Having searched for weeks or even months for your dream car, you need to make sure that you really do become the official owner once you have paid in full. This may sound a little odd but the chances are that you will be spending a fair amount of money for your prized possession so need to be confident of the sale. In addition to checking it over and scrutinizing the ins and outs of the vehicle, you need to be 100% certain that the car is genuine.
If it is a private sale, you need to be extra careful. Ensure that you are at the address that is registered on the documentation and that you see the owner going in or out of the house. This may sound a little paranoid but anyone can park outside someone’s house and say that it is their home. To be honest, it happens all the time. The difficulty some people have comprehending is that organized crime is huge whether on an individual or collective scale and every day, innocent purchasers part with their money and find that their car is really not the prized possession that they thought it would be.
Ideally you need to go into the house to be able to be sure. But quite often the person who is trying to sell the car will not have the keys to the house and will come up with any number of inventive excuses. Let the warning alarm bells ring in your brain if so. Similarly, the owner is probably going to ask you to pay cash for the car – don’t do it. In fact, don’t turn up there with a wad of cash in your pocket. Cash is simply not traceable and if the car does turn out to be a lemon, you will have no recourse and potentially no way of finding the alleged owner again.
You may be a bit embarrassed questioning as to why cash is required, but you can guarantee you will hear a myriad of creative excuses as to why they need the cash. Selling the car quickly as they have hospital bills to pay, they are moving abroad, they are selling it for their friend etc. Instead offer a bankers draft. It’s as good as cash and is traceable, so at least should anything go wrong, they will be able to see who has cashed it and where. But of course, the owner is not likely to want to go that route if the car sale is dodgy.
You might think that you are getting a good deal if you pay in cash, after all, no doubt that is what the owner has implied, but you might find that the cost of the car is much more than you originally thought if you end up losing both the car and the money.
“Image courtesy of [Keattikorn] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net”