How to Stay Safe when Selling your Car in Brantford

How to Stay Safe when Selling your Car in Brantford

Posted on July 15, 2021

Used car scams aren’t as popular as you might think but they do happen. The best way to stay safe when selling your car is to a dealership, especially now that they offer much better prices. But, if you want to sell your car privately, make sure to bear the following in mind.

Our Brantford auto loans team has put together these actionable tips to stay safe when selling your old car.

Be 100% accurate in the ad

A relatively common scam is for someone to buy the car and later claim a defect of some kind that wasn’t in the ad. Make sure your ad is 100% accurate and make sure all pictures you take reflect the true condition of the car.

Make sure to remove GPS data from the images so a scammer won’t be able to figure out where you live.

Once the ad is published, take screenshots of the entire ad so you have proof that your ad was accurate and you didn’t mislead.

Hide your phone number

Some classified websites offer services that hide your phone number behind a system number. Use them if available to keep your real phone number private.

If they don’t have that service, buy a burner phone and use that instead. It’s a simple and cheap way to keep your real phone number private and out of the hands of scammers or spammers.

Keep it local

There are lots of scams that involve out of province buyers. They can include people that will tell you they are serving military, working on oil rigs, on cargo ships or otherwise out of the region.

They will ask you to pay for shipping and offer to pay using a money transfer service or money order from abroad. It’s a scam.

Unless your car is unique in some way, it is unlikely that out of area buyers would want it, so keep it local.

Don’t view alone

Make sure you don’t allow viewings when you’re at home alone. Make sure a partner or buddy is around and visible. They don’t have to be by your side but make sure their presence is known.

If they can take a picture of the buyer and their car licence plate, all the better.

Check their driver’s licence before the test drive

Make sure to check the buyer’s driver’s licence before you let them test drive. Not only to check they are entitled to drive the car but also to check the details. Take a picture of it with your phone if you can.

Legitimate buyers won’t mind and will accept it as the price of doing business. Scammers won’t be quite so happy.

Careful on the test drive

Never let the buyer test drive on their own and if they want to bring someone, you take someone too. Or have your buddy follow.

Cash only or the bank

Don’t accept personal cheques, money orders, electronic transfers for PayPal or Western Union. Accept cash if you can see them withdraw it from the bank, otherwise use bank transfer.

There are numerous scams that use fake cash, cheques that bounce, chargebacks using PayPal or Western Union, so be aware.

Or, you could avoid all that by selling your car to our dealership. We pay fairly and guarantee you won’t be scammed!

When you’re ready for a car lease or loan, get in touch with the Brantford auto loan experts at Northway Ford for great deals on auto finance.

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