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I want to sell a couch over the internet (ebay-kleinanzeigen.de, the german pendant to craigslist). A potential buyer wants to pay almost the full price, but he is somewhere else (+1 504) and wants to pay by transferring the money. The couch should be picked up by someone else after I got my money.

I see some parallels to this one: Selling online - Is private transportation indicative of a scam? Does PayPal make it safe?

But it's not exactly the same. The buyer wants explicitly not to use PayPal but rather transfer it directly. Also he didn't write from a transport company. It would be possible that he is just collecting furniture in my country to resell it afterwards.

What should I pay attention to if I want to accept the offer? Should I even try it at all?

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    Is the buyer arranging all of the transportation? Have you been asked to provide any form of payment to the transportation service?
    – yoozer8
    Commented Dec 2, 2021 at 18:29
  • The buyer wants to organize it and I haven't been asked for any payment yet.
    – TimSch
    Commented Dec 2, 2021 at 18:45
  • 504 is the country code if Honduras. Why would anyone there buy a couch in Germany?
    – Hilmar
    Commented Dec 3, 2021 at 17:48
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    @Hilmar the notation "+1" indicates country code 1, i. e. USA. The + sign stands for the actual trunk prefix for international calls. In the US this would be 011, in Germany it's 00.
    – Peter Wippermann
    Commented Dec 7, 2021 at 14:12
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    @PeterWippermann: Good catch. So it's New Orleans and not Honduras. So which one is worse :-)
    – Hilmar
    Commented Dec 7, 2021 at 21:54

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This is a scam. I bet you the cost of the couch that if you go ahead it will mysteriously turn out that Paypal or whatever payment system the "buyer" proposes will not work and he will have to use another method (which, guess, what, allows him to reverse the transfer or otherwise give you stolen or unclean money). [Edit - or if he does pay by bank transfer, the money comes from someone else's account (hacked / stolen) and then when he needs his refund for whatever BS reason and the original transaction is traced and revoked, you will be on the hook for the money and potentialy also on the hook for money laundering.]

If you really think there is even half a chance that he is serious, tell him you will arrange the courier yourself and he can pay you up front for the couch+courier by a non-revokable method (eg Western Union).

Think about it - why should HE trust YOU not to scam HIM in this situation? If he was a legit buyer he would be opening himself up to all sorts of potential issues.

Just stop responding, block the number and move on.

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