What to do if you’re a victim of a scam when selling your car

What to do if you’re a victim of a scam when selling your car

Posted on February 2, 2022

Let’s be clear upfront. The vast majority of private car sales are safe and even pleasurable experiences. Two people coming together for supply and demand with a fair price paid for a quality product. However, enough go wrong for there to be significant anxiety when it comes time to sell your car.

That’s what we’re going to address today.

We hope you never have to take action after being scammed, but if you do, here’s what you need to know when you sell your car.

Act fast

Whatever you do after being scammed, do it quickly. Time is of the essence and if you involve law enforcement, the sooner you do it the better chance they have to catch the scammer.

Collate all your evidence

Collect everything you know about the scammer including all emails, phone numbers, social media messages and anything else you might have.

If you have video surveillance of your property or a video doorbell, make a copy of that and provide it to the police.

If the scammer drove to your house, ask neighbours if they have footage of the make, model and registration of the car.

Provide evidence of the scam. Was it a fake cheque? Fake escrow? Something else? You’ll need to be able to prove you were scammed and the sooner you do it the better.

Contact law enforcement

In the majority of cases, all the police will be able to do is provide a crime number for you to use with insurers and interested parties.

Depending on the situation and the evidence you can provide, they may also be able to investigate.

Give the police everything you have including any footage you were able to gather and everything from above.

Tell the bank and/or loan company

If the scam involved a payment method, it’s worth informing your bank so they can track it. They won’t be able to help much but they can add it to the statistics so the government realizes how serious the issue is.

If you have outstanding finance on the car, you shouldn’t really be selling it, but we don’t judge. Just make sure to alert them to what has happened.

You’ll still need to pay the loan off though.

Tell your insurance company

Depending on the circumstances and your insurance policy, you may not be covered for scams like this.

If that’s the case, you’ll need to alert them anyway so they know what’s going on and the status of your car.

If you pay insurance monthly, you may as well stop the payments if they aren’t going to cover you for a car you no longer have.

If you are covered, follow their claims procedure.

Losing out to a scammer when you sell your car is fortunately rare, but it does happen.

You can avoid all that by selling your car to a dealership. We’ll pay cash into your bank and settle everything on the day. It’s the safest way to sell a car!

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