Is a cashiers check OK?

[BKdoubles]

Is this safe?

Buyer meets me at my bank with cashiers check and I deposit the check.
We then can notarize a bill of sale.
Will the bank know right then that the cashiers check is valid?

If the bank needs 3 business days, I could delay the sale pending on the check clearing.
And finally I'll transfer the title.

Great thread!

[HappyNomads]

Yesterday I used USAA to buy a used car. This is my third time with their process. It works very well. I, the buyer, never see the cash. They send it directly to the seller AFTER extensive verification that ALL required paperwork has completed and ALL evidence required to prove to them that the seller does indeed have the right to sell the vehicle and that the vehicle is free and clear of lines and encumbrances.
Call USAA and gave the explain the steps. It is painless and effective.
Their caution enables me to buy without fear.

[DC Bruce]

Somewhere in the thread, I believe the OP said he used Craigslist. My experience in the last several years is that Craigslist is crawling with scammers. And all I was selling was some old furniture! Texts from spoofed telephone numbers, you name it. Even though I specified face-to-face, cash only transactions.
I did manage to sell one piece to a real person. As a buyer, she had a similar experience.
It’s too bad; Craigslist is almost useless now.
My own feelings about a $20+ K transaction to sell an Airstream is that it is worth the money to hire an escrow agent/attorney to do the deal if it’s a private transaction.

[r carl]

You shouldn't use cash nowadays, the police can rob you legally! They can detect large sums of cash in your car and pull you over.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCpzVy7DFfM

[Scoutx]

Originally Posted by AlinCal

So...They are going to bring me money and then steal it back? After I have their name and address?

Sure as long as the police can't link the criminals who robbed you to them or visa versa then they are utterly safe. Because you can suspect a lot of things, but proving it is something else.

[Freebird73]

I agree completely! The buyer was trying to scam him. Otherwise it wouldn't have been a big deal to do the wire transfer. He is trying to guilt the seller into taking the check.

[Sharon Rose]

We have clients wire money to our account quite often. If done early in the day, the money is good that day it goes into your account. We have also wired money out of our account. There is a marginal fee going in or out of an account, but it's not a major amount unless the wired amount is over $50,000 usually. But in that case we have never been charged more than $50. For smaller amounts the Bank Charge is only $16. No big deal compared to the headaches involved with a bounced or forged check.

The only other things we have done, and in the case of someone who commonly writes checks that bounce, we have our bank manager call the payee's bank to confirm the funds are in the account before we deposit that check. We have never bounced a check and do not wish to get that ding on our reputation.

Good luck. I strongly urge you to go the safest route.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world. Don't just talk about it. Do it."

[akmoores]

I wouldn’t do it. Wires are easy.

[Roee]

There are so many counterfeit cashier's checks and money orders out there that my credit union puts a 30 day hold on both of them. Almost everything I post on Craigslist for sale I get an offer of a cashier's check and they will have someone pick up the item for them. Many times they want to add the amount for the services of the person delivering and want me to give them the money when they get here. Yeah, NO!!!! Then your item is gone plus the cash you just gave them to steal it from you by the time the counterfeit cashier's check bounces.

[Gene]

If I am to believe everything I read here, there is no way to pay for anything. Are we going to the days of bank notes for paper currency where you would have to discount the money if from out of state or even from the other side of the same state? Is every bit of currency now counterfeit? Perhaps we should carry a ton of silver dollars with you? I don't think there are silver dollars anymore, but I don't know. Maybe Krugerrands, but you need someone with you to assay it to prove it is real? Normal commerce cannot operate in such an atmosphere. Two centuries ago it was difficult to transfer money for goods and until we had a national paper currency transfers with bank notes were sometimes unsafe or discounted. The stagecoach or railroad car with the gold for paying people was the subject of many movies.

I suppose anything using electronic transfers can be hacked and if that became common, commerce would largely stop in most of the world. I don't know what proof there is that wire transfers are hacked, how often and whether the banks that use it guarantee the money arrives at the right place. I use ACH transfers frequently and have never had a problem with them or any other wire transfer.

The issue of police seizing large amounts of cash claiming you are drug dealer is a serious problem. Even when no charges are filed, people have serious issues getting the money back. Prosecutors have used forfeiture laws to take people's money so they cannot hire a lawyer. In medieval times, judges in Europe could take the property of people accused of being witches and keep it for themselves. This made sure judges would find lots of witches. Is this so different? In western Colorado local and state police watch for out-of-state cars coming east into Colorado on I-70 and stop lots of them looking for drugs. Forfeitures are common. They like to stop rental cars and it seems a lot of stops involve minority drivers from California. I am surprised anyone in that business would ever use I-70, but that's a different issue. Colorado tightened up the forfeiture law a bit recently because local police were obviously abusing the law, but state troopers can still use (and abuse) it. The difficulties of using cash for large payments have been outlined above and I haven't sold anything moderately valuable for cash for many years. Before there was an internet, banks wired money using telephone lines (not cellphones) and it worked fine. They may have to go back to that.

[featherbedder]

I had prob. w/local bank that I have used for many yrs. w/3 bus. checking, house & 3 personal checking & several other acts. When I would get check for sale grain from Archer Danial Midland, Cargil, Consolidated Grain & Barge Plus several buyers I was told funds not avble. for 5 days, these checks all have watermarks etc. validating them. also told over $10,000 had to be reported, after several conversations w/vp of bank of my concerns as sometimes grain is sold to make payments, as farmers on forum no they can be quite high,and have funds frozen IMO not acceptable. Now after telling him I would move farm act. excavating act. & trucking act. & personal acts. to another bank, no longer a prob. Another time when pur. cashiers check they forgot to counter sign, was making pur. Sat after noon for tractor over 70 miles away then leaving for Kans. & Oklahoma, they wired trans. funds w/no charge to sellers bank that stayed open to complete sale. Basically they now cater to me as they should to all large or small.

[Gene]

Yes, some banks are a pain and other are easier to work with. We avoid the big banks and now use two local federal credit unions plus a brokerage account bank account for those purposes. One FCU is exclusively for utility bills to be paid through a credit card we use for nothing else (improves our credit rating too and we have another credit card for general use), another FCU for regular checking and the brokerage banking account just pays better interest ($70 last year—will pay towing gas for our next trip of 200 miles each way) than the money market account. It also helps me segregate money for different purposes. I run all wire transfers through the brokerage accounts and never get charged; these days they are very infrequent. I can do ACH transfers with the FCU's at no charge using the brokerage account because the brokerage has a better website than the cheap ones the FCU's use. We end up with three checking accounts and have never written a check on the utility account FCU, though we transfer money in and out of that account to pay off the credit card each money for utilities. Seems pretty complicated, but it works. Because I can do all the transfers online I never have to go into any bank except to use the bathroom when my wife cashes a check. Before the internet, this would have been much too burdensome to bother with.

When we traveled years ago, my wife had to set up payments with utilities and credit card and authorize transfers by phone, sometimes in Canada of here out west where cellphones didn't always work. It was a real pain and we worried whether we would be able to use the phone in time. The internet has made it all much easier. I realize there will always be evildoers who will try to steal from anyone they can steal from. To take that to an extreme, never leave the house and live in a closet in the basement. There are always some risks (that meteorite headed for the closet perhaps), but be careful of talking yourself out of taking reasonable risks. As for wire transfers, ask the two institutions involved who will guarantee the transfers just in case of hacking, find out the person's name you talk to, and write it down somewhere. Ask for the internet page where the guarantee is spelled out.

Will your internet connection get hacked, usually at a public hotspot? The banks are supposed to use secure sites, but are the chances someone is waiting in that very expensive Newmar nearbywith hacking equipment (that's how they got the money to pay for the Newmar) very big? Probably not. But I usually use my cellphone as a hot spot and avoid the usually slow wifi at CG's.

Stories about awful things like hacking and other stealing travel fast and widely, but most things are safe. Try to look at the risks and how small (or large) they are.

[Airtream]

I bought mine with a cashiers check. Drove half the country, met at their bank, they placed my finger print on the check and the funds were instantly available for the seller. I never knew there could even be an issue, but I guess these are the times in which we are now living.

Sorry you had a bad apple.