Frustrating Fake "By Owner" really Dealer sellers

This could probably go in the minor rants section but I'm interested in the hive's opinion.

Last night while helping a coworker check out a car for their kid and ran into my second dealer operating out of their house in as many weeks and probably like 5/6th total over the past few years. Link to the car in question. Should have been tipped off by the expired tag but didn't spot it. Here's a link to another guy doing the same thing but was easier to spot.

The guy had probably 7-8 cars in the driveway/on the street/behind the house with dead/no/dealer tags and at least two sharing the same tag on the rear. They are all on craigslist for sale by owner and portrayed as such; told us this was his wife's car and she just got a new one. Had an oil leak, rust underneath, and feeling sketched, we passed.

In principle I'm ok with folks making a buck and the guys I've come across seem to be taking trade ins and selling them out the back door on the side (the Impreza had a sticker from the local dealership on it). But on the other hand, I wouldn't buy a car from them on just the shear deceit. Coworker; who knows nothing about cars and is just frustrated with trying to find something decent in the ~$3k window, went off pretty good afterwards about calling the city on the guy.

Yeah, that's shady AF.  Do they own the car outright? If not, then they are misrepresenting the sale. Even if they are buying them from the dealer and flipping them, they are misrepresenting the provenance of the vehicle.  I would report them to CL to get them banned and steer clear. 

That and filtering through the buy here pay here listings are probably my two biggest frustrations of tracking down "cheap" cars. 

I was irritated by corner lot dealers posting FSBO ads, to get around the fee, but now that CL is charging owners to post, I don't understand why they'd continue to do so. 

What I see a lot of now, are legitimate cars being posted in the parts section.... 

In reply to RealMiniNoMore :

People don't like to buy cars from dealers, so making it look like you're selling your own cars is considered better optics by some people. IMHO it's shady optics, but what do I know?

It also might have the nice side effect that pretending to be the owner of the car instead of a dealer might make it easier to forget to disclose things, especially when it comes to problems with a car that a dealer should've easily spotted.

In reply to BoxheadTim :

Ah, yes. I hadn't thought of it that way - foregoing the inspection. 

At least Craigslist lets you filter by owner OR dealer. FB marketplace does either dealer or all, and as more and more cheap stuff moves to there, it's become more frustrating.

To the point, though, yes, I've seen this, and yes, I think it's shady.

Reintroduce morals to society.  Yep not happening.  I always do the CL owner/dealer filter but that only cuts out about half.  I've just learned to glaze over my eyes and search for hopefully legit owner ads - but why should I have to learn to spot a lie when CL has the algorithimic power to do it for me?  Clearly also their ban hammer isn't strong enough.  I'm not down with the Chinese method of social credits but there is a lot of E36 M3 I'd just like to see disappear from the internet - like adult spam e-mails ( those people ARE going to hell.) 

The post above about reporting them - I'm actually down with that on this occasion if you're a perpetual liar. 

I will admit to having an idea why they do it - they just want to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

Yeah, I can normally spot them on the ads and it seems to be like maybe 1 in every 7 to 10 or so that ends up being a dealer; both on craigslist and Facebook, that is listed as owner.

One of the ones in the past I met the guy at a Walmart and everything seemed good, then he pulled out a title that was obviously being floated (signed by a woman from a week or so prior), told me then it was his aunt or someone he was helping sell for but I just bailed. Looked up the cell he had messaged me from and found a few more listings up.

Thinking over to pHeller's thread how about reporting them to the city?

I ended up looking at a minivan listed by one of these guys. There was oil pencil on the valve cover saying 73,174m or something. 

I told the guy he was selling a car with a replacement junkyard engine and he flipped. He just kept showing me the "clear" Carfax and insisting that mechanics note the mileage in oil pencil on the valve cover when doing oil changes (sooo, this 100k mile car had exactly one oil change then?) The Carfax showed the car coming into a dealer trade in and then going out for auction about a month earlier. You buy cars at auction, fix them, and sell to the public pretending you're not a dealer?

I decided not to buy the car, and then I spent over an hour painstakingly looking the entire car over, and left him with a low-ball I knew he wouldn't take. Don't lie to me a-hole.

SC has made it very difficult to get a dealer tag and you can only sell so many cars a year without a dealer license.  I’m not sure the county cares.  

To be clear, I have no problem with someone buying cars at auction and fixing and selling. But I do expect then to follow the proper legal channels and not to lie to prospective customers.

Does your state have an implied dealer warranty? If so, they could be trying to skirt that.

In NC, there is a TFN dedicated to shady dealer practices: 1-877-5-NO-SCAM.

They're frustrating, but if you are on CL enough (not that I'd know anything about that....) they're pretty easy to spot.  I don't even bother with them.

BoxheadTim said:

In reply to RealMiniNoMore :

People don't like to buy cars from dealers, so making it look like you're selling your own cars is considered better optics by some people. IMHO it's shady optics, but what do I know?

It also might have the nice side effect that pretending to be the owner of the car instead of a dealer might make it easier to forget to disclose things, especially when it comes to problems with a car that a dealer should've easily spotted.

I think, at least in NJ, that a car sold by a dealer is required to pass emissions, private sales do not have this requirement. Years ago I bought a used car from a dealer with an out of date sticker, when I went to the DMV and it wouldnt pass, they told me to take it back to the dealer because of whatever law. Sure enough, the dealer spent more than what I paid for the car to get it fixed.  

TR7 said:

BoxheadTim said:

In reply to RealMiniNoMore :

People don't like to buy cars from dealers, so making it look like you're selling your own cars is considered better optics by some people. IMHO it's shady optics, but what do I know?

It also might have the nice side effect that pretending to be the owner of the car instead of a dealer might make it easier to forget to disclose things, especially when it comes to problems with a car that a dealer should've easily spotted.

I think, at least in NJ, that a car sold by a dealer is required to pass emissions, private sales do not have this requirement. Years ago I bought a used car from a dealer with an out of date sticker, when I went to the DMV and it wouldnt pass, they told me to take it back to the dealer because of whatever law. Sure enough, the dealer spent more than what I paid for the car to get it fixed.  

Emissions counties in Wisconsin are the same way.  Private party the work is on the buyer, dealer the work is on the seller.  Lots of expensive little things to fix on rustbelt cars and lots of folks who don't know how bad that stuff is to fix on a private party sale, or a guy could clear the code knowing it wont set a monitor for 2 key cycles.  Wisconsin is also an as-is, where-is state on private party sales.

The previous post about recognizing dealers does ring true, the ads are easy to spot even if they are deceitful.