Staying safe on craigslist

[LarryE9E10]

Hi all!

Selling a 2006 530xiT. Put an ad on craigslist. A guy emailed me pretty quickly and asked for the VIN in order to run a Carfax check. Sounds reasonable but, as craigslist is renown for internet scammers, I'm a tad suspicious. Is there a compelling reason not to provide the VIN? Don't want to nip a potential sale in the bud, but don't need more problems either. Any advice from the more experienced sellers out there would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[GolfBavaria]

Larry, I hate to be the guy that says it's no big deal then you are the one guy that has something happen. I list VIN's all the time when selling cars, eBay, CL, etc. No problems as of yet. I take pictures of VIN and post. With your "newer" car, people do run the CARFAX more frequently than an older car. I always run Carfax on newer car and I have made similar requests to sellers. Get a feel for the guy, see if you can meet him in person, but if not I wouldn't sweat it.

You can get peoples VIN's all day long looking through windshield etc. I am also not one to cover up license plates. I never really understood that either. You see peoples plates all day long driving around. I guess people used to be able to run checks on your address maybe, but not in CA. So, bottom line is it's going to ultimately come down to you, but I do it all the time. I do ask them to send me a copy since they will pay for it, then you get a free copy of your Carfax! Good luck!

 

[Peter Coomaraswamy]

Ask him for his personal email rather than using the masked craigslist email for starters or ask for a phone number, just tell him you're not comfortable using the internet for sensitive information, but the VIN is something that a buyer might ask for. I usually grab it while viewing the car-

 

[Markos]

I love buying on CL, but hate selling. This is especially true for cars. I think that you are fine sending the VIN. I recommend meeting the buyer at a third location, like a grocery store parking lot. Especially if you are selling an e9. You don't want a bunch of tire kickers knowing where your classic cars and the tools to maintain them are parked.

Spend $20 and run the Carfax yourself. Then you can just send results to the prospective buyers...

 

[Gor]

Couldn't agree more... Selling cars appears to be a stressful experience... worse if it's an E9. I am considering passing mine on to a specialist classic car dealer just to make it easier, and safer, even though they charge a large percentage of the final price, it may be they can sell the vehicle for much more than a private sale can generate.
Hope yours goes well,
Kind regards
Gor


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[sfdon]

I Always get the vin- use a vin decoder and you see all the options and correct model and date of manufacturer

What's the last 7 digits of your vin?

 

[teahead]

Are you afraid someone will grab your VIN and put it on another car?

They'd need to do a whole lot of work to do that. Title forgery, VIN tag forgery, body tag forgery.

99.99999% of the time, people want the VIN to run a VIN check for issues.

Safe to do; I post VINs on my cars I sell all the time.

 

[MyFemurHurts]

I wouldn't sweat giving out the VIN. I work for a dealer group, and we syndicate out VIN's on hundreds of used cars and haven't had a fraud alert. There isn't much a scammer is going to do with a VIN.