[jstanley]

> Unfortunately I had to leave the car, so they do a final inspection and prepare some papers. I came a week later to pick up the car.

I wonder how he would have felt if you had to take the car and keep the money for a week before you could pay.

[throwup238]

I did that when I purchased my used Toyota a few years ago. I told the dealer to hold the car until I could get a bank check issued by my credit union (no physical branches in my state so I had to call during business hours) and he said I could drive off that day. I was surprised but he just printed a temporary registration and a week later I drove by to finalize the paperwork after the check arrived.

It was a small dealership started by some ex-Microsoft guys and I was working at Microsoft at the time which might have had something to do with it, but it wasn’t like they verified my employment or anything. I assume they felt safe doing that considering the alternative would have been a career ending grand theft auto charge.

[wyclif]

Good salespeople excel at character judgement. They were confident that you are not the type that steals cars. But like the author says, by doing the entire transaction over email instead of in-person, you take a big part of their advantage away.

[chii]

The thing tho, is that the car dealership aint going anywhere, while the customer (if a fraudster) could just up and disappear with the car with the dealership having no way to track it back down.

[duped]

This is exactly what Carvana does when you want to return something to them