Need Help - Avoiding Scams while selling a car

[pteam]

I just had this situation happen to me just recently. I sold 2 hummer limos to a guy in spain. My bank assured me that when a wire clears your account, note "clears" is they keyword, it cannot come back out. The money was wired in my account and a few days after it cleared I let him take the limos. All has been well. Ask your bank specificially about their procedures.

[rick3000]

I like the idea of having the guy take it out in cash and hand it to you in the bank, then you deposit it right away. There is a chance with any transaction, but since you have met the guy, I doubt he is scammer.

[RandallNeighbour]

I'm sure your bank would be happy to scan the money for fake bills if they were going to deposit it. In fact, they might do this anyway just to insure the deposit is legit.

If someone walked up to me with hard cold cash to buy my car, I'd sell it to them in a heartbeat as long as I could verify the cash was not fake.

[fatmike]

Thanks all. There is some good info here. What's interesting is that there isn't a simple obvious way to do this. Every method has trade-offs.


I spoke to my bank today (which was some good advice) and they told me the pro's and con's of certified checks, bank checks and wires. As PTEAM indicated, a wire goes into a "pending" status and it can in rare cases be reversed until it "clears". That usually takes 24 hours. I won't explore the check options because he really doesn't have an established account in the US.


I'm leaning toward TBOYER's advice from the 10:07am post. I'll ask him to meet me in my bank with the cash & we conduct the transaction.

[der Geist]

anything that can be printed can be forged

[tboyer]

Hate to bump an old thread, but, interested to hear what happened with this deal.

[fatmike]

Nothing yet. My BMW is still for sale...





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