Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist are great places to find just about any used car, but they’re also a great place to have some of the weirdest interactions with other people. What was the weirdest time you had buying a car from Craigslist or Facebook?
I’m on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist so much that I have a weekly article about the best vehicles I find.
Most sellers that I deal with respond within a reasonable time and are open to fair negotiation. Others fall into the stereotypes of pricing something way too high, not responding to messages, or not disclosing deal-breaking problems until I arrive. But none of those situations are weird.
The weirdest of recent memory was dealing with a seller that was getting rid of a Volkswagen Touareg. It was described as running and driving “like a beast” with the only problem being some rust.
If I asked the seller two questions, they’d take hours to only half-answer one question and ignore the other. It took me a solid day just to get them to confirm that it ran and drove. They also refused to give me an address to meet them at even though that was sort of necessary to, you know, buy the car.
After days of excruciating messaging with the seller we finally met them and saw the car. It most certainly did not run “like a beast.” The engine made a horrifying timing chain noise on startup and there were so many active trouble codes on so many systems that I wasn’t sure how it was running and driving at all. My guess? It was a flood car cobbled back together.
Do you have any weirder stories of buying a car? What was the weirdest time you had buying a car from Craigslist or Facebook?