Last year I purchased a new (to me) hard-bottom dingy and dingy tow system. I’m getting ready for spring commissioning and will install my new dingy towing system prior to launch. As a result I decided to try to sell my “old” dingy and davit system.

I posted ads on Kijiji and was initially inundated with replies–most wanting me to ship one item or the other to another location far away from me and accept payment by PayPal. Interestingly enough, none of these people wanted to give me a phone number so I could talk directly with them or an address that I could contact them at. Many people who contacted me by email asked questions that were very poorly worded and showed little or no experience with boating.

Kijiji posts warnings about scammers trolling the ads looking for victims. I was quickly getting fed up with bogus inquiries from dishonest people who were looking for a sucker to take advantage of so I changed my ads to say that I would only deal in cash and close sales transactions in person.

Funny how that changed things. Most of those so-called interested people immediately disappeared and the ones who kept communicating with me were legitimately interested. Result – I met a great guy who bought the dingy and have a serious buyer looking (in person) at the davits.

If you are using Kijiji or another on-line service to buy or sell something please take some extra steps to protect yourself from fraud.

Cheers & have a great sailing season!

Wally