How to Avoid Scams Selling Your Car

How to Avoid Scams Selling Your Car

The team here at Help Me Sell My Car wants to make both selling and buying used vehicles easy, and that includes helping ease your mind about potential scams. They’ve become an unfortunate fact of life for all kinds of person-to-person transactions, and the used-car market is no different.

Now, the most important thing you can do in these cases is use your common sense. And the No. 1 rule to follow is that if a deal seems too good to be true, it is.

Some of the specific used-car scams to watch out for include:

Odometer rollbacks: The odometer, which tracks a car’s mileage, can be simple to tamper with, especially in modern vehicles with digital gauges. It can be hard to detect when it happens, too, which is why you should carefully compare the odometer reading with data from the vehicle history report, service records, titles/registrations, etc. Another sign can be when your common sense tells you what you’re seeing on the odometer doesn’t match up with the car’s condition.

VIN cloning: This is when a seller changes the VIN plate/etching of a stolen car and replaces it with a “good” one from a different vehicle to pocket your money from selling someone else’s ride. You can guard against VIN cloning by comparing the vehicle’s VIN plate with its paperwork and/or running an online VIN check of your own.

Curbstoning: An actual auto dealership is licensed by the state and has to follow specific laws about selling defective and dangerous vehicles. So what some dishonest dealers do is take unsafe vehicles from the dealership and try to sell them by pretending to be private sellers. Needless to say, they’ll also want to meet in a private location. Your best protection here is to make sure any used car you buy is inspected by a qualified mechanic. In addition, you can compare the name on the title of the vehicle with the name of the seller, which should always match.

Payment/Overpayment scams: A little patience is hugely important when you’re getting paid. Always look for cash first. If that’s not an option, try asking to meet the buyer at the buyer’s bank so both of you can be there to get a valid cashier’s check issued. Remember, the less ability you have to verify a check or other form of payment is valid, the more opportunity there is for fraud. In a perfect world, you’d even wait before the funds have literally been transferred into your account before you finish transferring the car’s ownership. Never agree to accept overpayment for your vehicle with a promise to send the extra money to the buyer. In fact, there aren’t any good reasons for you to send money to a seller at all.

Title washing: A title is a vital document that should include information like whether a vehicle has been totaled or damaged in a flood, is under a lien, or has had other issues that may make it hard to insure or register. But scammers have ways of getting around this by either changing the title itself or using loopholes to get a new, clean title issued. Again, tools like vehicle inspections and getting your own vehicle history reports come in handy when you want to verify title info. 

Now that you know more about used-car scams, you can start shopping here, start selling here, and enjoy the whole HMSMC site from wherever you have an Internet connection.