selling a car privately

Sure as fate you will get someone who wants your car, wants it badly without even seeing it, and will pay you more than your asking price. They will ask you (under some pretext or other) to pay a sum, say £300, to a courier of theirs and will then come to see the car, pay you your price plus a refund of the £300 and everything will be hunky dory. Except it won't be. You'll jut have lost £300.

Rob Graham

Only if you know how to tell forgeries.

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Use your local daily/evening paper and/or your local free paper. Be realistic about pricing. Remember that your 10 year old car is now officially an 'old banger', but you can still get a good price for a good car.

Prepare a Sale Document showing terms of sale (e.g. private sale / no guarantee etc), take cash only, don't allow any unaccompanied test drives (Safety cameras on every street corner) and be accurate and truthful in your description.

Cic.

A lot depends on the age and value of what she is wanting to replace it with.

Chris

If anyone says "What's the least you'll take for it" on the phone, f*ck them off. They're wasting your time and they've not got enough money. I've had this three times in the last week. Sent them all home as well.

Ignore time wasters. If you price your Puma right, it'll sell with no problems. Make sure it's spotlessly clean inside and out and it should go easily enough. They're a great little car.

Personally I'd want a CHAPS transfer, or cash paid in at the bank with the buyer present.

I have heard of people driving the car to the bank and paying in the money before handing over the keys. I thought this was to stop the buyer mugging you and stealing the money back, but I guess it lets the bank check for forgeries, mentioned in another reply, and if the bank accepts the money, I suppose you can consider that final.

Replying to another post, I am not sure why the buyer would want the seller to pay £300. Surely the buyer should send a deposit to the seller; not the other way around?!

Just put in an advert and you'll see. One person who replied to an ad of mine said she was pregnant with triplets, lived in Guernsey and wanted to send a trailer to pick up the car but the guy who was going to do this for her wanted £300. I would get it back plus the asking price when he took the car away.

Rob

or they send a cheque for the car, the cheque is too much and can they take the car and the change, but keep a bit extra for your trouble, you pay the cheque in and it seems to clear, they take the car and the change. Needless to say the cheque bounces two weeks later.

And get a Parkers price guide to see how much it's actually worth. It always amazes me that people still don't buy one of these books when they are buying or selling a car. If you are thinking of either, it should be the priority IMHO.

Surely virtually nobody is stupid enough to fall for a scam like that? It's more see-through than even 419 scams, and they only get a handful of replys for every million emails sent...

-- Andy

The rules have changed now - after 6 days you can be sure the cheque won't bounce.

-- Andy

They still try it, it seems.

Rob

I was in a very similar position with a 10 year old Renault Laguna, 2.0 Lt, 52,000 miles - worth £250 on Parkers or £50 on a "we buy any car" website. The car had rust on the rear wheel arches, 1 month MOT & Tax but good paintwork and was regulary (and expensively for a Renault) mantained.

I advertised it months ago (when it still had more of an MOT left) for £800 on Autotrader and those dimwits placed the ad in the wrong area (I live in Harrow, it got advertised in the Thames valley area edition.) Got one call from a lady in Reading - "why is it so cheap? - and then she got cold feet from the mention of rust and ran.

I advertised in the local paper offering it for £700. Nothing.

First attempt advertising on Gumtree.com, I had an email response from a "sandra williams" who plainly couldn't read things mentioned in the ad but was interested if I would take a bank draft of hers in "our transaction". Ignored (but reported to Gumtree as a suspicious contact).

The MOT was fast running out and I figured I'd only shift it if I got a new MOT (£50) and a new rear brake cylinder (£10).

The next advert on Gumtree was headed with the words "12 Month MOT" and offered for £500. It was sold the very next morning after I placed it, bloke came and test drove it and was soon happily paying me cash.

So try Gumtree? Free to advertise is the best bit!

Also there is PistonHeads.com which looks worth a go, free as well. I'd recommend to include a phone number in the advert, doing trades using soley email leaves ye in too much doubt about the whether the purchaser is serious or a scammer in my book!

I've sold various vehicles and IMO ebay is absolutely the easiest way to sell a vehicle. Selling in the small ads / autotrader tends to mean people turning up who are vaguely interested in the car, wanting to test drive it (more complex than it would at first seem, as you are liable if you let someone who doesn't have insurance drive your vehicle), and generally having your weekend wasted.

OTOH, when I've sold vehicles on ebay, it's been very trouble free. Put up plenty of good photos - clean the car inside and out, take photos of any damage, and try and take the photo somewhere vaguely photogenic - if your car's on the drive of a nice house or a paddock, people assume you have a lot of cash and will have serviced the car to death. The opposite applies if you take photos of the car parked at the side of the street / on the middle of a farmyard. Borrow a half decent camera rather than using your phone. Describe and photograph any damage. If the car is particularly mucky, find your nearest back street / industrial estate valeting boys and chuck it at them - they can be astonishingly cheap - I paid £25 a while back to get all the fabrics in a heavily smoke stained estate car absolutely spotless and fresh smelling, whilst DIYing it would have been a nigh on endless task. The same applies wherever you're selling a car - present it well and people will pay more for it.

Every time I've sold a vehicle on ebay, I've got more than I'd have thought to ask in the small ads, and the general gist of things is that people will ask you a few questions via ebay, and the winning bidder will generally turn up, pay and drive the thing off without a test drive, which I find astonishing. I've never had to mess around taking people

However, I would recommend you check autotrader asking prices and ebay completed auctions - certainly for my current car, it looks as if I'd get a tad more selling my car with an asking price a couple of hundred below the local traders than I would on ebay. And as PeteM said, the Puma is a good car, people know they're good, and if it's rust free and clean (with history due to the flash yamaha engine), it'll sell very easily.

Who the f*ck is still falling for these scams? I've never had anyone try it on when I've flogged anything on ebay, and I fail to see how anyone could be so daft as to go along with it. Anyhow, it's not unheard of for people to be robbed whilst selling cars via the paper - I've read a couple of times of people being held to gun / knifepoint, or having the car swiped by simply seperating the keys from the owner. Generally after doing something else daft, like agreeing to take the car for someone to view at a supermarket car park or motorway services.

The thing that astonishes me is that most of these scams aren't even new - I was approached by a bloke doing the "I'm returning from a trade exhibition and I've got a load of whatever's to offload or I'll have to pay duty on them" last year. Someone tried that one with my Dad 30 odd years ago!

In article , Stephen writes

(not about selling cars, but buying them, but a useful warning nevertheless)