Selling my car - foreign enquiry from Sweden

Classic scam : as I recall the check goes in the car is collected the cheque turns out to be fraudulent

 

Tell him you want a bank transfer, no cheques. See how he reacts.

 

yes tele transfer all the way, cheques can bounce at a later date. TT would be more convienient all round.

 

Even if the cheque clears it could still be a stolen cheque and the bank will try to claim the money back at a later date. this happened to me a few years ago. sold a car, got paid by cheque. the cheque cleared, the car got collected, 2 weeks later received a letter from the bank claiming the person who payed me the cheque had no authority to do so as he was using someone elses ID. I refused to pay them back, they threatened court action. I sent a threat back to them from a lawyer, and I never heard anything since. this must have been at least 5 years ago.

In my opinion bank transfer is the best option.

 

Cheques/Bankers Drafts are a no no, it can get very very messy as the Banks can take some time to declare fakes and as soon as they do the bank will take their money straight back out of your account without notice.

Direct Money transfer (including CHAPS, etc.) is the way to do it.

Once the funds are cleared they cannot take the money out again (nobody but you can take the money out if its sent this way). The seller would have to sue you to get their money back if there was something wrong with the car they where not happy about (eg. gross misrepresentation of the facts, etc.). The service will cost them about £40 to do but worth its weight in gold for piece of mind alone.

Regards,

Trev

 

I don't think they can withdraw the money out from your account. they can demand it and go to court but they cannot just withdraw it. They never withdrew it from my account even when my lawyer basically told them to f*** off. Maybe my case was slightly different because i called the branch and confirmed that the bankers draft was issued by them that same morning and it was a genuine draft just the customer was using someone elses ID and i also took the name of the person that answer my call in the bank and checked the validity of the draft.

 

I agree with you that money transfer is the better cleaner way to do it. that's exactely how i got payed when i sold my f355 to a guy from sweden. he flew in saw the car, liked it. left a deposit. flew out. a week later transfered the money , i confirmed to him that the money was cleared in my account, he flew in again and drove the car away.

 

We're describing two different scams here. Banana's above is the less common one, in that he had a genuine draft from a real bank that the bank had issued incorrectly. He even called to verify it. That is the bank's problem - in essence, they gave money to the wrong person so it's their problem to chase down that person and recover funds from him, not from Banana who had no involvement in the fraud.

The more common scam is the one where the draft itself is a fake but a really good one, or it's stolen. If it is printed with valid routing and account codes and good quality paper, your local bank clerk isn't going to spot it's a fake and it will go all the way through the clearing system until it reaches the supposed issuing account where of course there is no cash. The end bank can and will reverse that credit all the way back to your account, and yes they will remove the cash because legally it was never yours - they just 'lent' you the money against your draft until it cleared. It never cleared... So you're out a car and the cash and nowhere to go except Mr Scamming Git Buyer who of course has disappeared.

Two points for this one: it can take a long time for the end account holder to spot there was a fake transaction, raise the alarm, and claim the cash back. That means that the bank can come back to you weeks or even months after the deposit. There is no time limit.


If in any kind of doubt, insist on a wire transfer.

Regards

Mark

 

Hi Matt
Some guy tried to give me a stolen bankers draft for my Porsche, before i let the car go i took it straight down to the bank on the draft, told them that there may be somthing wrong with it, and after a few checks they said it was stolen. I phoned the police and told them i would tell the guy to collect the car and they could catch him. They did not want to know and told me to send him an e-mail telling him the draft was a stolen. I could not belive there attitude, if this guy gives out 20 drafts he could catch one person out.

Try to trace the guy buying your car with any info he has given you to confirm he is who he says he is, address, tel number's, etc. that's what tipped me off, when i looked at his address on Google earth, it was a small terrace house in Leeds which probably cost less than the car.

Insist on a wire and let us know the outcome. DON'T,DON'T, DON'T part with the car until the funds are in.

 

Don't touch this with a barge pole. The only safe transfer is a SWIFT or CHAPS transfer. Cheques or drafts can be reversed - and if it's gone through several third party banks - it can very very hard to sort out.

It's a scam more than likely.

Forget about it.

 

Would you send 10% to the account of a person you don't know for a car that you had never seen and then buy it outright based on a shipper having kicked its tyres? Do you see a used car dealer from Stockholm, Romford, Beverly Hills or wherever doing it?

Guy flies over, sees the car, signs an appropriate contract, leaves a cash deposit, flies home, wires the remainder into your account (takes max 2 working days from an EU country) and flies in again to collect the car and docs. That's how I bought my F-Car in the UK and I was the person flying in from Poland. Before flying over we had about 30 e-mails back and forth inquiring about the state of the car. If the seller was dodgy in any way I would have also walked away and never have wired him the balance of the price while sitting 1000 miles away sans car.

Walk away.

 

Sorry but it does happen i put this ford pop on ebay within 24 hours a chap from oregan usa phoned me paypal me £100 so that i would cancel the ebay advert then transfered the balance into my account within 7 days a car transporter came from southampton took the car 6 weeks later the chap in oregan usa got the car
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Of course there are exceptions, BTW the wheel straps should be on the top of the wheels not the bottom !

 

The key point here is "transferred balance into my account". If you get to that stage - fine, if not it's a scam.