Thank you Maddie Pfeifer for allowing me to hijack the Mid-Valley Scam Alert to tell you all about a scam I stumbled into — but fortunately did not fall for — twice. It’s the ol’ piano-mover scam, which just goes to show you that there are scams for everything.
I’ve lived many lives. One of them as a piano aficionado. Not playing it. Oh, I play, but unless I’m practicing up a storm, it’s not something I inflict on others. No, I mean the instrument itself.
You’ve heard of wine tastings, and maybe even chocolate and scotch tastings? I attended piano tastings with a group of like-minded people. We’d go from house to house to play each other’s pianos, all different brands.
Fast forward to now, and I’ve found myself newly transplanted in Oregon, with the ex getting the grand piano. In his defense, I did gift it to him, and that’s how California divorce law works.
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But Craigslist has my back, and every now and again, you can find really great stuff for free on Craigslist. There are a lot of free turn-of-the-century (that’s 1900s, not the aughts) uprights available at any given time. I’ve read ads from people who bought a new house in, say, Sweet Home, where the previous owners left an old piano behind.
And every now and then, if you’re lucky, there’s a free or inexpensive grand piano.
But as always, something too good to be true often is.
Here’s how this scam works, according to us pianofiles who take to the internet, often Reddit (it’s likely too small to be on the FBI’s radar):
The ad shows a photo of a grand piano, often a baby grand piano, and says that it’s free as long as it goes to a good place where someone will love it. Some ads specifically target churches!
When you text, they — often with a “Dr.” in the name — tell you that the piano belonged to a loved one who died and they just need to not see it anymore. Anybody with a heart answers back with sympathy.
“I’m so sorry about your son. That’s awful,” I text back.
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Or maybe they’re just moving and don’t want to take the piano with them. That was my first introduction to the scam. The dead relative was my second. Either way, the piano is already packed and “on the truck,” and they need you to contact the movers about making a side trip to drop off the piano.
“But if you don’t mind talking to the movers to know how much it will cost to reroute the piano to you after they deliver my properties to my new home …”
None of this made any sense, as they were moving to California and wouldn’t exactly send the truck back to Oregon with a single piano in it. That, and the piano was supposedly 2 years old. But that particular brand hadn’t been manufactured since 1989!
I don’t expect you to learn the histories of the hundreds, likely thousands, of piano brands that ever existed. But I do want to caution you about this variation of what the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration — there’s an administrative agency for everything — calls the moving fraud complaint. Usually, that involves holding your loaded items hostage for exorbitant fees.
This scam also has shown up on Facebook marketplace (and probably other classified listing-type sites). If you do a search on Reddit with these words, How I was almost scammed by a “Free Yamaha G2 Baby Grand Piano” ad, you’ll see a running update on the scam and the names of the movers being used.
Beside keeping a lookout for the above signs, one thing you can do really quickly is to see if the same photo has been posted elsewhere. Just right click on it and, if you’re in the Chrome browser, press, “Search image with Google Lens.” The first scam attempt I found was for a real piano, really for sale … for $14,000!
Keep staying safe and playing beautiful music!
