Every single day there are tens of thousands of cars for sale on eBay which makes the eBay motors division the most profitable department within eBay. There millions of cars sold online every year and eBay is getting a big portion of it. There is large numbers of people making a living just taking cars on consignment and placing them on eBay. Some of these people have never even seen the car they are selling! This is a great business, usually the only risk is your auction fee and some shrewd consigners even get the car owners to pay for that. As with most other online businesses, the biggest issue to deal with is gaining the trust of potential buyers. This can be a little difficult for someone just starting to do business on eBay. But, you can hardly blame the buyers who are spending thousands of dollars on a vehicle they have never physically seen. eBay in their infinite wisdom has set up escrow services to help alleviate these fears. This definitely seems to help when the buyer knows that the money is going to be kept by a third party until the transaction is completed smoothly. The escrow service of choice is Escrow.com. The way thee system works is the buyer gets two days to inspect the vehicle, if everything is okay he notifies the escrow company and they release the funds to the selling party. If the transaction goes south, the buyer returns the item and the escrow company returns the buyer's money. The online vehicle sales business has become so large that Escrow.com has even opened a division that only deals with vehicle sales. They even offer an inspection service which at this time is $125, not too bad for the piece of mind it affords. Through Escrow.com the buyer can also deposit his payment with them and negotiate a period of up to 30 days to have the vehicle completely looked over. This time period must be agreed upon by both parties before the transaction is consummated. If the buyer doesn't contact the Escrow Company by the end of the agreed upon period then it is assumed the transaction is valid and the money is distributed to the seller. Another value added service that has been implemented recently is worldwide shipping. Escrow.com will ship vehicles almost anywhere in the world, well except for Cuba. LOL. They will also get a vehicle history report like CarFax that tells the history of the vehicle and whether it has ever had major damage, been stolen, or even if it has been a vehicle for hire. With all the positives offered here it would be wise to utilize the aforementioned company for any vehicle transactions online. |
