layers of protection are reasonably deep, as an auction house must protect against ‘bid and run’ problems by requiring personal information, including credit card numbers from buyers and sellers.