Selling a used car, how do I avoid scams?

Q.I've gotten a couple of responses but they sound fishy to me. In both cases the buyer is out of state and wants to arrange to have the car shipped, that just doesn't sound right. It's a 94 Concorde with 128K miles on it, it's not a hard to get classic car. One of the buyers said he would send me a certified check or money order that includes the shipping costs, that's a huge red flag. I did a little googling and there is a known scam where they send you a check, your bank accepts it, you send money to the shipper and then a week later the bank tells you that the check is bad. I sent the buyer an e-mail and told them they would have to pay the shipper directly. Was posting an ad on Cars.com a bad idea? The last time I sold a car was 94 which predates Internet scams. I put an ad in the Want Advertiser which was a print only publication at the time, and I ended up selling it to someone for cash. The Want Advertiser is online now so it's no safer. What's the best way to sell a used car these days?

A.I've put an ad on Craig's list that includes the proviso that the deal has to be done in person, if they want to ship the car to Nigeria they can forget it. I haven't had any response from the Craig's list ad yet but I'm gotten three scam responses from the Cars.com add. Two of the guys have admitted that they are in London. The one who say's he's a broker I told that I'm selling the car to local buyer. There's a lot of people out there who simply don't think ahead - they own a vehicle and drive it for a few years, never maintaining it, then one day it breaks down and when they go to a garage, the mechanic looks at it and just shakes his head, there's just too much stuff that needs fixing. So the mechanic tells them the old "this will cost more to fix than it's worth" Now, what that is really translated to is "you have beat this poor piece of shit to the ground, sell it to a wrecker for $50 and go find another $2000 vehicle to beat to the ground, ya damn (ab)user." But what these people think is "Oh, I deserve a nice new car!" and they run out to a car dealer and spend too much money on a new piece of shit. Of course, the new car dealer isn't going to give them squat in trade in value for an old beat up POS so they don't trade it in. Then, a month later all the bills are piling up for the down payment, the insurance and all that, and they absolutely must have $3K to pay all that off, so they put an ad in the paper for their old car.

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