Has anyone ever used PayPal to send a deposit for a car?

I'm in Indianapolis, and I've agreed to buy a car in Central Florida.  Seller wants a $500 deposit sent via PayPal, to hold car until I can fly down to pick it up.  

Tips and advice please. I've never used PayPal except to buy junk on eBay.

I've done it as a seller in that exact situation. Same as every other PayPal transaction.

If I were you I'd fund by credit card and also would make sure that it's for goods & services, not for "a friend".

BoxheadTim said:

I've done it as a seller in that exact situation. Same as every other PayPal transaction.

If I were you I'd fund by credit card and also would make sure that it's for goods & services, not for "a friend".

+1

As a buyer go for it. Definitely do it under goods and services to get covered under buyer protection. 

PayPal is really easy to deal with if you have a dispute, if a bit "hands off" (you have to wait for the systems algorithms to run their course, period.) and you get a ridiculous amount of time to dispute a purchase. (6 months! Which makes me nervous as a seller.)

Yeah I wouldn't have a problem with it as a buyer. I've offered to do deposit on PayPal and then they refund it when I pay in full cash on pickup. Seems to ease worry on both sides. If seller is offering I'd do it no problem. 

Ive done it a ton of times.  No worries.

The flight down and incidentals are going to be more than $500 and you are on the hook for those no matter what, so don't sweat a $500 deposit too much.  

I've bought a car in whole on eBay with PayPal.

This also may qualify as "buying junk on eBay", but okay.

I paid for my racecar via PayPal, and that was in person.  The fee to go it as a real purchase (with protection) was about about half of what a wire transfer would have been on the $7,000 if I recall.

The only out of state car transaction I've done, we used a bank wire escrow. 

This was also with an old "internet" friend that I wasn't too worried about messing things up. You can actually see the build thread of what he did for me on R3Vlimited.com. 

As the buyer, Paypal transactions are fine for big ticket items.  As the seller on something like a car I would want a wire transfer or a bank check drawn on a local bank.  Sure, you can do a reverse on a bank check from a local bank but its a whole lot harder to prove the reversal was in the right if you are right there on camera withdrawing the money.  

I wouldnt take Paypal on a car as a seller.  Would take a refundable deposit, hold it until the car is paid for in full.

Is there anyway to send payment to a third party who accepts the title for the payment ?

Is that something a bank would do ?

$500 is not fun to lose , but $5000-$10,000 is a real hurt !

In reply to 93gsxturbo :

That's what I did the last time I sold a car halfway across the country. $500 non-refundable deposit via PayPal, balance via wire transfer.