You need to watch out for the notice on the community bulletin board that says “cars for sale by owners”. It would be wise to read the entire ad so you can determine if it is indeed legitimate. People offering used cars for sale by dealers and listings purporting to be cars for sale by owners often prove unreliable.
About eight months ago, I was shopping for a used car. I found a very useful and effective category, “cars for sale by owners,” on Craigslist, the most wonderful of free online community bulletin boards. However, all I found were attractive deals I couldn’t afford, affordable deals that included cars with no engines and no pink receipts. There were also no responses after I did my best to visit the owners, test drive and check the vehicle, and call back as requested with an offer.
I also found ads that were clearly for cars and trucks being offered by a dealer and confirmed by the dealer’s business information. However, I was suspicious because an ad for a 1970s Chevy pickup had contact information that included four phone numbers and one clearly misspelled detail. To make matters worse, I found separate ads for a Ford F-250, a Chevy Nova, and a listing for two passenger cars that had the same contact information, those same four phone numbers, and that same detail clearly misspelled, after I did a search of over 1,000 cars for sale by owners.
I’m sure the guy behind those ads was a fraud. The cars and trucks existed, and were presented with photographs. However, the background in each of the photos was the same and the contact information and details were also the same. This means that the purported cars for sale by the owners were actually listed in the wrong place intentionally, by a guy who wanted the profits of a used car dealer but didn’t want to pay taxes.
Obviously this person wasn’t very smart because he used the same identifiable information and just turned it into cars for the owners to sell. She wasted the time and energy of serious buyers because of her actions. She also gave the already dubious characters in the used car business a more negative identity.