No luck yet (and a scam?)

(by Pat)

Showed the car to another prospect today--a brother and sister (immigrants again--interesting class and frugality issues showing up in the for sale by owner used car scenario). He said his brother-in-law is a mechanic and they may come back. No one has been ready to go for a spin yet. Three maybes so far, but I don't have a sense whether they'll actually come back or not. I'll follow up tomorrow. I had one appointment cancel today, but he said he'd get back to me this weekend.

Got one response today that I suspect is a scam. He only left a phone number, and when I called, he said he lived in New York. But he was very interested in buying a van, right away. He wanted me to resend the link with a photo. Then he called me back and said he'd be interested in driving up to buy the car, but only if I could sell it for $3,000. I told him that I had enough interest in the car already that I didn't need to drop the price yet. And I hated to see him drive 5 hours to get here and then not like the car. (I'd also read some strong warnings on Craigslist to beware of out-of-state buyers trying to run a scam, so my radar was on alert.)

He called me back a little later, and said he really wanted a van right away, and could pay $3,200. I said no again, but that I'd call him back if I couldn't sell it. But it just doesn't feel right. I think we're going to make a little house rule that we're only going to sell to local buyers (now that we've reread the scam warnings on Craigslist). It's odd to have someone be in such a rush--the other prospective buyers are definitely taking their time. And weird to have someone want to buy a car without even having seen it in person or having driven it, and when there are other similar cars listed on Craigslist much closer to NYC than Boston. Odd.