Are You A Victim Of Curbstoning?
A prospective used-car buyer scours the ads and finds a listing for a vehicle that sounds like a good fit.
After a quick call to the person named in the ad, he arranges a meeting in a parking lot to see the vehicle. The car's mileage is low and it seems to run fine. So the customer pays cash and drives it home.
But within a couple of weeks, the car starts breaking down. The guy he bought it from is nowhere to be found. After some checking, he learns the vehicle had been flood damaged, sold at auction, and then foisted on him, the unsuspecting buyer. He was "curbstoned."
Curbstoning refers to unlicensed used car dealers who pose as individual private sellers, turn a quick, tax-free profit on a sale and disappear. Many of them sell cars by the side of the road or in an empty lot -- thus the name -- making themselves hard to find once problems pop up. Skilled curbstoners change their pager and cell phone numbers or even the cities where they operate to avoid being caught. Worst of all, some customers don't even realize they were victims of a curbstoning scheme: they figure they just ended up with a lousy car. Curbstoners are prepared going into these deals. They have credible-sounding stories about why they need to sell a car quickly and they steer customers away from uncovering a vehicle's hidden problems, experts say. But customers can be equally prepared to ensure that great deal doesn't turn out to be raw deal, complete with a car that has been flood damaged, has title problems, or is even stolen property, said Chris Boglev of the New York Independent Auto Dealers Association, who works in the Buffalo area. Customers need to be thorough. Curbstoners often pull off their deals by not showing customers the title or the car's Vehicle Identification Number, two pieces of data that can tell you lots about a car's true history. This is one of the easiest kinds of fraud to combat, according to Carfax.com, which allows customers to research vehicles' histories. "Consumers need to protect themselves," The trouble is, curbstoners appeal to two competing emotions: making a great deal and helping out someone else. Consumers like the price and are drawn in by a seller's story that he needs to sell the car immediately because of a costly divorce settlement. The story combined with the really low sale price, that's the ultimate dupe. There is also the story of a Florida woman who was curbstoned. She bought a car that she'd seen promoted as virtually new in a classified ad. Soon after, she spotted an identical ad for the same car in the paper, with a different phone number. Her suspicions aroused, she contacted her state's consumer affairs department. Police then discovered she had unwittingly bought one of six cars that had been stolen from a dealership in Canada. The cars were returned to the dealership, and the woman was out of a vehicle - but not her loan payments, which she had to continue making.
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