I'm not sure who 'they' are, but I can tell you about my experience of two with car purchases at a distance:Ferrum said:Thank you! Is it customary to wire them the money when paying by cash?SageBrush said:Similar battery health in those two cars, but the second car is in slightly better shape. You can probably choose based on price or model trim. Anticipate losing the 12th charge bar sometime this year, most likely in the summer.
1. Carportal: I wired the money after I received a signed bill of sale by email. Carportal then asked me to sign the bill of sale via a California approved electronic signature process. That was to pacify the state -- Carportal already had my money.
2. New Car dealership: I paid a $2000 deposit by credit card after receiving in email assurance that my deposit was fully refundable, for any reason, without any fees or penalties. A few days later I paid for the car balance by wire transfer after receipt of the bill of sale by email. In a similar vein but not electronically, the dealership then mailed me the original bill of sale for me to sign and mail back to them. Again, this was in order to be in compliance with the local state authorities rather than any particular worry from me or the car dealer over fraud.
Auto purchases are tightly (read: detailed to a fault) regulated by states because of the taxes and assorted fees involved the state collects. You should expect dealerships and brokers to all act the same. I mentioned earlier that CarPortal had some difficulty figuring out the paperwork for an out of state customer. I remember Ravi sweating over whether he should update the car's MCO odometer reading to include the 20 miles he put on the car as a test drive to ensure nothing was amiss before he shipped it to me. I told him it made no difference to me but he was having visions of the California MVD revoking his broker license over an incorrect (in their eyes) entry.
If you are buying from Carportal, I just remembered another story. The day the car was to be shipped to me, Ravi emailed to say that his last inspection found a scratch he thought had happened from their last wash and polish. He apologized and offered to reimburse me the cost of repair which I thought was fine and fair. To this day, even after going over the car carefully after a wash and wax, I still cannot find whatever he saw.