So my daughter Moriah needs a car, (funny how fast they grow up) and for the last several weeks we’ve been on the look out for something affordable but reliable. My thinking has been to spend around 10K, but her budget is more like 5K. Working at Walgreens while she finishes school doesn’t allow for much but I thought we might be able to help her out. We had boughten a used Mazda 6 about a year and a half ago and I thought, well we could sell her that car for between 8 and 9k since we only owed 4500 and use the difference to put down on another car for us. So we went the used car dealer we purchased the car from for 13900.00 and guess how much they offered us for the car? 7K. So I looked at the salesman and said, are you saying that in the year and a half we’ve had this car we lost 7k in value. He said, ”We’ll that’s the cash value to us.” I said, “Yeah but all you’re doing is padding your pocket with our trade and reselling it to our daughter and then your selling us another car as well. Sounds like a sweet deal for you to me.” And we left.
What a joke! I mean seriously, do they think we’re that stupid? Obviously. So here’s the part I really hate. Then we turn to Craig’s list to look at used cars from private parties and having boughten my share of cars over the years I know that it’s hard to find a good car at a great price. But my daughter seems to think otherwise, and doesn’t mind stating it to me in as matter of factly a way as a 19-year-old can. “I’m telling you Moriah, cars that are only 4 to 6 years old with less than 100K miles don’t sell for 1500.00. It’s a scam. It’s worse than a scam, it’s a scammy scam!” Her usual reply is something like, “Don’t be a hater, Dad…” And she will email the seller. Unfortunately when shopping on Craigslist you don’t really know who you’re dealing with because you usually only get an email address, so you don’t know if the car is even in the USA until they email you back. One thing we’ve found is that every car that looked to good to be true has been supposedly owned by someone in the military who was being shipped overseas and the car would have to be shipped from the state they lived in, which was usually well over a 1000 miles away. Funny how people in Florida have to try to sell their cars to people in Houston isn’t it? Long story short, we go on Craigslist last night and guess what appears at the top of the page? A warning: CARS THAT MUST BE SHIPPED ARE SCAMS!!! My daughter finally got it.
But Craigslist can be a great resource so she kept searching for that perfect car that would fit both her budget and image. Eureka!! “Dad, here’s an 06 Camry for only $1500, it only has 78K miles and is in mint condition.” Red flags go up all around the campfire. ”Riah” I said. “Do you really think they only want $1500. That cars in better shape than our Mazda and I wouldn’t sell it for 7K even to you.” Her reply, “I’m emailing em.” I scratched my head and say, “Fine, email em.” Well bright and early this morning a knock comes on the bedroom door. “Mom, Dad… They emailed me back and blah, blah, blah. The person’s in the military and the car is in perfect condition, but they will ship it from Greece.” SCAM!!!!
Seems to me people in the military aren’t that desperate to sell their cars and wouldn’t it cost more to ship a car from Greece then the $1500 their asking? To top it off they say that you will be protected via eBay motors and the money will be put in an account on hold until after 10 days you’ve decided that you want or don’t want the car. What if it were a legit deal and we decided we don’t want the car? Who pays to ship it back? SCAM, SCAM, SCAM!!!
So two things I definitely hate are Car Dealers and Crooks preying on the less experienced…
