房客買車記 I

Oxygen

My tenant is a 22 year old foreign student. Without a car, he has been buying food from eBay and at a nearby dollar store. After his only relative in ATL moved to Alabama last month, he finally decided to purchase a used car.
I have offered to go shopping for the car with him or test-drive the car if he needs a second opinion. But he is very polite and doesn’t want to trouble us.
He called me yesterday morning and asked me to give him a ride to Wells Fargo. He told me that he has found a good car and the owner won’t take his personal check, so he needs to go to the bank. By the time the CSR stepped in to help, I realized he actually needed to withdraw $6000 “cash” not a “cashier check”. Both the CSR and I thought this is ridiculous to pay such a large sum of money by cash.
So, I volunteered to talk to the owner – Gen (this is not his real name I post here) (turns out Gen is not the owner, he is a car dealer). Gen was very rude over the phone and refused to take the cashier check and told me that my tenant had agreed to pay him by cash.
I asked him if he had given my tenant a better deal if he paid by cash. Then, he suddenly agreed to accept the cashier check, but asked us to put his name as the “payee”. I asked him “Should the payee be the company he works for?” He said he is the owner of the company and he is trying to avoid the tax ……(what!?).
At that point, I thought the whole thing was soooo fishy. I told my tenant I don’t have a good feeling of this person – Gen. My tenant is such a young kid, and he was so desperate for that car. So we ended up paying Wells Fargo $10 and purchased a cashier check made to Gen. I asked the bank teller if something went wrong, and how late can we make a stop payment on that check? The bank teller said “the cashier check is the same as cash, only difference is an additional proof that we made a payment to the payee. So as soon as the check has been handed out to the payee, the money is gone. If we want to cancel this cashier check after purchased but before the payee gets the check, we need to fill out a form, so that the bank can put the money back into the original account.”
A customer behind us over heard our conversation with the teller and asked us if we were trying to purchase a used car from Craigslist. My tenant said no, but it is from auto.com. That person suggested that we need to be very careful and better go to the “State title office” (not the “County tag office”) at S. Atlanta Rd., to transfer the title and pay off the money right over there. I thought it was a brilliant suggestion. But my tenant said Gen was already on the way to deliver the car to him. I asked him to cancel the delivery and to set another time to meet at State Title Office. My tenant didn’t want to do that. He said he chose to trust that guy. He told me that he was trying to give some earnest money to hold that car, but Gen refused to take it. From that point he think Gen is a trustworthy fellow.
There was an accident happened on our 3 miles way home. That took us some time to detour other way home. Gen arrived right behind us after we got there. My tenant told me he has chosen a blue car made by Chrysler. Turns out it is a “Cruiser” with roof window, very cute! To be continued ………….

老郭

但愿不是你的房客被骗了。 等您的下集。。。

这是一个非常好的主意：“go to the “State title office” (not the “County tag office”) at S. Atlanta Rd., to transfer the title and pay off the money right over there.”