[88carrera]

I had this problem buying a car 1200 miles away from a private seller. Whatever you do, do not do a wire transfer without being at the point of delivery of the auto. Once you initiate the transfer, you have no chance of controlling whatever happens after that. It is the same as sending a stranger cash in advance. In my case, it would have taken several days for the wire transfer to go through and I had no intention of arriving at the point of purchase and having to wait until the transfer cleared.

I had no reason to believe that the seller was not completely honest, and he had no reason to believe other than that about me. Nevertheless, we did not know each other and a large amount of money was involved. I did not want to fly 1200 miles from home with a large amount of cash on my person, so we had a problem.

After much thought, I went to the local bank branch manager where I have my checking and savings accounts and explained my predicament. He prepared a cashiers check for me in the name of the seller. He then scanned the check, called the seller, verified that I was a trusted client and sent the scanned copy of the cashiers check to the buyer. He also gave the seller his personal telephone number and told the seller he could call him for verification when I arrived to take possession of the car and give him the cashiers check.

It turned out that this plan worked out well. By this time the buyer was convinced that the deal was legitimate and when we went to his bank to cash the cashiers check, he did not bother to call my bank manager for verification. The scanned cashiers check he had previously received from my bank exactly matched what I gave him, so no problem.

Too bad we can no longer trust bank cashiers checks and need to conduct our affairs in this convoluted way.

Good luck.