Selling car to out of state buyer... any pitfalls to watch for?

DKWilkins

New Member
Jul 24, 2005
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Dublin, GA
I am selling my 73 Mach 1 and have received a call from a buyer in TX (I'm in GA). He has basically said he wants the car and wants to Fed Ex a cashier's check to me (asking price) to keep me from selling the car to someone else.

He will be arranging transport of the car back to TX.

I've sold cars/motorcycles before but they were all in-state buyers who came out and looked over the vehicle, gave me cash and took possesion then and there. Anything to look out for that I should be careful of? I'm sure many of you have experience with this, any pointers?

In the modern age of scams one can never be too careful....

Treading lightly in GA.....
 
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I sold Chepie out of state, but the buyer used a broker who was very good, and sent along a detailed report for a body shop/ resorsation shop to use in surveying the car.

when final OK's & price were set, I had the money wired to my bank acount, so I was assured the money was good. Then did I release the car, and he arrainged for a trucking company to pick it up.

If he is buying sight unseen, make sure , even use a lawyer, that he is buying the car "as is" and has no guarentees from you. Trade lots of digital photos first, even ask him if he wants pics of certain things.
 
be careful

if it s VALID cashiers check, it is like cash..........and if it for exactly the cost of the car, even better.......

watch out for someone who says something like

"gee, i already had a cashiers check made out for $5k more than you want .........and it will be too much trouble to get a new one.........so, if you don't mind, could you just cash the check and send me back the difference in another cashiers check, thanks

i had a buddy who almost got caught on that one and spent a couple hours tryin to convince the bank and the cops that HE was the target of the scam....they wouldn't even let him go to a computer to show them the email trail

the bank told him if he had had the funds in his account to cover the check, they would have cashed it for him....no questions asked......and the cops said that if that happened his next roommate would have been named bubba

because he didn't have enough money in the account to cover the check, the back wanted to verify that the check was good and found out that it was bogus.......
 
Thanks for all the tips guys-
Turned out to be a moot point anyway... another buyer showed up the next day with cash, so the first one here with the $$ got the car.

A couple of things I discovered after talking to my banker:
It seems with all the fraud today (to include cashier's checks) my bank will only cash said check upon approval of a bank officer. Even then if something hinky turns up afterwards (like a stop payment order or some such) they will come to ME to recover their money. If this were to happen I'd be out the car and the $$. Seems it takes about 10-12 days for an out of state cashier's check to clear...

In this case, "let the SELLER beware"..
 
sell it.

Legally, there are 2 words that you need to know. Caveat emptor
"Buyer beware..."
When I sold my 67 GT500, the guy sent a pal for it. When he got it back to Georgia, he calls me saying its a total piece of frankenstein crap and he wants a refund. Up until then we had both been quite amicable.. I sent him 15 or 20 pics of the car, outside, under, inside, around, engine, everything. He still said he felt that I misrepresented the car , and I was like " HOW ??? ". He said the body work underneath was crap , and he was going to have to tear it all out and start over. I didnt know, I paid a guy to cut out the rust and replace it with NPD steel. Thought he did a good job. Anyway, I then called my mechanic and asked him if he had looked at the work real good while he was under it doing the brake lines. He said he did, and now that I had sold it , hed tell me that he thought the work was crappy, but didnt want to hurt my feelings. I called the guy back (after telling him to go ahead and sue me in a North Carolina court over a 37 year old car he had transported out of state and see where it got him) , and told him that I would make it right. He told me that it was going to be at least 4 thousand at the minimum to get the underneath back anywhere decent, so I did the right thing and sent him 4,000 . Did I have to? No way. Would you have to? No way . But it was the Christian thing to do. So I did. And I also believe in what comes around, goes around. Good luck.