Selling a car - advice please

[Pickles]

OK, so I have advertised on LeBonCoin. The only people I know who have used LBC to sell cars have generally been selling low-value (bangernomics-grade) cars. Have any others here sold cars worth several thousand € on LBC?

Secondly, how would you take payment? Reading other sites, the recommendation seems to be to take payment as a bank cheque (not personal cheque), during office hours and ring up the bank, using phone numbers obtained from the internet or telephone directory, not any that might be on a cheque, to check the authenticity of the cheque.

I've cleaned the car, sorted out the paperwork, CT etc. Has anyone got any other advice as to where else to advertise (I've done AI and put an advert in the window for whatever those are worth)?

[Anton Redman]

Might help if you told us make model age and price.

I would probably advertise in local paper, France is so big, and population desity so low that you can spend hundredsof Euros going to see a car at the wrong end of the country.

As regards cash depends where people live and what evidence they can offer of address etc. You should be able have them make a bank transfer at their bank to your account 

[Pickles]

[quote user="Anton Redman"]Might help if you told us make model age and price.[/quote]

I can't, due to the "no advertising" clause. I thought long and hard about what to post which would not contravene the clause.

[quote user="Anton Redman"]I would probably advertise in local paper, France is so big, and population desity so low that you can spend hundredsof Euros going to see a car at the wrong end of the country.[/quote]

Thanks for the suggestion. LBC goes by region so it would tend to avoid that problem. I will however investigate the local advert-packed freely-delivered rags and see how they compare with the local paper.

[quote user="Anton Redman"]As regards cash depends where people live and what evidence they can offer of address etc. You should be able have them make a bank transfer at their bank to your account.[/quote]

Hmmm. Hadn't thought of that. Ta muchly!

[dave21478]

I have zero experience of a French bank cheque, but I can tell you that whilst bankers drafts are talked about as being "as good as cash" in UK, that is a load of old bollox.

This is a UK tale, but I would image its exactly the same deal here in France....

I run bangers, and £1000 is a high value car to me. Suddenly inheriting my grandfathers 1 year old Toyota Corolla was a bit of a surprise. The car was no use to me so I advertised it, but was very wary about how to deal with receiving payment of £7k.

Some chap wanted to pay by bank draft....I asked on a couple of forums and was told...."as good as cash...clears instantly...blah blah blah".

So, the chap drew the draft from his bank and sent me a scanned copy of front and back. First off, I had no idea what a genuine draft should look like so had no point of reference. They look just like a normal cheque but are printed instead of hand-written. I called the number on the back to confirm it was real. First hurdle was that the number no longer existed. I called the banks main number and after much faff was put through to someone who could help. Due to the Data Protection Act, they can tell you very little.....she confirmed that on the date shown at the branch shown, A draft for £7k was drawn. Thats it. She couldnt tell me who drew it or who it was made out to or the serial number and I still had no idea if this thing was the real draft or a forgery.

The buyer was coming from far away so we met half-way at a train station and completed the sale. I handed over a 1 year old car and in return got a wee bit of paper. I went to my bank to pay it in. They could not confirm if it was a genuine draft there and then, it would have to go to the clearing house....oh and it takes 4-5 working days to clear it.

So in summary, the only single way it was safer than a personal cheque was that - assuming it was genuine - it would not bounce as it is drawn on the banks funds not a private account.

Fortunately it was fine and the guy was an honest car dealer (oxymoron!), but thinking back, it could have all gone very wrong so many different ways that there is no way in hell I would ever consider doing it again.

Personally, I would now only ever accept going to a bank with the buyer and having the money transferred straight into my account there and then, or watching them produce the bank draft there and then, which I would later pay into my account with confidence.

Or cash, but with the proviso that I use a counterfeit note checker. A genuine buyer should be ok with any of these systems.

Oh and one thing I like to do.....who knows if it would really be any help if things went wrong, but every time I sell a car or whatever here (lower value stuff) I tell the buyer that since I will be paying their cheque into my account in Scotland - I dont, I just pretend I will and really pay it into my French account - I tell them that my bank requires a copy of the ID card of the person who issues the cheque, and I run off a scan of their ID card as part of the paperwork. None have ever refused or questioned this and I suspect just asking might be enough to put off a potentially dodgy customer.

[Pickles]

Thanks very much for the very useful advice. I think that we have a buyer, via LeBonCoin: I'd pitched the price so that it compared well with cars of the same make, model, age and mileage, and reckoned on accepting about 10% less. We've agreed on the price that I had reckoned on, I have a deposit and we hope to complete the transaction on Tuesday afternoon.

[Benjamin]

We were in a similar situation almost three years ago. Three year old Focus Ghia estate diesel auto which we put on LBC, AI and a couple of less than memorable French web sites. This was probably about this time of year and............nothing (except one time waster via AI).

I don't know what it is with French car buyers but as you've found out they don't seem to go for internet advertised higher priced items.

March drifted into May and our house buyer was in place for the end of June. I decided to look for UK based buyers of LHDs and found one in Basingstoke. The deal was done over the 'phone with lots and lots of questions and one Friday I caught the ferry to Portsmouth and drove directly to Basingstoke. The bosses son, who I'd dealt with, had had to go out suddenly so I dealt directly with the boss. A good look round the car with his sons' notes that he'd written from our 'phone call and then he took it for a spin for a few minutes.

Came back and pronounced "exactly as described". We sat in front of his computer and the payment for the vehicle was made directly to our bank account at the agreed price. He told me a few stories about bodged cars with dodgy resprays which hadn't been declared and I think that's the crux of doing this type of deal. Be very honest with one another.

Sure, we got a bit less than we would have liked but it was one more thing off the list to be done before we re-located.

[Benjamin]

Congratulations  [B]

Our posts crossed so I'm pleased that your buyer has turned up.

My post may help others who are running out of time.

[Pickles]

Thanks everyone for all your help and advice. The deal is done, car is paid for and is now with its new owner.

[AnOther]

Going to the bank with a buyer is fine except when it's the weekend, quite likely the only sort of time many people will be free for such transactions !

Taking a draft is not always the answer either as until you've actually seen a car you can't guarantee that the price you've agreed beforehand is what you're going to pay On the day, sellers do not always tell the whole truth or you may find something they genuinely missed or didn't know about so it takes away that wiggle room although I suppose a seller could give you back any difference by cheque.

Whilst strictly speaking it's illegal to use more than €3k in cash in a transaction I wonder how often that is disregarded in practice ?

Coupled with vices cache rules and buyers expecting 20 year old bangers to be as good and reliable as 20 month old ones it perhaps goes some way to explaining why so many French seem to hang onto their cars to the death !

Maybe if the whole business were made less onerous and potentially problematic it could give a boost to the entire car market.