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OilBurner

I'm heading out to Germany on Thursday to collect my motorhome. It's secondhand and I am buying it privately. I'll be taking a large amount of cash, in 100 Euro notes, with me.

Thanks to this forum I have now learned how the German registration system, German title papers, export plates, export insurance etc work. However, it occurs to me that I am still not sure precisely when I should pay!

In UK I'd simply stand in the seller's driveway, hand over cash in exchange for receipt, V5 and keys, and head on my way. In Germany of course we must go together to the official office to change the registration, so should I hold onto the cash tenaciously until we get there and only hand it over in front of an official?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Rapide561

Hi

In those circumstances, I would do all the paper work etc, and once that has been done and you have something to prove ownership of the van, only then hand over your hard earned cash.

Russell

OilBurner

Thanks for that, I shall email the seller stating that this is my intention in order to avoid any risk of possible misunderstanding. I assume that if this is normal practice, he will be expecting this anyway?

androidGB

Like all of these things, someone has to trust somebody.

He could allow you to have the vehicle registered in your name and you could refuse to pay him in full, or you could hand over the cash and he could not register it.

Seems to me the obvious way would be you jointly register it together, you hand over the cash, he hands you the keys.

From my recent experience of buying privately in Germany, I would say they are very honorable, straight forward, and well organised.

It is a shame I couldn't say the same about Currencies Direct, the company I used to transfer the money

Andrew

babyrhino

Hello oilburner

I've already been told that I was very lucky because I owned up to handing over the cash one evening and getting the van delivered the day after!

Like Andrew says, it's all about trust - I was happy that my man was genuine - we had spent a lot of time emailing and he picked us up from the station, sorted out hotel etc so we had built a rapport.

Probably wouldn't do it again though - he was going to come with the van at 9 in the morning and turned up at 12 minutes past and my heart has already been bypassed!

Brian