Weddingbee boards

My FI is selling his truck tomorrow, and I'm getting a weird feeling about the buyer. I'm a little worried that it's a scam. If anyone has experience with buying or selling a used car using a personal consumer loan direct from a private seller, I'd appreciate your input.

Some background: My FI listed the truck on Craigslist for $18,000. The potential buyer responded via text message and came by to see it the next day. He's in his mid 20's and seemed nice enough. He didn't mention pricing however - he just said he'd take it. They didn't confirm the price as far as my FI can remember, so my FI is just assuming he'll get the full $18k. The buyer is planning on paying with a personal loan through Chevron Credit Union. My FI still owes around $9,000 on it, so there are four parties involved - 1. my FI, 2. the potential buyer, 3. the buyer's credit provider, and 4. my FI's credit provider. They're meeting in the morning to process everything. The buyer asked my FI to bring his drivers license, insurance, and registration, and they're planning on heading over to the buyer's credit union.

Here are the red flags I'm seeing -- the biggest one is no discussion on price. That's always the #1 topic that comes up when buying/selling a car. It just seems so strange to me. Also, the fact that he asked my FI to bring all of that personal info. I guess it makes sense, but he's been so ambiguous about everything else - i.e. how his credit union is actually going to pay our creditors - that it just seems a little alarming that this is one detail he was very sure of. And, besides that, I've bought four cars and sold three in my life - one in a somewhat similar situation - and I was never asked or did I ask to provide proof of insurance. My insurance provider always covered my purchases for either 30 or 60 days following the transfer date.

Any thoughts?? We're definitely not going to accept a cashiers check, money order, etc. And, I know that it can take some time to process a direct wire, so we're not handing anything over until all is said and done. We're going to call both our creditor and the buyer's in the morning to ask what their standard process is, and we're going to make sure we don't stray from it. With $18,000 at risk, I'm just trying to make sure that we're not putting ourselves in a bad position.

Thanks Bees!

Thanks for the suggestions everyone! Good news - everything went well today, and the truck is officially sold and money is in the bank. It turns out that the red flags were a result of the buyer just being very young & new to the whole car buying process. This guy was probably 21 or 22, and I think this must have been his first car purchase. He didn't even try to negotiate the price - he paid the full $18k. It's funny, because my FI would have let it go for up to $1k less than asking. A couple of the other things that seemed weird were just miscommunications - for example, they didn't actually need our insurance. Everything was handled completely by his credit union, so I'm confident that we processed it correctly. So, now I'm feeling a whole lot better about it... and with the difference between what my FI owed and what he got, he'll be able to pay off all of his credit cards and put the rest towards the wedding/honeymoon. Woo hoo!!

In case anyone is wondering... my FI's grandpa gave him his '93 Toyota pickup truck recently, and we're trying to get on top of debt, which is why he sold this one. It's not nearly as fancy, but I have to say that the simplicity is kind of a nice change. Manual transmission, no A/C, no mirrors in the visors, no power anything, including steering, no CD player, etc. Not much that can break!!