Parker County Today February 2018 | Page 114

our opinions: CURMUDGEON MUSINGS The Last BY MARK BROWN Word Wanting to sell stuff ... e recently began selling some of our “stuff,” that we have way too much of. This endeavor falls under the heading, “Everything in This World is Way Too Difficult.” I’ll tell you about it, in hopes that it might help you to avoid some of the traps that we have stumbled across. First of all, I have come to the conclusion that you spend the first half of your life accumulating stuff, and the last half of your life getting rid of it. My wife and I happen to be in the “getting rid of it,” stage of our lives. So how do you go about doing that? Well, we thought that since other people we know had experienced some success over the years selling their stuff on Craigslist, we would give it a try. After all, how difficult could selling stuff be? Here’s what we found. First, my wife put an ad on Craigslist for a sauna. I put an ad up for a telescope. She put up her sauna four or five hours before I did. So, she gets an e-mail right away that says, “I want your sauna if it is still for sale.” She replied, “It is.” She received a note right back that said, “I will pay your asking price, and pay you $50.00 extra because I will overnight a certified check, and when you cash it, I will come and get the sauna, and for your trouble of holding it for me, you can keep the extra $50.00.” At first that sounded OK. My wife was excited about selling said sauna so fast. But, before she had a chance to respond back, I received the exact same e-mail from a different person about my telescope — it was verbatim! OK, now maybe we should have known right away, but not having dealt with this before, for a minute greed took over and we thought, “WOW!” But, I don’t believe in coincidences, so we quickly responded back to both emails that it was cash only, no checks certified or otherwise. Just to explain, for the naive like us, what they must be doing is banking on our igno- rance. If we had accepted the deal, and cashed the check, gotten the cash, given the thief our merchandise, then a W 112 few days later the certified or cashier’s check bounces (because it would certainly be a fake) at the source, the bank then charges us back for it, and the thief has our stuff. What a scam! Who would come up with a scam like that? A sauna and telescope for free, and we are out $1800. The point is, there must be a scam lurking in almost everything you try to do today. You can’t do better than remembering the saying — “If it sounds too good to be true,” ... stay the heck away from it! Some tips just from my personal beliefs: Do not put any pertinent personal info up on Facebook, especially date of birth, even the high school you attended, nicknames, your kid’s info. In other words, anything that would allow someone to figure out user- names and pass codes. Do not give out any info over the phone; people are working 24/7 to figure out ways to scam you, to get your sensitive info, and they come up with some legitimate- sounding scenarios to get you to part with it. Do not leave any sensitive papers of any kind lying around. Have what we refer to for businesses as a clean desk policy. When you’re not using it, put it away; same with laptops and iPads. You have to connect the dots today. The world has changed. When I was younger, we used to throw our canceled checks in the trash. You just can’t have that kind of atti- tude anymore. The evil thieves are crawling around in your woodwork.  If only they would expend half that much effort and creativity in working to earn an honest living, there would be no limit to what they could accomplish. But, n