Give out VIN on the phone.

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docmirror

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Selling a rather interesting car. I got a call today from someone that sounded like they wanted to buy. Didn't know a lot about the make or model, but talked for a while about it. They closed by asking for the VIN on the phone and I declined. They said it was for the carfax, and maybe it was. I asked them to come on over, see the car in person, take the license plate, VIN, all the info they wanted. They declined. It was a local area code and exchange.

Do you give out the VIN on the phone?
 
I've given it out online to help people run a carfax and get insurance quotes. Whatever it takes to sell the car.

I am not aware of any VIN scams, and a car dealer lists all of their VINs online.
 
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www.compnine.com is another useful VIN decoding tool for many domestic manufactuers and some import.

I frequently ask for and give out VINs. But then again, I'm selling the bits, not the total
 
docmirror said:
Selling a rather interesting car. I got a call today from someone that sounded like they wanted to buy. Didn't know a lot about the make or model, but talked for a while about it. They closed by asking for the VIN on the phone and I declined. They said it was for the carfax, and maybe it was. I asked them to come on over, see the car in person, take the license plate, VIN, all the info they wanted. They declined. It was a local area code and exchange.

Do you give out the VIN on the phone?
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I wouldn't worry about it, anyone can get a VIN. It's right there at the bottom of the windshield, drivers-side.
 
Aeric said:
I wouldn't worry about it, anyone can get a VIN. It's right there at the bottom of the windshield, drivers-side.
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That's correct. When they drive up to my car, I can also get their plate number, and know who they are. If they want to copy down the VIN on my car, maybe I'll do the same. If they are a voice on the phone, not so much.
 
docmirror said:
Selling a rather interesting car. I got a call today from someone that sounded like they wanted to buy. Didn't know a lot about the make or model, but talked for a while about it. They closed by asking for the VIN on the phone and I declined. They said it was for the carfax, and maybe it was. I asked them to come on over, see the car in person, take the license plate, VIN, all the info they wanted. They declined. It was a local area code and exchange.

Do you give out the VIN on the phone?
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While I have never had a problem getting a VIN from a seller when buying a car, if I were local, it shouldn't matter too much (from the prospective buyer's perspective) IMO. Would have been a bigger deal on my last purchase where I flew across the country to find the right example. But that isn't their issue. You have the right to divulge as much or as little info as you care to, and they have the right to look elsewhere if what you provided doesn't suit their tastes.
 
While I don't think there should be an issue with giving out VINs, when I most recently sold a car, I just ran the Carfax report myself and provided it to interested buyers.
 
I wouldn't hesitate to give them the VIN. It's incredibly low risk.
 
It's not really a risk FOR YOU. There are VIN scams but they mostly involve sort of a car "identity theft" so they can list a car with a valid description and VIN that they are selling which of course, they won't deliver. However, the defrauded buyer won't have any connection to you during the deal.
 
FYI, the person called again and now wants to come look at it. I'm meeting them at the Post office in the morning. They are welcome to check the VIN of course. If I had carfax service, I would get one and provide it to them, but I don't, so I won't.

Frankly, I just don't need the money. I'm going to stick with my plan.
 
One day I got a strange call from the salesperson at a dealership. She asked me to go out to the car I had bought and read off the VIN number. Seems they had done the paperwork on the wrong car. I never thought to check it and obviously they hadn't either. I guess they caught it a couple weeks later when they tried to sell the other car. So all the paperwork had to be changed, including with my insurance agent. Good thing I hadn't registered it yet, or had an accident. But I did get those extra few weeks on the temporary plates...
 
Out of curiosity, what kind of car is it? No worries if you are intentionally being discrete.
 
flyingron said:
It's not really a risk FOR YOU. There are VIN scams but they mostly involve sort of a car "identity theft" so they can list a car with a valid description and VIN that they are selling which of course, they won't deliver. However, the defrauded buyer won't have any connection to you during the deal.
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And I give a **** that others are that stupid, exactly why?

Don't buy cars sight-unseen. Duh.
 
Everskyward said:
One day I got a strange call from the salesperson at a dealership. She asked me to go out to the car I had bought and read off the VIN number. Seems they had done the paperwork on the wrong car. I never thought to check it and obviously they hadn't either. I guess they caught it a couple weeks later when they tried to sell the other car. So all the paperwork had to be changed, including with my insurance agent. Good thing I hadn't registered it yet, or had an accident. But I did get those extra few weeks on the temporary plates...
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Mr. Lundegaard sell you the car up in Fargo? ;) GMAC keeps calling.
 
The VIN was wrong on the temporary registration of a new car I bought. USAA caught it when I read them the info when I was getting the insurance. It just came up tilt in their system. Went out and actually looked at the car and got the right one (they'd mistranscribed one of the digits).
 
35 AoA said:
Out of curiosity, what kind of car is it? No worries if you are intentionally being discrete.
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Porsche, pre-1995.

Interestingly enough, this car prefix VIN is WP0(zero). Several states have gotten it wrong by entering WPO(as in OH). There is no letter O in the VIN system, so it screws up the DB when that happens and the DMV gets a nasty gram that says 'VIN invalid'. lol
 
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docmirror said:
Porsche, pre-1995.

Interestingly enough, this car prefix VIN is WP0(zero). Several states have gotten it wrong by entering WPO(as in OH). There is no letter O in the VIN system, so it screws up the DB when that happens and the DMV gets a nasty gram that says 'VIN invalid'. lol
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993 or 964? Or earlier? Either way, much cooler than 996+ IMO
 
I don't see a problem giving out the VIN.

If you were buying a vintage Mopar for instance, you sure want to check that what they're selling matches up to it.
 
docmirror said:
Not telling. Unless you're a buyer. ;)
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Wish I were, but I really can't justify having another esoteric 2 door German sports car in the garage to a wife that is eagerly awaiting babies. My current sales pitch is a nice, well maintained E55 wagon.....I think I might be able to sneak that by her at least. One day though.....
 
35 AoA said:
Wish I were, but I really can't justify having another esoteric 2 door German sports car in the garage to a wife that is eagerly awaiting babies. My current sales pitch is a nice, well maintained E55 wagon.....I think I might be able to sneak that by her at least. One day though.....
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E55. Has a recall on the ECU wiring harness, problems with the dig display sometimes, and the key lock cyl. The whole run of the E series has issues with the key lock cyl. Make sure it's working right, and the ECU harness has been replaced.
 
docmirror said:
E55. Has a recall on the ECU wiring harness, problems with the dig display sometimes, and the key lock cyl. The whole run of the E series has issues with the key lock cyl. Make sure it's working right, and the ECU harness has been replaced.
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I'll look out for that stuff. There were some pretty high profile generic harness issues with the w124 and later w202 and w210 I know due to the biodegradable materials they started using.....surprised they didn't get that sorted by now. Either way, my C43 was the most reliable car I ever owned up to the point where it was T-boned and it gave its life for mine :sad:
 
Merc and many other German car makers switched to a low copper conductor with junk plastic shielding in the mid/late 80s. High tin content cause it was much cheaper. Porsche, Merc, Opel, and some Fiat, Renault, and a few other brands got the same wiring and it's junk. The front harness on the 86 and later 928/944 will disintegrate due to heat and brittleness. Same with the Merc. Opel had a problem with the inj harness, ECU, and all the others with anything in the engine bay. After 1994, they mostly went back to a higher content copper and solved a lot of issues. I had a W124 Merc and learned how to replace the front engine harness in them and made a fair amount of money doing it. About a 90% failure rate after 7 years. the harness was ~$900 at first, and then they made so many it went down to half that.
 
docmirror said:
Merc and many other German car makers switched to a low copper conductor with junk plastic shielding in the mid/late 80s. High tin content cause it was much cheaper. Porsche, Merc, Opel, and some Fiat, Renault, and a few other brands got the same wiring and it's junk. The front harness on the 86 and later 928/944 will disintegrate due to heat and brittleness. Same with the Merc. Opel had a problem with the inj harness, ECU, and all the others with anything in the engine bay. After 1994, they mostly went back to a higher content copper and solved a lot of issues. I had a W124 Merc and learned how to replace the front engine harness in them and made a fair amount of money doing it. About a 90% failure rate after 7 years. the harness was ~$900 at first, and then they made so many it went down to half that.
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Learn something new each day. Makes sense though. They don't make these cars like they used to certainly. Glad that my M3 says "west germany" on the door sill sticker......now if only they would have engineered a cup holder into it so that I could put my damned latte down while driving :)
 
docmirror said:
http://vinnumbercheck.net/vin-number-scams.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_5167831_avoid-car-scams-craigslist.html

http://www.autothiefs.com/vin-scams.htm

http://www.askcarexpert.com/craigslist-used-car-vin-scam/22295/

Two minute Bing search. Car is on Craigslist.
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Did you read the links you found? These are all scams run by sellers on buyers...not scams "buyers" run on sellers.

If someone wanted to run this scam, it'd be a billion times easier to (a) log into any used-car website on the web and find either a random car or take 60 seconds longer to narrow down to an actual make/model similar or identical to the stolen car they want to resell, and grab that VIN, or (b) go to any store parking lot and copy down a dozen VINs from cars in the lot rather than to go looking up Craigslist ads for cars, call up the seller, and ask for the VIN over the phone.

You're being paranoid. VINs are not SSNs, and don't need to be treated as if they are.
 
Knowing it is a sports car VIN is one of the first things I'd ask if I were interested. I'd have to run it by my insurance agent to know if I could afford it
 
That happens to us every few years!:mad2::mad2: Very frustrating, usually easily resolved, but not always. We had an issue 7-8 years ago, where we had sold to identical used Mercury Sables, same color, same interior, slightly different mileage and of course different VIN's. Long story short, we traded in car A, discovered the VIN didn't match the title or registration!:mad2: We tracked down the other car and verified the VIN's had been confused.:no: Well, it was a simple matter of swapping the titles with the lien holder, but customer B decided we had committed some type of fraud, or killed a puppy or some such nonsense. They demanded their money back, even after putting 60K miles on the car!:mad2:
Since car A was in better shape than car B and I already owned car A, I just swapped cars with them, no paperwork, just swapped keys and cars! That way the lien holder didn't have any issues, the customer's complaint was no longer valid, and I wasn't held hostage by the owner of car B! :D


Everskyward said:
One day I got a strange call from the salesperson at a dealership. She asked me to go out to the car I had bought and read off the VIN number. Seems they had done the paperwork on the wrong car. I never thought to check it and obviously they hadn't either. I guess they caught it a couple weeks later when they tried to sell the other car. So all the paperwork had to be changed, including with my insurance agent. Good thing I hadn't registered it yet, or had an accident. But I did get those extra few weeks on the temporary plates...
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Hey John, ever considered installing trunk monkeys to deal with customers like that? (referring to the series of very funny commercials)
 
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