C-Wolfe
Thank you for your comment. I'm very leery of scammers. it did not sound right to me. one of my worries is how do i get paid for the boat. ive read that bank checks, cashier's checks etc can all be forged. I figured id take the buyer to my bank and do a wire transfer. That way the bank can tell me immediately if the money is in my account.
I bought mine in Maryland (drove down from Rhode Island), and the owner was incredibly leery about the transaction process. I wanted to do a bank check, and go to his bank, where they could check the legitimacy of it on the spot. (For lower amount boats, I bring a check a few thousand less than agreed pricing and the rest in cash, just in case it’s worse than expected and I need to offer less— can’t make a second check for less unless you’re near your bank). He said no, it must be a wire. I informed him that wires between different banks don’t always clear quickly, and he said that’s fine if I need to wait overnight, and also said I had to go to his bank (of a different brand than mine) and have me request the wire through his own banker, who would then give the phone to me. I said it doesn’t make sense, I can do it from the yard and then we can go notarize at his bank once it clears, but nope, he didn’t trust it. He wasn’t very tech savvy (long retired and never really had to be), so my reasoning fell on confused and increasingly skiddish ears. My bank only did wires remotely by video banking,
which made him want to call the whole thing off. I reassured him that I can’t steal money from him, I can only give him money, and he countered that but now I have his bank account information. It was a lost cause, but we initiated the wire and he let me take him to lunch. We waited a few hours, and finally at closing time it cleared to the bank’s incoming wire account but not his personal account. He said not good enough, I’d have to spend the night, but the bank manager was able to convince him that the funds were in the bank, with his allocation, and unable to be clawed back. He very unnervingly allowed me to sign and have notarized the papers, and he drove me back to his house to get the boat hooked up. Despite it now being after 7pm (and I met him at 7am), I head north before he changed his mind and stopped like an hour later at a hotel beside an Autozone to grease things up better and take inventory. If I were to sell my boat, I’d do the bank check + cash method, at my bank, to have them accept it all as verified deposit. For smaller boats, I recently sold a catamaran skiff for $7500 cash, no bank involved, a dory skiff for $15k personal check (that I was to deliver after it fully cleared, which it did), and a Compac Suncat for $17k bank check given to my bank and verified on the spot. But a $40k C-Dory sale? I’d be most comfortable with bank check/cash at my bank; wire confirmed in the bank’s account; or escrow agent. I’m inclined to skip a boat broker having never used one, but if it were a Freeman or something sure.
