You are not obliged to sell your car to someone you are not comfortable selling to. Why not just say cash on collection, sold as seen? Just don't give the keys to anyone until you have cleared funds in your hand or bank account. Quite simple, really.

Many thanks Nick. This is clear - my question is more whether there is anything specific around someone exporting a car bought from you to another country, which can result in you somehow losing out

The usual scam along these lines is for them to send a cheque for more than the agreed amount and ask you to wire them the difference after the cheque has cleared.  The story is that they have been given this cashier's / banker's cheque that they want to use and this will save them some fees.  You typically won't meet them and they will offer more than you were expecting for whatever you are selling.

After you have checked that the cheque has cleared and you have wired them their money you will find out that a cheque can be identified as fake or unpayable some time after it has been confirmed as cleared by the bank and you'll realise that you are down by whatever amount you sent them.

It's definitely a scam. Nobody would buy a car in Geneva from Russia (unless you are selling an antique Rolls-Royce, which I assume isn't the case). Not only this does not make sense, but the taxes and red tapes due to exporting a car to another country is also a deterrent.

When they contact you, you should ask upfront when would they be available to see the car. If they aren't interested in having a look at it I'd not contact them again.

In short, deal only with locals.  (Or GLocals...)

thanks everyone for the inputs. in the end i agreed to sell to the guy in france - he said he had sent payment and provided his 'proof' which was a v fake looking email / attachment from 'banque de france'.. the terms of the payment were that he was sending chf800 more than the agreed price and that in order to make the payment clear i had to first send him back the extra chf800.. what a joke, the stupidest con ever. the sad thing is that people must fall for it for him to bother trying and it is likely older, more vulnerable people..

We had the same thing, they send you a cheque and ask you to withdraw a certian amount to pay the person who is collecting the car. Then they collect the car you give them money and then the bank informs you the cheque has bounced.

Hi Joe, yeah don't fall into those traps. I have had my car on sale here as well as on Autoscout and number of people coming from abroad were endless. My standard reply was that they should be here in person in order to do the paperwork for exporting the car....they never replied. Deal with locals only, my advice.

Regards

Don't be automatically put off by the thought of export though, it's super common here, just like wads of cash.

For example a friend sold his land rover to a guy for 20k or so, sounded suspicious at first, the guy was from abroad, would send his friend, would export the car etc..  The person turned up as agreed, with cash and his own delivery plates etc and took the car away. Seems these cars are really sought after in Lebanon and that's where he was taking it.

Just make sure you have cleared funds, you personally cancel the grey card and you take your plates off. You should be fine.

Swiss cars are considered to be a good buy in Eastern Europe as usually they are well maintained, serviced and have a clear track record.

As John mentioned above, if they turn up in person, they take care of the export formalities and you take off your plate, you can sell abroad as well.

Not everybody is a scammer with checks.

Those scams are usually anyways organized out of Africa, usually Nigeria and you can instantly recognize from the overfriendly "my friend" stlye....the immmediate cash need email from friends who got robbbed abroad came from Turkey and Turkish police caught the guys after they received the particular transfer details etc. ;) But this is another story.

This is definatelly a scam!

Recently I was trying to sell a dress (not a car :) on Anibis and I recieved tons of similar emails, sometimes with nearly identical texts. The buyer confirms that he wants to buy my dress without any attempt to negotiate the price, but he is abroad (France, Belgium, Netherlands...), so he proposes to use paypal and, of course, he will pay all fees, etc. If you agree to that, he sends you an email with a fake confirmation of payment, saying that paypal will hold the money until he recieves the merchandise.... Simple, right? Sadly, if somebody does not know how paypal works, they might be tricked by the scammers.

Another thing. As I got suspiciouse, I decided to google the people who contacted me, luckly the email adress was [email protected]. They dont exist in Social Media, however I found one of the ladies: Marguerite Lavigne (1737 - 1830). I have a reasanable doubt she did not write me herself...

So, watch out and dont waste your time on those people. 

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For those who read French, here is a couple of examples of these emails:

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Not surprised. some people are quickly moving across the Mediterranean....I have had this in 2006 while living in Hungary whel trying to sell a table and the guys were from Nigeria....

However, having seen a lot of cars being imported into Hungary from Switzerland, without having seen the communication Joe has received, I would not  state that it is a definite scam.

They may have been genuineely interested.

Sorry. I have not seen the French seller comment from Joe. That is surely the typical scam I have also witnessed.