rant: I'm sick and tired of people selling cars and only accepting cash.

Trent said:

So what should we be doing other than cash? I have a dozen interested parties on the mini. I hope to sell it in the next week.

 

In person at a bank/credit union?

Bank transfer/ E transfer seems easy enough. Even on a Sunday evening.

Should I have gone for the Venmo/Cashapp option? 

Paypal goods and services will allow them to get the money back without any recourse from the seller so that is right out. Is Friends and family any safer?

Cash with an ultraviolet lamp or verification pen handy?

Cash with a UV lamp & verification pen protects you from counterfeit bills but none of the other risks.

Personally I'm not any more comfortable with transfer apps than I am with cash. Moving 5k+ through them is getting rather scary.

A bank transfer or in person at the bank are good options. I paid for the Toyobaru via a cashier's check and e-Transfer.

GameboyRMH said:

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

Anything under $5K and cash is fine, $5-10K and I'll think about it.  Over $10K and I'm really not happy with the idea of paying (or accepting!) that much.

This, there are risks to walking around with huge amounts of cash too, especially if you're in a jurisdiction where civil asset forfeiture is an issue. Being unwilling to accept any kind of bank transfer for 5-digit amounts is being unreasonable IMO.

This is kind of where I'm at. I can see both sides but at a certain point, carrying around lots and lots of cash becomes a liability, especially if you look or present yourself in a certain way. Civil asset forfeiture ain't no joke.

I normally find a way to come up with the cash if the seller is insistent but whenever possible I do a cashier's check or try to take the seller to my credit union so that the responsibility of carrying a large sum of cash is immediately not mine.

TLDNT

CASH IS KING

YRMV

Hmm... interesting... the last larger private purchases I've made (just under $10K) were with personal checks, but I knew the sellers and the sellers knew me.  And they were cashed before I picked up the cars. The less expensive ones I've bought were either cash upon pickup or PayPal prior to pickup. 

I haven't really thought about buying a $10K+ car from a private seller I didn't know.  I suppose I would get cash from the bank if asked, but haven't been in that position yet. 

In person at a bank is my preferred method.  In NC a notary needs to sign the title anyway, so a bank will let you take care of two birds with one stone.  A certified check or a wad of cash or a wire transfer can all be verified right there on the spot.

Im happy to pay in cash for small deals but I prefer not to carry around >10k.

The guy who started this company was on the Car Dealership Guy Podcast a while back and I thought it was an interesting concept.  Basically and escrow service to facilitate private party car transactions.  Full disclosure, I have never used them, but would consider it in a private vehicle transaction over a certain dollar amount.

https://privateauto.com/dealnow

With something like USAA, having a local bank is critical, too.  One caution is that if you're planning to withdraw a large amount, notify the bank a few days in advance that you'll be pulling $x,xxx out.  I was surprised one time by going to the bank one Saturday morning and they were very hesitant to give me something like $1k in cash.  Remember your account balance is theoretical money only, and they may have to move some stuff around to have the physical cash on-hand.

Agreed with the OP.  I've bought and sold cars with PayPal and (preferably) ACH/wire transfer.  Anything more than 4k isn't worth dealing with a billion 20s you get from an ATM.

Traveling with more than 4k seems sketchy as all hell with civil asset forfeiture, which I still don't understand how that's allowed.

In reply to infinitenexus :

USAA sucks now. They're nowhere near as good as they use to be 15 years ago. 

Do you not bank with another local financial institution? You could've transferred the money to yourself then went to the bank and withdrew it. I only take large e-payments from people I trust and some GRM folks.

And if you live somewhere where you don't feel comfortable temporarily carrying $10k then, move lol

WonkoTheSane said:

Agreed with the OP.  I've bought and sold cars with PayPal and (preferably) ACH/wire transfer.  Anything more than 4k isn't worth dealing with a billion 20s you get from an ATM.

Traveling with more than 4k seems sketchy as all hell with civil asset forfeiture, which I still don't understand how that's allowed.

Civil forfeiture or not, having someone know I got a pile of stacks on me and I'm headed a certain direction is asking to get robbed. Unfortunately that's a thing these days. Granted like I already said once, if I'm going to a cash deal I'm not going alone, and I'm sure as berkeley going armed- but especially if OP is in Cleveland, not doing it at all is being aware of potential situations and not a bad plan, imo. Stick up kids do not give a berkeley anymore. 

Had a whoops moment a few weeks ago.  Just got home from selling a bicycle to my buddy and a car to another buddy, then hopped on a plane down to Mexico to go see a few customers.  Had something mental like $9800 in cash in my wallet.  Under the "you must declare" amount but certainly more than an average joe should be carting around in Mexico in US Pesos.  I always try to emtpy my wallet and just carry a few k in Mexican currency.

All in all it worked out fine, but I didnt know what to do with the cash for a week.  Didnt want to have it in my wallet, didnt want to leave it in my bag.  Ended up stashing it in my carry-all messenger bag with my laptop charger, was careful pulling out my computer at customers LOL.

But anyway, cash is king.  Always has been, always will be.

Absolutely nothing but cash.
But I also don't expect a buyer coming to look at what I'm selling to have large sums of cash on them. If it's expensive, we can go to a bank together and you can withdraw cash and give it to me. Then we'll do the paperwork and it's yours.

I sold a Harley once and the guy needed a loan. Fine. We went together to his credit union, I gave them the title and they gave me the cash and him a loan agreement. Done.

I think I'm breaking silence again....  

I have banked with USAA a really long time.  I can use the app on my phone to raise my ATM, debit card or wire transfer limits in less than a minute.  I can then go get however much cash I need easily.  Sadly most ATMs have limits so you have to go to a couple.  
 

Getting cash wasn't that difficult.  You can even type ATM limit in the search function in the App or on the website or you can call the number on the back of your card.  
 

Happy belated Thanksgiving.  Back to much reduced posting.

I've purchased and sold vehicles dozens of times. I have only NOT used cash 2 times. First was my brand new $21,000 2011 F-150, that was financed. Second was my wife's used 2010 Odyssey that we bought from her aunt, used a personal check. Every vehicle besides my truck has been under $5,000, most by a large margin. If I was selling a car for $10,000, I'd prefer cash, but would consider doing $5,000 in cash and $5,000 of some other form of payment that includes me not giving them the title until payment clears. 

Also, how the heck are the cops or anyone besides the seller gonna know you have 10K on you? We still have 4th Amendment protections that prohibit police from searching you or your vehicle without probable cause or a warrant and 2nd Amendment rights to prohibit non-police from searching you or your vehicle.

If vehicle is in the same town, you could show up and look at it and decide whether or not to drop $10K on it. If you decide that you do want it, you could make arrangements to meet later with payment instead of carrying that much cash, if you're concerned.

Man, some of y'all took my little rant far too seriously. Some of these comments border on ridiculous. I'm sure more people will jump in to insult me but I'm not ready any further.

Also, I don't think anyone here is insulting the OP, I think he is just upset that not everyone agrees with him and is taking it too personally. There's lots of good info in this thread that he could learn from, but instead of continuing to read it and maybe learn something, he'd rather just ignore any opinions that don't line up with his? Ok, then.

90BuickCentury said:

Also, how the heck are the cops or anyone besides the seller gonna know you have 10K on you? We still have 4th Amendment protections that prohibit police from searching you or your vehicle without probable cause or a warrant and 2nd Amendment rights to prohibit non-police from searching you or your vehicle.

Due process does not apply to civil asset forfeitures, for no particularly good reasons.  It's outrageous, but unfortunately true.  Here's one example (of many):

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/highway-robbers-how-trip-buy-farmland-ended-police-taking-all-n1281629

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks for the article, I read the whole thing. Yes, I am aware of and very much against CAF, but there is also a 5th Amendment right to refuse to answer questions. They won't know you have the cash unless you tell them about it. I'm not a lawyer, but if they ask, I'm pretty sure one can legally decline to answer, or tell them that one does not have a large amount of cash, or tell them about the $50 that one may have in his wallet but decline to mention the $5,000 in the glove box. 

90BuickCentury said:

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks for the article, I read the whole thing. Yes, I am aware of and very much against CAF, but there is also a 5th Amendment right to refuse to answer questions. They won't know you have the cash unless you tell them about it. I'm not a lawyer, but if they ask, I'm pretty sure one can legally decline to answer, or tell them that one does not have a large amount of cash, or tell them about the $50 that one may have in his wallet but decline to mention the $5,000 in the glove box. 

So they come up with a pretext to search the car, find the cash, seize it.  Sure, the pretext might be something you can fight in court and that would stop the cash being used as evidence against you for any criminal charge, but it won't get them to return it.  And they aren't really interested in criminal charges, they just want to take the cash because they get to keep it to buy toys for the department.

In reply to infinitenexus :

So you wanted to post on a discussion forum then got mad when the discussion didn't go your way?  Want some cheese with that whine?

93gsxturbo said:

Had something mental like $9800 in cash in my wallet. 

Even in 100 dollar bills that's a thick pile of cash.  I have a vision of George Costanza's exploding wallet.  

In the past, I've used cashier's checks and sent a scan of them to the seller so they could confirm with my bank. I'm not sure how I could fake that.

Cashier's checks are interesting.  They are guaranteed by the bank's funds.  Once it's on paper, the money is gone from you.  If you lose the check, it's actually a big hassle to get the money back into your account.

I find wire transfers slightly confusing.  When I bought my Ferrari years ago, we drove over to the seller's bank (in retrospect, I'm not sure why we bothered, I guess he wanted a teller to confirm it).  My financial advisor at the time called his assistant and - boom! - the money was in the guy's account and the title handed over to me. When I bought my Bimota last year, I called USAA and they had no way to do that.  It wouldn't get cleared until close of business.

I threw up my hands and got cash for the Bimota.  The branches of my CU only keep so much on hand and want 36hrs notice if you want more than $2k or so.   I ended up going to 3 branches.

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

90BuickCentury said:

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks for the article, I read the whole thing. Yes, I am aware of and very much against CAF, but there is also a 5th Amendment right to refuse to answer questions. They won't know you have the cash unless you tell them about it. I'm not a lawyer, but if they ask, I'm pretty sure one can legally decline to answer, or tell them that one does not have a large amount of cash, or tell them about the $50 that one may have in his wallet but decline to mention the $5,000 in the glove box. 

So they come up with a pretext to search the car, find the cash, seize it.  Sure, the pretext might be something you can fight in court and that would stop the cash being used as evidence against you for any criminal charge, but it won't get them to return it.  And they aren't really interested in criminal charges, they just want to take the cash because they get to keep it to buy toys for the department.

 

Yup, CAF is a very real threat unfortunately.  They don't even have to charge you to keep the cash.  I won't travel with more cash than I could afford to gift to the local PD, otherwise we meet at a bank branch and I will withdraw it there.

CAF is ludicrous.

But yeah, cash is king.  Under $10k, it's cash.  Over that, and I've found most buyers are fine with a bank wire.

In reply to 90BuickCentury :

Luckily the dealer we used for hte last two Kias was fine with a personal check. It was really really hard to hand over that second $28k one..... but private sellers? I wouldn't expect anyone but a known GRM'er to even think about accepting anything but cash.

If selling, we bring our marker pen to check the bills. Wife counts, I converse with the buyer. Always have two people. No matter what you're selling. Theres been a new rash of robberies in the indy area to steal the product or cash. 

Whoever is going whiny with the downvotes is getting a bit over zealous, no?

I sold a car with cashapp and paid for a car with paypal friends and family. I also paid for a $20k+ car with a sandwich bag of cash. There are plenty of safe reliable ways to handle bigger transactions nowadays, and if someone has the ability to pay you with a method that shows up instantly in your account and can't be reversed, it's sellers who won't accept that who are cutting their prospective buyer pool down. 
 

you all need to calm the berkeley down, acting like a goon squad as someone expresses their frustration because you happen to also not trust modern payment methods

Cash or money wire for me only whenever I've sold a car.  Cashiers checks/bank checks are too easily faked, I won't accept them.  Cleveland isn't that dangerous, if you were worried about carrying the cash to the buyers house, then ask him to meet you at the bank and do the transaction there, or at a police station. 

I bank with USAA too and haven't had an issue pulling out whatever I've needed.

This thread is an example of why the downvote system is dumb.