Well, here it is mid-week already and here we Americans are, with our collective noses back to the collective grindstones after a holiday weekend of burgers, beer and fireworks.
This means that coffeesister and I must continue looking for new digs here in San Francisco, which can present quite a challenge.
Have you ever looked for a room for rent in this city? It’s not like in other places, where you go to the “rooms for rent” section of Craigslist and actually get legitimate listings from people who actually want to rent you a room.
Here we have scammers similar to the kind who claim you’ve won something and all they want is your personal information so they can send you several million dollars.
The room-for-rent scammers are always “out of town” and renting the room from afar. They want you to send them money and they’ll send you the keys in turn, along with assorted “rental documents and agreements.”
I am absolutely positive that they are the same scammers, or at least they all know each other and are sitting in an Internet cafe in Nigeria drinking pitchers of green beer as they boast to one another of their conquests.
“I took fifteen stupid Americans today for five thousand dollars and forty-seven social security numbers!”
“That is good Faahri, then you buy the beer!”
Fortunately, we’ve learned what to look for to avoid being victims who unwittingly help Faahri’s associates get free beer..
First of all, we never – and we mean NEVER – rent from anyone we can’t meet in person and who can’t show us the place. That takes care of pretty much all of them right there.
But we don’t even get that far if we just don’t respond to ads that have certain tell-tale signs that a scammer is at work.
Such as..
An “immaculate one-bedroom apartment with granite entryway, valet service and beautiful views that’s fully furnished and situated in a new high-rise in the financial district” for $650.00 a month. In this city, that rate will usually get you a closet in a dive hotel with a moldy mattress thrown on the floor.
An ad from a person claiming to be “a reporter on assignment” operating in a foreign country, but their English is terrible. So far we’ve had a television reporter, a newspaper reporter and someone covering a story in Nigeria for a San Francisco news blog. The ads tend to read, “I send greetings to you as so glad am I to have your interest in apartment to watch while I am away for assignment to the country where is great the turmoil and I am as such cannot return for long while!”
There is usually a wife left behind in the states who we can contact at a different email address to claim the keys and documents, AFTER we’ve made payment to the “person on assignment,” but sometimes they just say they’ll send that stuff after cashing our check.
But we’re experienced professionals now, that coffeesister and I, so we get past the scammers because we know all the signs, and we actually get to meet up with people who have rooms for rent.
And so do about 300 other people.
That same day.
We usually lose out to people who are younger, better looking and gainfully employed with stellar credit.
Plus, they sparkle in the sunlight and they’re not even vampires.
It’s really fun to peruse the real estate ads here too, even though we can’t buy anything. Houses like this one tend to run about eight hundred thousand dollars..
Whereas houses like these tend to run several million..
Even this house will set you back two or three grand, and you can carry it around..
A lot of houses in this city were built in 1906 or before. That’s older than I am. By a LOT. And they’re worth more.
By a LOT.
But we’re determined to keep plugging away, that coffeesister and I, because we’re hearty pioneers who are forging a destiny and all of that crap.
Tomorrow evening we’re attending a meeting in a bar, where like-minded people who are looking for places to rent or actually have places for rent will gather together to drink lots of beer, shake hands, swap names, tell everyone what they’re looking for (or have available) and then drink more beer.
The great thing about it is that they’ll all be right there, in person, and not a single one of them will be drinking lots of beer in Nigeria and using a Yahoo email address to tell us to send them a check and then they’ll send us the keys.
We’ll actually get rejected and declined in person!
I’m so looking forward to it!
I mean the beer, of course.
CLICK HERE to find out how the meeting went.
