"DownTime" wrote in message
. ..
Just curious to know if anyone here has recently had a negative experience
in either buying or selling a boat. I have mine listed for sale, and a
potential buyer coming on Friday.

In the past, I tended to be somewhat of a trusting soul, and generally
considered cashier's check good as cash. With all the fraud and scammers
in the world, would anyone accept a cashier's check and hand over the
keys? I am not likely unless it is drawn against a local bank I can walk
into to get my cash.

The buyer had asked to be able to do an electronic wire transfer, which
sounds reasonable to me for this transaction. The institution I use does
not have a local brick-and-mortar facility to walk into. I am not
interested or looking forward to driving 2.5 hrs each way to get to it
either.

I'm interested to know if anyone has recent experiences with problems or
positives with fairly significant sums of money being exchanged.

My daughter, while working as a claims rep for a large ins. co. dealt with a
claim on a stolen Mercedes. The seller had sold it for $17,000 and accepted
a cashiers check for same. Buyer drove off with car and title and seller
took the check to the bank. Turned out that the check was for $17 and the
seller had cleverly added three zeros to the sum and somehow added the word
"thousand" also. Ins. co. paid on the claim and eventually found the car in
California but wasn't able to retrieve the car as the buyer had sold it to a
dealer for cash and the dealer had the title signed by the original owner.
I don't know if they ever found the thief but I'm sure they wouldn't have
had much luck getting any money back from him.

Tom G.