Cat Hostel

Just received an email from my wife in Riga. If you have been to Rome or any place in Italy actually you will know about their reverence for cats. Apparently there are now "Cat Hostels" in Riga where shelter is provided and the cats are fed and taken care of by government decree. I mean, fat cats are a point of pride in Latvia but this is pretty neat I figure!

My Experience With Kijiji.

What is Kijiji? It's a place where you can buy and sell online, locally primarily, but you can search other cities as well. It’s just that for reasons which will become clear below Kajiji very wisely recommends that your transaction be completed in person and for cash. It is a place where you can post ads for free and cruise through many categories of classifieds. Kajiji makes their money selling various services meant to promote your advert and on advertising revenue based on page views, standard fare. Good enough so far.

It is also a place full of scams and nutters which in fairness you will get from placing an advert in the local newspaper or any other venue like the church bulletin board so it's not like I'm holding Kijiji to different standards! But it is different in that it is online. That means that you have to submit a valid email address along with a phone number in order to post an item. And it also means that it provides different avenues for folks to abuse the system. For instance as far as selling a vehicle goes you will get curbers (those who flip vehicles for a small profit, negotiating as low a price as possible only to sell it at a higher price often within the same day and with no outlay of their own cash) regardless of where you post your ad, but PayPal and Phishing scams are unique to the online community. Both of which I had to deal with in the very first week. So, pay attention. 

I started off with five ads three weeks ago. Only one has sold to date so lets stick with that. It was a vehicle and to Kijiji's credit it eventually worked out but with no small amount of wasted time on my part. While I had a variety of interest expressed via emails and phone calls the emails were the most useful to scammers and conversely provided the most entertainment for me. Anybody phoning generally had done their homework and were fairly serious about doing a deal but that didn't stop them from frequently bailing on an appointment and leaving me dangling which is more of a statement about human nature than Kajiji but the emails were a lark! My favorite was pure entertainment with no illegal intention that I could figure out due to it’s outlandish nature. It went thusly;

Hi,

Thanks for the prompt reply,My name is Ashley Walters, i believe my son Travis sent you a text message to email me for the sale,I would like to know the lowest price,more pictures and its current condition because i cant come over to inspect it,i am buying it locally here in Canada for my son studying/working in abroad (Malaysia). I work at sea as i am a marine biologist (i work  on the St-Lawrence river in Quebec. my office: Pilotes du Bas-St-Laurent] and due to the nature of my work, phone calls is restricted, i can only use my iPad to partially communicate.I am really sure he will be more than happy if i am able to purchase it from you because this is what he want and chose from the Advert. You need not worry yourself about how it will get to him there in Malaysia as i have a contact of shipping company there that will be handling the pick up and all the paper work.

While I was amused the email went straight into my filter bin, because, landlocked Winnipeg right? That’s something you should figure out about your email service, how to block or filter senders because they just won’t stop, even when you beg them to!

Then there is the Paypal scam which is simply someone expressing an interest in whatever you are selling but because of difficult employment circumstances or physical conflicts with the space time continuum the prospective buyer cannot be on hand to do a deal for cash and in person, so a proposal is made for you to get a PayPal account. What happens is that a fake email is sent to you that states funds have been transferred to your Paypal account just as someone shows up to take possession of the item. If you use the links in that email you are fed false info showing a transfer and a balance. Going directly to your PayPal account through the PayPal site will show 0 funds. It is covered in detail in the Kajiji Forums hence the disclaimer that all transactions be in person and for cash. This particular character was so persistent that I refuse to re-post the emails, so pissed off I was. 

Phishing is data mining whereby you get something like this;

Hi,

Is this your posting? 

If so, I'm very interested! Let me know. http://kijiji.ca/items-product-number-yadayada-blah-blah

Thanks

If you follow the link you end up at what looks like the login page for Kajiji where you are invited to submit your username and password. Surely the scam is obvious, no?

Then there were the lonely hearts. The folks stuck in moms basement late at night, out of PBR and reduced to drinking the bongwater and emailing strangers like me because their girlfriends (I’m assuming they have had one at some point in time) won’t talk to them anymore. They were legion.

So what advice do I have? Well, if you are selling use a one purpose disposable hotmail or yahoo email address and a throw away pay as you go sim card. You are not going to want to meet most of these people I assure you.

And for the rest of you!

“How To Have Your Kijiji Counter-offer Taken Seriously”

1) Read Kijiji “Terms & Conditions.” No Paypal! Cash and in person.

2) Read the original ad. Read it again. Scratch nose, re-read.

3) Search for similar ads on the site, read them. Compare with item 2).

4) Google similar products advertised locally online and search in different venues comparing the information contained therein with the info gleaned from 2) & 3). Collate.

Do not then offer the OP 30% on the asking price.

I wish you all the best. 

PS; I submitted my feedback to Kajiji Forums but to date have not received any acknowledgment or seen my missives posted. 

No Regrets

One of those moments where one is presented with a choice. A choice to mind your own business or to get involved. For good or ill I choose to get involved.

It was nothing heroic! Nothing that would re-define my life, give it meaning. It was just a quick decision made on the spur of the moment that may or may not be the right thing to do. There was very little time to think.

As I drove east on Ness in the west end St. James/Crestview this morning before 11:00 am there appeared in the middle of the road a distraught young woman wearing just a short sleeved tee-shirt against the +7℃ weather with no purse frantically waiving her bare arms obviously trying to get someone to stop and help. There was only a couple of vehicles in front of me but those persons weren’t having any of it and zig zagged around her leaving it up to me I figured, so I stopped and rolled down the window to see what was up. It was only on the second attempt that the woman was able to tell me that a vehicle had taken off with her baby inside. She had my attention. So I told her to get in the back seat and continued east down Ness as the young lady scanned the road in front of me for the vehicle in question while telling me that she thought it would be turning off on Moray, but no. There it was turning south on Sturgeon. 

I wasn’t about to do anything drastic so keeping to the speed limit I followed the small black car south while asking the woman if she had a cell phone in order to call the police and report the kidnapping of her child but she said the phone was in the car and I noticed that she didn’t seem too keen to get the police involved. While I was contemplating what to do next as I certainly wasn’t going to give her my phone or risk a $200 fine by making a call while driving, the light at the Portage/Sturgeon intersection turned red and I was able to pull alongside the black car which was in the far left turn lane and without a word the woman immediately jumped out, leaving my rear drivers side passenger door open, zipped around the back bumper of the other vehicle and jumped into the back seat through the unlocked door where there was clearly a baby basket and all the bags and blankets you would normally associate with a newborn. The driver, a young black guy with full round features and a bald head didn’t seem to react so since the advance right turn was active in my lane it was time for me to split. Reaching behind myself I grabbed the door frame, closed the door, turned right onto Portage and circled the block to get back to the strip mall and complete my business there. It all turned out very well I thought as there was medium traffic, no laws were broken, nothing was stolen from my vehicle and this couple could continue their very irresponsible behavior somewhere else, hopefully not on the street! 

Now I’ve had time to think about what happened and I suppose I shouldn’t have let her in the vehicle at all. What I should have done in retrospect was to pull into the parking lot and phone the cops letting her deal with it that way. All my luck was good this particular time but it could have just as easily gone all pear shaped on me. 

I don’t regret getting involved, just with my method and I suspect it has something to do with what I experienced on a street in Moscow, Russia where I lived in 2004. I was walking with my wife back to our flat with two grocery bags and a woman was thrown from the back seat of a passing car landing in the street right alongside us. She was disheveled, extremely out of it and wearing a very short skirt with no underwear. No one said or did anything, except my wife who insisted that we help. How I thought!? I think I had been in Moscow for a couple of months by that time but there was no denying this woman sitting on the road in front of me with no underwear screaming and crying in distress.

So I put down my bags and with my wife's help picked her up and placed her on the sidewalk pavement leaning against a kiosk which brought down the wrath of the woman proprietor who was seriously pissed at what we had done provoking a savage response from my wife about women taking care of women when a young tattooed girl showed up with her big lens SLR and began taking pictures of this street scene. These types are all over Moscow centre taking pictures that they hope to sell to various web ‘zines or what have you. This brought forth more of the same from my wife, women helping women, which was ignored as was the first rant and then we saw the cops down the street taking notice of the commotion. That was all it took. My wife went quiet and I picked up our grocery bags and away we went, quickly. Likewise the shutterbug with the kiosk hag retreating into the interior of her little hut.

I noticed when I lived in Moscow that most of the expats, when amongst themselves, were quite critical of Russian society. They complained about everything, from the bad body odor in the Metro to the corrupt cops and the harsh attitude of the citizens. They reversed themselves when they thought Russians were listening but it was clear that they all thought it was better at home, whether that was the US, Britain, France or what have you. I even fell into this way of thinking until my wife, a born and raised Muscovite told me to stop. 

After returning to Canada in late 2010 I can assure you that within certain parameters it’s the same everywhere. I’m pretty sure that given that girls appearance this morning and the nature of the community in this part of the city, no one was going to stop for her. 

So I’m glad that I did. 

Mutherfuckin Bike

Forced to sell my Trek 'cuz I can't take it back to the EU. Sad.

Which one are you?