Selling a used car, how do I avoid scams?

I've posted an ad on cars.com to sell my Concorde. I've gotten a couple of
responses but they sound fishy to me. In both cases the buyer is out of
state and wants to arrange to have the car shipped, that just doesn't
sound right. It's a 94 Concorde with 128K miles on it, it's not a hard to
get classic car. One of the buyers said he would send me a certified
check or money order that includes the shipping costs, that's a huge red
flag. I did a little googling and there is a known scam where they
send you a check, your bank accepts it, you send money to the shipper and
then a week later the bank tells you that the check is bad. I sent the
buyer an e-mail and told them they would have to pay the shipper directly.

Was posting an ad on Cars.com a bad idea? The last time I sold a car was
94 which predates Internet scams. I put an ad in the Want Advertiser which
was a print only publication at the time, and I ended up selling it to
someone for cash. The Want Advertiser is online now so it's no safer.
What's the best way to sell a used car these days?

 

Put it out on the street with a 4-Sale sign.

This concept has been working for the last 80+ years.

 

try craigslist.org or ebay

I've always found the local newspaper to fetch higher prices. Of course, I
always
insist on cash only.

Ted

 

I have done that.

 

Bring it to a detailer, have it cleaned up. Put it on the front lawn
with a for sale sign... make sure you tell them it gets great mpg (be
truthfull) sell it as is and be firm with your price. It will be gone in
two weeks.

 

You could try making the buyer wait until the check clears the bank,
before it can be shipped. Of course, they may not go for that.

-Kirk Matheson

 

Make them send it through western union as a transfer. That way they will
verify his information on his side using ID (because of the amount) and they
will pay you when you show up with ID. As far as I know there is no way to
be scammed this way.

 

Easy to avoid scams - sell it to somebody who comes to get it and brings
money. You're right, all these fake check and mail back extra money deals
are the going thing. You really can't take a cashier's check any more,
unfortunately, because they're so easy to fake. But luckily, your car's not
worth much, so you can take a cash transaction for it.

 

Since the paperwork had to be notarized, last time I sold a car I met the
guy at the bank and he took the money out and I put it back in the bank.
Bank did the notary stuff for free.

 

Nothing has to be notarized in Massachusetts, you just sign the title
over.

I've put an ad on Craig's list that includes the proviso that the deal has
to be done in person, if they want to ship the car to Nigeria they can
forget it. I haven't had any response from the Craig's list ad yet but I'm
gotten three scam responses from the Cars.com add. Two of the guys have
admitted that they are in London. The one who say's he's a broker I told
that I'm selling the car to local buyer. The other one who claims that he
want's it for his son I've told that he would have to take care of the
shipping himself and that I'd require a couple of weeks for the bank to
clear the check, we'll see if he continues to persist with this. I got a
third one that was less well crafted then the others and that included a
phony phone number I simply forwarded to .

 

That's good. Actually it can be worse than that. It can take the bank
six weeks or so to find out even a Canadian money order is fraud - a
stolen genuine one for example. Happened to a friend of mine and
everyone was angry at him, even his own bank although he specifically
asked the bank to double-check the money order. He lost big-time on
this scam.

 

Don't sweat it. Just tell the buyer you won't release the car until the funds
are in your bank. Pretty straight forward.

 

That's exactly why you wait until the funds clear and are in your bank before
you ship the item you are selling. If the buyer balks, tell them they should
have used a better method to pay.

 

The scam has nothing to do with shipping them the car, that never happens
because the "shipper" isn't real. The way that the scam works is that the
certified check appears to be real and the bank accepts it. You then send
a real check to the "shipper" and then sometime later your bank comes back
and tells you that the original check was bogus. As the previous poster
said it can take weeks for the bank to figure it out.

BTW don't ever post an ad on cars.com. I've had mine up for a couple of
weeks and the only responses that I've had have been from scammers, all of
whom seem to be in the UK. I'm pretty sure that the scammers have software
that is monitoring cars.com and automatically sends an e-mail to any new
or edited posting. When I first posted the ad I had several scammers
contact me, then it stopped for a week. I edited the ad and changed the
price last night, I had two more scam inquiries within an hour.

I'm having a little better luck with Craiglist, I've had two calls (not
e-mails) from local people but they haven't gone anywhere. I've been
asking the for the blue-book value which is clearly to high. What is the
consensus of this group about a fair price for a 1994 Concorde with a 3.5L
engine and 128K miles on it?

 

Let me try again. Are you aware that funds can be deposited and
undeposited? When that happens, owing to fraud, the FBI and the bank
will come knocking on your door. If you withdrew the the so-called good
deposited funds, then they will demand the monies back pronto. So
someone can be out lots of cash and a car. And the bank will have the
FBI doing the talking. They, at the point, don't care how the fraud was
perpetrated, first they want their money back.

Now if this is cash, regardless of transferring methods or depositing,
I don't see any risk. With things that used to be as good as cash,
there is now considerable risk, like with stolen money orders. They
take time to process and reveal the fraud. The bank in the meantime
releases the money. When weeks or even a month or so later, the fraud
surfaces, the bank wants the money back. They want the money back even
if they okayed the money order!!!

 

Actually there's a variation on that scam you have to be aware of although
it doesen't apply to car sales, but it works even better for the thieves.
It is
usually done against the buyers - it's the typical bogus item or no-ship,
but
they take care to only defraud you about $30 or less. As a result you do
nothing because the banks want almost that much to issue stop pays, or to
get printouts of cashed money orders. You might think that the thieves
won't
make much money doing this but they are doing it to hundreds of others at
the same time.

Also, one last warning about cash - your not 100% safe there either. Many
states nowadays have discovered how lucrative it is to seize assets for
"forfeiture" For several years Oregon had a law that allowed police
departments to in effect, accuse someone of a crime then seize the alleged
proceeds of the crime. Then even if the person was never charged or was
charged and found not guilty, since the forfeture was a civil action, not a
criminal action, there was not the higher standard of burden of proof on the
cops to prove the proceeds were from something illegal (like a drug sale)
and they were therefore not required to ever return the seized assets. And
they often didn't. Or they would return their cash equivalency less
"reasonable charges" for towing and storage, if it was a car for example,
which basically meant they would tow your car, assess $500 of towing and
storage fees, then sell it at a firesale for $600 and you would get $100
back
if you were lucky. Even if the car was worth $3K or so.

This fun and games was put a stop to during the last election as a result of
a
ballot measure referred by initative petition which was passed, but I'm sure
there's states where it still goes on.

Thus you could conceivably sell your car to someone who paid you in cash
and a week later have the cops arrive and tell you that the cash was a
result
of a drug deal and that they were seizing it for forfeiture.

Ted

 

Good story, but I fail to see how the police would know you sold the car for
cash in the first place. The only way I can see it happening is if you were
under surveilance by the police at the time. And if you were, for what
reason? Then I believe the police would have all the evidence to do just
that!

 

Registration

 

Again, you wait till the funds hit your account.

Go to www.kbb.com and use the 'private party sale' value as a starting point.

 

That's the price I've been using, the Kelly Blue Book private party sales
value of a 94 Concorde in fair condition with 128K miles on it. I've only
had a couple of nibbles. I've just put an ad in the Want Advertiser which
is how I sold my previous car back in 94, hopefully it will do better.