Selling Your Car on eBay: Watch Out for Scams

If you want to sell your car on eBay, you are making a good decision. EBay is a popular online auction website. While most internet users use the website to buy and sell small goods, like movies and electronic equipment, the buying and selling of cars has increased in popularity. Although eBay is a great way to sell a car, you need to watch out for scams. Unfortunately, scammers seem to flock to eBay.

As nice as it is to know that scammers target the eBay website, eBay buyers, and eBay sellers, you may want more information. What do they do? How do they scam you? How can you avoid these frauds?

One sign you that are likely being scammed on eBay is when an interested buyer asks you to remove your vehicle from the auction website. They claim they want to deal with you directly and not eBay. In fact, they may claim they are trying to save you money. If you move the sale off the eBay website, you don?t have to pay the fees. Watch out, this is likely a scam. Ebay, PayPal, and credit cards, provide both buyers and sellers with protection. A buyer who wants to get away from that protection, usually has something devious up their sleeve.

Another sign you are being scammed is with over-payments. New eBay sellers must offer PayPal as a form of payment. With that said, you can still accept money orders, cash in person, and checks. If a buyer sends you a check for more than the price of the car and asks you to return the difference, run. In fact, return the check, rip it up, contact your bank, or contact the police department. This person is trying to defraud you. What happens is the check is fake. It looks real, but it isn?t. You go to your bank and cash the check; you withdraw money to send back the different. Only, a few days later your bank learns the check was fake. You are now out the money you spent and the money you sent back to the scammer.

Although not necessarily a scam, you need to proceed with caution when accepting checks and money orders as payment for your car on eBay. What happens is that people send fake checks and money orders. They request pickup or delivery of the car right away. They are trying to get their hands on the vehicle before you realize the money is not real. Yes, you can contact the police and try to get your car back, but it may be a long and hard process. You car may be long gone. Please note that legitimate buyers do pay for vehicles with personal checks. They will however, have no problem waiting for the check to clear.

Another type of eBay scam you want to look for is one you should keep in mind at all times, even after your car sells. Scammers will send you an email stating there is a problem with your account, they have a question about an item you are selling, and so forth. The email says to click on the link. You click on it. It looks just like the eBay.com website, but check the address bar. It isn?t. This is called a phishing scam. The scammer gets you to log into a fake website, they now have your eBay account information. They may create fake auction listings to scam others out of money, but it looks like you are the one doing the scamming.

As you can see, there are many ways that scammers target eBay sellers, just like you. So, is selling a car on eBay more trouble than it is worth? No. As long as you are careful, know what type of scams to avoid, and use your best judgment, you should be okay. Most of the time, the buying and selling of cars on eBay is a pleasant experience for everyone involved.

PPPPP

Word Count 662