I Sold My Broken Cars On Facebook Marketplace And Scammers Are Now Flipping Them As Daily Drivers

I try to live an honest life. I’m the kind of person who lays awake at night at the thought that I might have made someone unhappy. I felt so bad that my diesel Volkswagen broke down on a buyer that I refunded him $500. But even I have my limits, and one of them is when you buy a car from me and then try to scam someone else with it. Twice this year I sold my cars to people who seemed enthusiastic, but they were just dishonest people trying to dump my horribly broken cars onto innocent unsuspecting people.

What you’re about to read are just a couple of examples of why Facebook Marketplace, or, just people, can suck so much. When Marketplace launched in 2016, it seemed to be a great idea. You could sell things without eBay’s fees and as a buyer, you were buying things from people with real Facebook profiles and real lives. They weren’t the shadowy people hiding behind emails like Craigslist. Facebook then became the go-to classifieds site in many markets, but even Facebook isn’t stopping bad actors.

Let’s start with the freshest experiences I’ve had.

Back in March, I took my 2005 Volkswagen Touareg VR6 on one final ride. I bought the SUV in May 2021 with the intention of using it to haul my Kei car imports home from Washington and Maryland, respectively. The SUV then sort of became my rock and my go-to vehicle for hauling and off-roading. It was great at the job, but the vehicle always had issues that would have cost more than the SUV’s worth to fix.

For example, the Touareg’s transmission valve body was shot, and that part alone would have cost about half of the SUV’s value just to buy. Then there were the gaping rust holes, the failing headliner, the failing suspension, and a bunch of other small things. It was like the SUV was dying by a thousand cuts. The tipping point for me was learning that the Touareg had a power steering leak from somewhere that wasn’t a line. If I just fixed the mechanical issues and did nothing with the cosmetics I would have spent enough money to buy a nice Touareg V8, so the VR6 stopped making sense to me.

I try to be outrageously detailed in every listing I make. Facebook Marketplace has a character limit, but I try to make sure the buyer has a good idea of what they’re getting into. Here was the ad for the Touareg mentioned as issues:

When the buyer contacted me, I told them there was a chance the steering rack would need to be replaced. I also told them about a gas leak that I couldn’t put in the listing because of the character limit. They said those issues weren’t going to be a problem. Great!

Red flags appeared the moment the buyer arrived. I told him that the valve body was worn and as a result, it sometimes slammed into third gear. You had to be easy on the throttle during shifts into third gear. I went as far as to say he should lift his foot off of the gas pedal just on that shift. If he didn’t, he ran the risk of redlining the engine and possibly damaging the transmission as the worn valve body just couldn’t handle shifting into third when you’re rushing the SUV.

He didn’t listen. He got in and floored it right there in my neighborhood, hitting at least 45 mph in a place where a kid could have popped out at any moment. That was screwed up enough, but I heard the engine bounce off of the rev limiter and a loud clunk as the SUV flared its shift into third. When he got back, I told him he better be giving me the money because he was ruining my transmission. Sure enough, he gave me my money, then drove out of the neighborhood, flooring it. I heard one last redline and monster transmission clunk as the taillights disappeared. I never met someone who literally floored it everywhere, but that guy did it.

Somehow, he managed to make it back to Milwaukee without grenading the transmission, and less than a day later he posted this listing:

Now, I have eyes, so I can tell he did nothing to my Touareg. He didn’t even remove the last stickers I was struggling to get off. The listing was also posted so close to the sale that it was almost impossible that he could have purchased a new valve body and installed it. There just wasn’t enough time to do really any of the necessary repairs. It was obvious it was a zero-effort flip and any problem was dismissed “O2 Sensor” problem. The reality is, my Touareg was not in daily driver condition.

Thankfully, it seemed he couldn’t find someone to take the bait as the SUV was up for sale for six months before the listing was taken down. Hopefully, it didn’t end up in the hands of someone who thought they were getting a good car.

Now we get to my Phaeton.

My second round of cheap Volkswagen Phaeton ownership was fun but also challenging. I bought this 253,000-mile Phaeton from a reader hoping to turn it into a cheap beater with a heater. Well, the car’s valve cover gaskets failed on the way home. On a later drive, the leak got so bad the car almost caught fire. Then, in true Phaeton fashion, it had to break in other ways.

The blower motor went, the passenger seat motor stopped working, and then the pump for the air suspension started getting weak. I fixed the seat and the air suspension pump, but then at some point in the recent past, some jackwagon did a hit-and-run on the Phaeton. None of my neighbors or my cameras caught it. The cop in my building also didn’t see or hear any reports.

The pieces you see below are sort of just placed there, the bumper was actually worse than it looks:

I was once again set backward. My Phaeton was painted in a rare blue color. We’re not talking about VW’s fantastic Waterworld here, but rare enough that I hadn’t found a single bumper in the correct color. My eyes also spotted additional damage under the bumper.

I’ve been on a bit of a selling spree this year. I sold the U-Haul camper, my wife’s BMW E39, my VW Passat TDI, my VW Jetta SportWagen TDI, and technically the Buell Blast. None other than Stephen Walter Gossin taught me that it’s just not worth keeping a bunch of beaters around unless they’re making me happy. Truth be told, I do need to cut my fleet down so I’m not as stressed as I am, so I added it to the sales pile. Here’s what that listing looked like:

I figured $1,000 was fair given the issues and the difficulty of finding a bumper. Even the bumpers I found that were the wrong color were $200 to $600 before shipping, so this could be a pricey repair, and that’s assuming you don’t replace the totally mangled parking sensors or anything else.

The messages came in at such a rapid pace that I couldn’t even respond to them fast enough. Once again, I probably priced this car too cheap. I paid $2,000 for it, so maybe I should have priced it at $1,500 or something. Oh well.

Here’s one of my least favorite parts about selling vehicles. In the past, I used to hold a vehicle for a supposedly interested buyer, but then they often had a habit of not showing up, making me lose out on a sale I could have had prior. So, now I just sell to the first person who shows up with cash.

Some people ask to come even when someone else is already on their way. I used to do that, but someone once threatened to kill me over something like that, so I don’t do that anymore, either. It’s one person at a time, take it or leave it.

I got tons of attention from the ad and honestly, I did turn down some people. One guy told me he was a fresh immigrant and needed a cheap reliable car to get around and for his contracting work. As much as I would have loved to see ladders and such on a Phaeton, I couldn’t do it. I told him bluntly: “This is the worst possible work vehicle money can buy. It gets terrible gas mileage, and requires premium fuel, and it’s not if it’ll break on you, but when. I’d recommend getting a beater Toyota or something.”

Again, I could have made an easy $1,000 off of the guy, but I don’t roll like that.

The first guy to show up was, as the kids say, pretty “sus.” First, he offered me $500 for the random old Hyundai Elantra parked next to my Phaeton. I didn’t even know who owned that car. Then he got into an argument with his girlfriend (I assume it was his girlfriend). They were arguing in Spanish, which I’m not fluent in. But, as I understood it, he was certain the car had four cylinders while she said it had eight. She then even took him to the back of the car and spelled out “P.H.A.E.T.O.N.” But she didn’t know what the car was either because she had to Google it.

All of it was bizarre, but look, I just wanted my money. First, he tried to offer me $500, citing the cracked windshield. I pointed out that the cracked windshield was in the ad, so I’m not sure why he was trying to use that for negotiation. He then offered me $600, stating that the car didn’t have brakes. I pointed out that the car stops and I watched him stop, so that’s not going to fly, either.

Then, he switched to Spanish, offering me $800. I said “Look, it’s a $1,000 car that runs and drives, it’s going to have lots of problems. If you have a problem with that, I have five other people who want to come right now.” Then we exchanged a bunch of “lo sientos” for a few minutes. He then offered me $900 before I told him I was firm at “mil” ($1,000) and not a dollar less.

That $1,000 materialized weirdly quickly. I passed him the title and he drove away. I hoped he was maybe going to fix it up or whatever, but it was just a few hours later when he published this listing:

The listing is still up, but I’m not going to link to it. Just know if you see this Phaeton, it’s being misrepresented. Note how the photos don’t show the rust or the big dent, but then he says there’s no rust, which just isn’t true. The pictures also conveniently fail to show the hit-and-run damage. Clever.

That’s twice in one year I’ve accidentally sold cars to flippers who are better described as scammers. Both of these cars had laundry lists of problems, but suddenly, after just a few hours after being sold, those issues were gone! Weird how that works.

This is just one huge reason you can’t really trust anyone on Facebook Marketplace. Or, I suppose if I’m really honest here, it’s why you have to be careful buying a vehicle from anyone anywhere. You have no idea who is just intentionally misrepresenting a car to get your money. Thankfully, both the Touareg and the Phaeton were so broken that you don’t need to be a car person to figure out something is wrong. I mean, the Phaeton begins visibly smoking within a couple of minutes of being started. But that still might be enough to catch someone who might not do a test drive, so someone can still get scammed by this.

Sadly, I wish this was it with the denizens Facebook Marketplace. I have purchased about 60 cars in my life thus far and over 30 motorcycles. Most of them came from Marketplace.

I’ve seen and experienced it all. Guys have actually threatened to kill me because I didn’t sell them a motorcycle for their low-ball offer. Other people fail to show up, harass you, never respond to messages, or are just straight-up bigots. We won’t even talk about how annoying it is to get a “Hi, is this available?” and respond to it just to get nothing back or an offer that’s 10 percent of your asking price. Then there were the guys who jumped my Honda Gold Wing’s title about four times, racking up a bunch of tickets in my name along the way.

Recently, I tried to buy a Ford E-350 Power Stroke from a contractor and when I arrived his first words were “where are the men?” Come on, man. I’m learning another lesson here. If I don’t want my cars being misrepresented by shady flippers, I should probably be a bit more selective with my buyers. I should have known something was up when the fella got into an argument about cylinder counts.

So, selling cars private party online continues to suck, which probably doesn’t surprise any of you. Still, I feel like this stuff needs to be pointed out. So, if you’re in the Chicago or Milwaukee area and see either of these vehicles for sale, report the ads and then run, not walk, far away.

(Images: Author)