Buyer's Remorse / California

Alameda California : Sold a 1982 Porsche April 15, 2006 to a buyer from craigslist. Built up somewhat of a trust relationship with the buyer for in the course of 2 weeks he has come by to see the car for over 30 mins each, besides being a servant of the public he should be trustworthy ( firefighter), ya right! Test drove the car 2 occasions. Make the long story short he called me Monday eve telling me he has given it some thought and is thinking of returning the car . Earlier that Monday I deposited the check in my bank after calling the fireman’s credit union to clear the check, so no holds, sufficient funds, so yay, let’s deposit it… Haven’t heard from this guy till Weds telling me he put a stop pay on my check and I need to get my car back.. OKAY this is becoming all too trippy to me. Since the check cleared I was thinking man “man leave me alone PLEASE! “ .. Thusday comes I get a phone call from my 12 year old telling me the Porsche is the driveway with ll the paper work keys.. BTW the pink slip of the car has all his info whited out with corrective liquid paper. Is that legal ? this is all becoming a nightmare.. To top it off the bank pulled the POSTED funds in my account since his bank wouldn’t release the funds after the fact that it was cleared to begin with.. any advice is appreciated thanks Paul

Have you already submitted notice to the DMV that you sold the vehicle? The following comes from http://www.dmv.ca.gov/vr/vr_info.htm#BM2520

"Protect Your Liability. Complete a Notice of Transfer and Release of Liability (REG 138) and mail the notice to the DMV address on the form. The seller is responsible for reporting the change of ownership to DMV within 5 days from the date of sale. It is important to do this as soon as possible, because after DMV updates the information from the REG 138, you will be cleared from future liability on the vehicle. The purchaser is responsible for reporting the change of ownership to DMV within 10 days from the date of purchase."

If you have followed these steps, then I would recommend one of two courses of action:

1) Send a letter CRR requesting that the buyer remove HIS vehicle from your property in a reasonable amount of time or you will have it towed.

or

2) Call the police and report that the vehicle was dumped on your property.

However, I expect that if you do step #2, the police may recommend that you take option #1 instead.


Good luck!

thanks for the reply, I did send out the release Weds morning so hope that went in the system. I did find out that he started the transfer process to has name but didn't pay that transfer fees, I'm now trying to have someone push the transfer to his name even i have to pay for the transfer fee just to make things right.. Once it's under his name it's pretty much written in blood. I find out Monday if that goes through But I would like to find out if it is legal to white-out his signature and the rest of his info on the bill of sale.. Funny thing is when you hold it up in the light the signature and rest of the info is SO visible..

Save all those documents for the pending small claims suit in which you sue him for the cost of storage (if you include that provision in your CRR letter) and also any costs you may incur from having it towed and junked. They will be useful as evidence.

Edit:
Don't have a friend "push this through" or anything like that. That could be construed as you trying something fraudulent and backfire on you