I am selling a motorcycle on motoscout.ch, and someone from France contacted me, is willing to pay the full price, will transfer the money, and have a transport agency pick up the bike.
Smells a bit funny to me.
Here is the email I got from him (in French and German, Google translated to English):
I confirm my interest in the machine.
I'm ready to buy it but I couldn't go there to see it and pay you because I'm in France.
I offer bank transfer as a payment method.
You don't have to worry about taking the machine back once you have cashed in the money according to a purchase agreement.
The transport company will come to you to collect it with all the documents.
Yes it is a well known scam, people who sold smth in their life on web-sites always encounter this by amount of 10 (on facebook by amount of 100), never give out any personal details ever.
OK, that explains the ad that I saw in an Otto's brochure (IIRC), they were advertising a new Volkswagen - can't remember the exact model - for 35k.... I asked myself this question then - who would buy a car from an Otto's catalogue - now I have the answer
But seriously, if it is a new car you can't see it until they deliver it - and still you might want to check it during handover, I've seen some Teslas delivered in the dark and the lucky owners were quite surprised the next day - some parts were not exactly as they should have been...
How did you know what to expect? Did you know the seller? Or did you just transfer money to a stranger, an individual (not an established company), without ever having met them? Did you contact them in an email, and not via phone call? etc.
In other words, was your case similar to this one? Context is important. Congratulations to everyone in this thread who ignored it.
Both motorcycles were sold on Ricardo. All I had was the description and some phots. So very much the same as in OP's case.
In one case the seller delivered (!) the bike in less than 2 hours after I hit the buy button and we exchanged keys and gray card for money. I am sure he thought he made a good deal. I, on the other hand put another 70'000 km on the clock and it is still going strong, ready for the next 70'000 km. (The joy of Japanese bikes).
In the other case the description listed an issue, which I knew could only mean one thing: a flat battery. Indeed, all the bike needed was a new battery (otherwise it would neither have been to difficult to fix the problem).
This. In FL, I saw a 1968 Pagoda on eBay from a seller in TX (and yes, TX is another country ). I called him and asked all the pertinent questions, which he answered truthfully. At the last minute of the auction I bid and won. I've had 20 years of joy from this beautiful car, and I'm now selling for an OK profit (twice the time value of money), but I've spent very little on it, had a blast, and made a lot of friends--how do you value fun?).