Selling my van. Is this a scam?

I am selling a left hand drive T25 westfalia camper. A guy has been emailing and telephoning. says he lives in Brittany. He is travelling over to UK Friday to buy my van, having seen only photos and email description. He has offered 500 pound less than I was asking which i am ok with. I have arranged to meet him in a public supermarket car park, have said I will only accept cash and that i would not use paypal etc. It still doesn't feel right. Any ideas anybody?

Sounds dodgy to me. A deal involving handing over a suitcase full of cash in a supermarket car park just doesn't sound right. Although you have said you will only accept payment by cash.

Can you post a message he has sent you? We can then look for tell tale signs of a scammer by the way he writes to you. If he has sent you an Email it would be great if you could put it up with full headers as we may be able to determine his location from the IP address. Please block out any personal information about yourself before posting.

I don't know what he is going to try and pull (if anything) but it all sound dodgy to me but when you have been involved in scam warning as long as me you learn to distrust everyone.

Welcome to Scamwarners KOD999.

The unusual feature is that someone living in France would want to buy a right hand drive vehicle with the complications that would create for him. Of course you can drive quite happily using a right hand drive car in France but you wouldn't want to drive one permanently. Overtaking is hazardous and insurance would be more costly as well as it having little resale value in France. At some stage he'd have to re-register it.

Now I notice you mention it's left hand drive.

I can't call it as a scam but it is a popular vehicle for scammers to offer for sale and a scammer would like to get hold of photos to use themselves.

This article includes details of what the buyer would have to deal with in buying and re-registering a UK vehicle. It does mention that French 2nd hand vehicles are expensive.

http://www.frenchpropertylinks.com/essential/registering-car-france.html

Thanks for replies.
The guy turned up. Spent an hour looking at the van and bought it cash. Whilst I filled the paperwork out with him, my wife paid the money into the bank (could be counterfeit I thought). So he was genuine. It was a camper and he said diff to get hold at home.

Glad to see that it all worked out for you, thanks for letting us know

Do you remember the guys name that bought your westy? We are selling one here in the USA and 2 french guys came to look at it a few times and said they wanted to ship it back to France and they have imported a few before already. They took my email down and emailed me saying they wanted to buy it but had to get the funds wired from their France bank account. I usually can spot a scam but this one seems like it could be legit because I actually already met the people. Unless they got some kind of new scam going on where people actually come out to look at the vehicle? Anyhow I told them I would not release the vehicle or title untill the funds clear my bank and no charge backs. Which they said was ok.


Im just wondering if this might be the same guy buying these and importing them to France.