‘Stealth’ dealers on Facebook Marketplace

[Elkins45]

There are tons of small time dealers on Facebook Marketplace who are apparently trying to masquerade as just some dude selling a car. I presume this is to avoid having to pay some sort of fee FB charges to dealers. It’s obvious because they have multiple cars for sale and none of them have plates in the pix. I could care less except they treat every inquiry like it’s the FB police and make you play 20 questions before they will tell you where the vehicle is located. I don’t have the patience to pass their tests.

The smart one leave you some clues like a license plate frame or sticker with their dealership name so you can find the car on their website.

 

[Japanese]

Yep.
And also a lot of people (small shops) sell cars with rebuilt titles, after they have fixed them. It's good that they usually state it on the add, but in the end and with small letters.

 

[Elkins45]

Yep.
And also a lot of people (small shops) sell cars with rebuilt titles, after they have fixed them. It's good that they usually state it on the add, but in the end and with small letters.

I pretty much presume that if the ad doesn’t state “clean title” that it’s a rebuild. That turns out to be right maybe 90% of the time.

 

[slacktide_bitog]

Curbstoners have always been around

Dealers have always posted as private sellers

 

[NOTEVIL81]

Just move on. Why get involved in that.

 

[zzyzzx]

I once test drive a vehicle based on a listing on FB Marketplace because it was listed near me. It has mismatched Chinese tires and no license plates (meaning I could only drive it in an apartment complex parking lot). I'm not sure how they are actually intending to sell it, since nobody is going to buy it like that. That and they said that they were selling it for someone else. Anyhow, as I watched the listing, the vehicle seemed to move to different parts of town! As if that was going to make it sell at their preferred price. I still have no idea what scam they were trying to pull off on someone, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was some sort of scam.

 

[Pablo]

FB Marketwho?

 

[Elkins45]

I had really high hopes for a 2012 RAV4 at a good but not suspicious price and made arrangements to test drive it. It I knew he wasn’t a dealer because it had a plate in the photo that the seller had obscured. I’ll own up to the mistake I made because the pix clearly showed an obscured plate on the front and KY doesn’t have front plates. Two guys showed up driving a RAV with Illinois plates. The story I got on the test drive was that it car belonged to the second guy (who spoke no English) and the guy I had been talking to was helping him sell it.

I passed. The car needed a bit of work which made the decision easier, but it was the Illinois title allegedly held by guy #3 that was a bridge too far. There are too many other options out there to get mixed up in a title mess.

 

[Elkins45]

Curbstoners have always been around

Dealers have always posted as private sellers

I didn't realize (or had forgotten) there was a slang term for it.

 

[IndyIan]

I find marketplace is pretty good if its got good pictures of the item at someone's house, and the seller has a real profile to look at. Often for things like dirt bikes and atvs, you can see how they treat their stuff by their pictures in their profile.
Often for small stuff, people will just leave the $50 bucket of baseballs on the porch and give me their email to transfer the money when I pick it up. I assume they look at my profile and it doesn't look to shady, and its just saves time to not have to match schedules perfectly.