I found someone offering a car through craigslist that I am interested in, but he says he is using this escrow service called Auto Trade Deals (www.autradeals.com) I'm a bit hesitant because I have never heard of it before, but it sounds pretty legitimate based from the website. But I'm not going to risk getting scammed unless I'm 100% sure that I can trust this site and that person. Any advice/help?
Unless it's a reputable new/used dealer, I would not buy that way - even then probably not unless your only paying money you can afford to lose. I've bought 6 cars on the internet and my recommendation is: 1) Only buy a car that you can drive BEFORE you pay cash. 2) Make sure they have the title in hand (unless it's a new/used car dealer). 3) Check the car out with carfax. I know it won't tell you everything, but it will tell you some tips as to the car's history and is worth the $30 from buying a lemon, salvaged, mileage rollback, etc. If the car is too cheap and they want to use a 3rd party to work the transaction instead of cash or cashier check = red flag.
Thanks man. Looked into it more, concluded that it was all a scam. Apparently there's lots of 'escrow scams' on craigslist going around nowadays. I looked into the website for autradeals.com and found that it was actually created about 2 weeks ago. Sucks that there's people out there trying so hard to just scam other people.
