Okay, so I’m selling my Pacifica. You can all look at it on eBay here:
I get a message from an eBay member like this:
Please forward me your number. I would like to make an offer and buy your car. I AM VERY INTERESTED IN BUYING IT AND AM A SERIOUS BUYER. I live in New York. I have no problems driving up to Maryland on Saturday with Cash. Please forward a phone number so I can talk to you directly or just call my number 917 XXX-XXXX
Thank You, Ilya
Hope to hear from you soon.
He’s only got a 3 rating from eBay, and all his purchases are over a year old. But, at least he spells okay and the grammar is good. He capitalized Cash, and that throws a red flag to me.
So……should I call him? Call him from a place that’s not my home? Tell him to go through eBay? Whaddya think?
My gut tells me it’s shady, but what can calling him hurt?
My $.02 Weed
I would use ebay…
Ebay offers the “safe Harbor” buyers protection. This protects both the buyer and seller by acting like an escrow service. If you want to call him and mask your number, i would reccomned a calling card since this will show up on caller ID as a new number each time.
Couple things are suspicious… 1 – the fact that they are offering cash 2 – Driving up to Maryland from NY may be difficult since MD is south of NY.
I don’t think that there is any harm in calling.
Cash…
I see that as a net positive. Hooray for drug dealers! The only cash-and-carry customers left.
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Matthew P. Barnson
If sellling on eBay…
If you’re selling on eBay, insist on selling THROUGH eBay. Yeah, I know the fees are horrendous. Dodging the system, though, just results in pain and unhappiness.
Now, if this buyer were local and saw an ad in the paper or something, tha’s a different story. Yank the listing, sell to the dude, and call it good. But where he saw it on eBay and wants to do the purchase offline? Call him on his BS.
We have purchased two vehicles through online services. One through eBay, one through an alternative service. We had pretty good experiences both times, except for the fact that the delivery company ripped the bumper off the front of our van and refused to pay.
Yeah. We show up to pick up our brand-new van and find it in pieces on the lot. We look at the manifest, and on the carbon copy I can see that someone put in ink on the carbon page “bumper ripped off”. OK, yeah, that will stand up in court. So our only choice would have been to sue this obese joker and his skanky, tattooed, deathly-thin meth-addicted employee.
We just reattached it with duct tape and drove off. We haven’t even bothered to fix it yet, because yeah, I’m just that cheap. The duct tape is gone, at least, and my brother-in-law took pity on me and reattached the bumpe correctly.
Anyway, so this dude wants to come down from NY to buy your vehicle? Well, his area code is New York, in a block currently being assigned to residences (not mobile phones). So I’d work with him and sell it. Just make sure that cashier’s check is good.
—
Matthew P. Barnson
The resolution
So I was careful. I didn’t give him any phone number except my cell phone. Emailed him from a junk Yahoo email account. However, his English was good, he called when he said he would, and there wasn’y any requests for bank account numbers and such.
We met today. I had a friend follow me, and we met in the bank parking lot. He came with his dad (the money and negotiator) and an uncle. They checked the car out, took a test drive, haggled, agreed, and he paid in US American currency. In an exvelope.
Then they threw me in the trunk and abducted me to New York.
Nah, it was an okay experience. I had someone else there keeping an eye on me who wasn’t obviously with me, which made me feel a lot better. The dad was funny, I will be kicking a** with my Russian accent for weeks to come 😉
So the car is sold, and an out-of-ebay deal actually went safe. Thanks for the tips.
My $.02 Weed