After 18 years, I managed to find a "new" used car for my wife. Only problem was, it was in another state.
Unlike smart people, like Daren, who actually drive a car before buying it, I could not find any car that met my pretty picky list of requirements. I basically wanted a two or three year-old car with no miles on it in mint shape. I have been searching within a 500 mile radius of Phoenix and nothing showed up. In desperation, I opened up the search to "unlimited miles" and a few popped up. After culling through those, what appeared to be the perfect car showed up in the very last page.
When I approached my wife about the car I found, she reacted like I was full-retard stupid. "NO WAY AM I BUYING A CAR FROM OUT OF STATE!" I offered to fly out and look at it. Then we realized that would no doubt take a few days, involving hotels and food as well as gas to drive it home. The complications seemed insurmountable.
Just to convince myself there was a problem with the car, I spent $40 on a CARFAX. I figured it would be easy to sleep after discovering the car had once been a submarine or a theft repossession, or an FBI seizure as a mobile crack lab. Nope. Car was clean as a CARFAX car can be. Now, I was out $40 and I still couldn't sleep.
A week later, I checked online to see if the car had sold and it was still there. I approached my normally sweet wife who had channeled a rabid raccoon when I brought up the idea only a week before. She was still pretty negative but, at least the flames stopped coming out of her ears.
The next day, I approached her again. She gave in and let me call the guy again to work out pricing. That took all of 3 minutes after which I asked him if he would be willing to take the car by the dealer for a pre-purchase inspection. He jumped at the offer and gave me the name of the service writer they always used.
To independently verify that this "service writer" wasn't his brother, I independently looked up the dealer online and called their direct number, asking for the service writer. The guy picked up and we talked about the owner and the car. He laughed and said the car always came in for service with white towels wrapped around the floormats.
Still laughing, he said he'd be glad to do the inspection but, he'd be stealing $170 from me because the car was in perfect shape. The owner was an oral surgeon (who we independently verified online) and she drove it 2.0 miles to work and 2.0 miles home five days a week. I told him an independent once-over would verify the VIN number and the fact that no kid had been doing lawn jobs in it recently. It passed the inspection as expected.
Now, I had to pony up some cash. I was going to send him earnest money but, after doing everything we wanted and more, I told him to send me his banking info and I would send him the full amount and immediately arrange for shipping. Actually, my wife had warmed up to the seller and it was her idea to consummate the deal and get the rig shipped ASAP. I think she was getting into this new car deal.
There is no real road map on how to do this independently. Some people use an escrow company but, that costs $$ and adds about a week to the process. I asked around and cash payments were common. My brother sold a race car a decade ago and I asked him how he did it. His answer: "The guy sent me $55,000 and I hauled the car from LA to the Oregon border where he met me at a truckstop. We rolled the car off my trailer and onto his trailer. Done." Except for the 28 hours of driving, I liked the plan.
One night while laying awake trying to figure out how to do this deal, I realized no matter how complicated I tried to make this, at one point, the seller would have a bunch of my money and the title and the car. That made me laugh. Buying car from out of state takes trust and thinking outside the box.
The money hit his account on Wed. On Friday, the Russian haulers backed their car hauler into his street and hauled the car away. Door to door shipping ran $970 and I couldn't have flown out and driven it back for that. The following Wednesday, the truck pulled up in front of my house and we had our "new" car.
It was better than I could have hoped for. The seller said it was "as new" and he was right. I found one teensy rock boo-boo on the roof and the lower rear bumper has a tiny tiny ding in the clear coat. That is it. And, the best part, its a 2015 with 5350 mi on it. It still smells like a new car inside.
And the best part, my wife LOVES the thing. She is so happy she let me change her mind.
The things we do for love.