Receiving money from France for selling a vehicle.

experiences / suggestions please

TL:DR

We ( well my wife ) owns a vintage vehicle she wants to sell. It’s proven harder than we thought despite theoretically being desirable ( restored vintage Vw camper)

Theres a guy in France that seems very keen to buy it and so far doesn’t seem to be a scammer but obviously that’s in the back of my mind.

Assuming he’s on the level, he would need to pay us and then have someone collect the vehicle and deliver to him in France.

How feasible is this? How can he send us the money and is there any export stuff we would need to be aware of or is that nothing to do with us once he’s paid?

is there a scam angle I’m missing?

TIA…

He wants it he pays in gbp on collection. Export is his problem, not yours

A recent thread on here mentioned the bottom has dropped out of the classic VW camper market funnily enough.

Anyway, out of curiosity, is it rhd or left?

If rhd I wonder why he wants it?

For payment he just calls his bank and tells them to deposit GBP into your bank account. It’s not complex though it may not be instant just wait for cleared funds. I’ve done it both ways from my high street UK account in and out of EU.

Or he could pay using Wise

Bruneep has the answer, too many other potential pitfalls. If I was buying a vehicle I would want to inspect it anyway so it seems a bit unusual that someone would buy from a private seller without inspection.

It’s a LHD vehicle ( originally from USA )

I agree it’s unusual but I suspect they may not be as easy to get hold of in France.  We had someone else come and see it who was based in France and restored / sold VWs there.

I think he’s saying it may take 4 days for funds to clear and it does seem

reasonable he wouldn’t want to come over and agree to buy her then have to hang around 4 days waiting for it to clear before he can set off home?

International wire transfers are effectively immediate, or he can come over with a big wodge of GBP he can withdraw from his bank and pay you cash right there. How much money are we talking?

International wire transfers are effectively immediate

Usually not.  1-6 days

Money into Wise Euro account is just about instantaneous. Use their conversion page to calculate how much needs to be sent to cover exchange and other fees. Use the business page to work it all out.

I just bought some bike gear from Germany. The online payment wouldn’t work so I did a bank deposit with Wise. Seemed to take a little longer than transferring from my own accounts internationally, but it worked fine.

Assuming he’s on the level, he would need to pay us and then have someone collect the vehicle and deliver to him in France.

This bit would make me nervous. The only thing that would calm me down would be a bank transfer, fully cleared before his mate comes to collect it. As it stands its potentially next level paid, mate / courier collected and purchaser never receives items and claims a refund, seller loses item and cash scam. Is it advertised through ebay? Do they offer payment protection ?

A fully cleared bank transfer is the only thing I’d consider other than a bag full of GBP. How mch are we talking about here?

Unless the buyer was with me looking at the vehicle then I wouldn’t entertain it any further. A deal is where both parties are happy and it’s difficult to do that remotely.

And finally, vehicles are emotive – after all the adventures/time/effort put into it why wouldn’t you want to hand the keys over to the next custodian of those adventures, dreams & aspirations and watch them drive off into the sunset with a tear in your eye?

As above Wise is pretty much instantaneous, paid to & from my brother in France a few times. Sold a motorbike bike recently to a guy in Ireland, bank transfer done – just waiting for his mate to collect it, pretty easy when done correctly & there is a permanently exported section on the V5

I forgot to mention – years ago I sold a Brooklyn Machine Works Racelink (a rare expensive bike – but not the value of a classic VW). The Norwegian buyer flew over, i booked him into a local guesthouse, we went riding locally, took him to some local pubs etc and he flew home happy with the bike. Still keep in touch.

With the availability of cheap flights I’d expect anyone serious to fly over and buy in person.

All good advice here, thanks!

value wise over 10k less than 20….

International wire transfers are effectively immediate

Usually not. 1-6 days

You’re confusing cross border ach with wire transfers. The former are measured in days, the latter (with higher fees) are close to immediate (few mins to a few hours depending on the technology implemented by the 2 banks)

value wise over 10k less than 20….

Thats a bank transfer and the security that comes with it. I doubt someone is going to travel with a bag full of cash… It will also weed out the less serious potential buyers!.

then

a permanently exported section on the V5

which you complete then it’s over to them. Call your insurance broker when it is off your drive.

Apparently CHAPS is faster. £25 a transaction sounds reasonable to me.

https://www.bankofscotland.co.uk/helpcentre/everyday-banking/payments-and-transfers/pay-by-chaps.html

I sold my Jeep to a guy in Poland last year, he was one of the early people interested and I put him off a few times assuming it was a scam too. He persisted and we did a video walk around (in the near dark and peeing rain) then he transferred a deposit over for me to take it off sale. After a lot of false starts including him breaking down on the way over he did turn up and took it.  You’ll be nervous through the whole process!

He’d stayed in the UK before and still had an open bank account which would have made it easier, he actually ended up getting a mate staying in the UK to help him with the pick up and there was talk of him making the payment so maybe an option if your guy has any UK connection. Fairly sure we ended up doing the whole transaction from his Polish account and the final transfer was instant as the deposit had already made the account connection – not totally certain of that though, it may have been the UK one he had.

For the DVLA you don’t send the V5 back as the new owner needs the whole thing, so I sent them a letter with the new owner’s details. They acknowledged change of ownership pretty quickly.

I paid a guy in Gran Canaria about €400 using Paypal (wingfoil lessons – ooh get me) and it went straight through.

I have an account with Starling bank which gives me an IBAN number, where most UK banks will give you only sort code and account code by default. YOu could ask your bank for your IBAN nnumber, he can then use that to sen you money.

Give the buyer a proper receipt too, as it should help with them getting it registered abroad – or so I found out when a guy I’d sold to moved to Germany.

I sold an aged VW kombi/bus from here in Norway to a student in Germany. We‘ve had a video call upfront and he signed a simple contract – all worked out fine. But I would also assume scam in 90% of such requests.

Are we speaking of a T3 or older?

Wouldn’t next spring be a better time to sell? Like with convertibles – everyone will have their summer heads on then.

theoretically but we have nowhere inside to store her and another damp winter by the sea isn’t going to be doing her any favors.

51 year old type 2