WHATCAR?: Used car - selling scams

 WHATCAR? UK: Selling your car - Used car - selling scams

10 August 2010

Car sellers can find themselves scammed, even before they've sold their car.

If you use a website to advertise your car for sale, you may receive an e-mail from a foreign buyer agreeing to pay full advertised price.. This is almost always a scam so ignore any requests that ask you to contact a shipping agent on the buyer's behalf.

They may also try to send you a cheque, which later turns out to be fake, and ask you to send the car to a shipping agent, or then cancel the sale and ask for a refund. Either way you could loose your car and maybe your money, too.

By waiting for six full business days for funds to clear, you're protected from fake cheques. Banking rules introduced in 2007 guarantee that the bank has no comeback if the buyer's cheque later turns out to be fraudulent. CHAPS payments or direct money transfers are safest when selling. They're quick, and you'll know the money is real once it's in your account.

Money transfer and escrow companies are not especially common in the UK, and they're an easy way for criminals to exploit buyers. Escrow is a method of holding a payment in trust until the car has been delivered. It's not a bad system, but you need to be sure that you're really dealing with a legitimate Escrow company and that the person collecting the money is who they say they are. Money transfer companies are just as prone to fraud, and the use of forged passports and identification documents means that anyone could walk in and collect the money.

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SOURCE:
http://www.whatcar.com/car-news/selling-your-car/used-car---selling-scams/217159

That's all folks, thanks for having the time and patience to read this blog entry.