If you’ve ever wondered how to deal with scammers in this increasingly fragmented e-commerce market, where a seller might not hesitate to scam you, Reddit might have a solution: scam them back.
At least that’s what one user suggested after believing a Craigslist ad selling a washing machine was secretly a low-effort scam. The post chronicles how a man listed a washing machine for $400 on the website, which seemed like a reasonable amount to the person who wrote the post.
The washing machine was too far gone
The poster claims that at first the washing machine seemed to work fine. But before the first cycle was even finished, the machine stopped working. The poster explained that they reached out to the seller about the issue but never received a reply.
So the poster decided to figure out a way to fix it. Apparently, after two hours of YouTube DIY videos, they realized the washing machine was simply too far gone. Unfortunately, there’s no Carfax for a washing machine, so sometimes all you can do in a situation like this is learn to live with regret.
But the Reddit page where this story was posted is called r/pettyrevenge, so the story couldn’t end there. The poster decided to trust their instincts and find out exactly what kind of scam the seller was running. The seller apparently was listing other household items on Craigslist, which immediately made the poster suspicious.
There were so many household appliances listed that the poster assumed the seller must have a warehouse full of broken appliances ready to scam even more people. That’s when the poster came up with an idea for getting back at the alleged scammer.
Since the poster had a burner email, they reached out to the seller and asked about buying two dryers. They even threw in a claim that they would pay extra. They gave him a time and location too, but when the time came, the poster never showed. They even made sure the meetup was at 4:30 p.m. so that, right afterward, it would be rush hour and the seller would have to drive back through traffic. The post ended with, “I lost $400 but man!! It felt good to waste a scammer’s time.”
Some wanted “double revenge”
Users in the comment section suggested they should just continue wasting the seller’s time. One user wrote advised to keep doing this forever, making the scammer realize, “‘I’m a leech on your side from here until eternity.'” Another added, “I’d even stretch it out for a couple of weeks or more. And I might even have him deliver to some people that I don’t like too? Why not get some double revenge out of the deal? Pose as them using a new burner account. He shows up asking for them trying to deliver a washer and dryer and they have no idea wtf he’s talking about?”
Do it. Scam the scammer back ❤️
by u/Outrageous-Candy-576 in pettyrevenge
It’s rarely a good idea to play these kinds of pranks on people. Some might argue that doing it to someone you believe scammed you is fair, but fair is not always safe. Craigslist has always been a buyer-beware type of website. If you do get scammed, a safer next step is reporting the incident through the appropriate channels or warning other buyers on forums and review platforms, while being careful to stick to facts you can support.
Published: Jul 11, 2026 03:59 pm