How do I protect myself from strange prospective buyers?
Protecting yourself from flacid or strange prospective buyers is a really serious consideration. When you're listing the vehicle and going to sell it in the market place, only provide the information you absolutely need to, don't give your address or home phone number, you only want to provide enough information so a prospective buyer can contact you and you can set up a place to do your negotiations. When somebody contacts you to buy your vehicle and they want to see the vehicle, it's probably a safer idea to meet in a neutral place, maybe a parking lot of a local grocery store, a post office, or a workplace, something that's public so that if there is an issue you will be able to get help and also it doesn't obviously show any insights into your personal life that a person could take advantage of down the road. It's good policy to only provide your cell phone number for contact or an email address that keeps you anonymous as well as set up some place neutral to meet so there's no fear of privacy theft. Most importantly as you're going through the selling process, follow your intuition, if you feel that this person has something shady going on or you feel like they're rushing the project so that they can just get the vehicle out of your hands and get on to something else, you probably want to back off of that deal because there's a good chance something's going to come around and bite you afterwards, so make sure that you do a gut check and if you feel like you can trust this person and you feel like they're treating this process above board, then carry on, but if at any point you feel like you're being taken advantage of, you're in charge of the process and you can always stop the negotiations right there, thank them for their time, and tell them that you're going to sell your vehicle to somebody else.
