The Official Stop Curbstoning Blog

No one wants to get ripped off when they buy a used car. Countless individuals are getting ripped off by curbstoners everyday, and it’s not just the unsuspecting car buyer who gets the short end of the stick. Licensed car dealers also feel the brunt of this illegal and unscrupulous activity.

NBC Bay Area News followed a California DMV investigator as he tried to put the brakes on curbstoning in San Jose. This four-minute segment reveals a curbstoned vehicle for sale with a deployed airbag, and tells the story of how one couple was defrauded out of $23,000 for a vehicle that stopped working – it turned out to have been wrecked, stripped of its VIN tags, and repainted to look like new.

If there is one state that has taken proactive measures to eliminate curbstoning, it’s California. In addition to actively identifying and prosecuting curbstoners, the California DMV is doing a fantastic job teaching consumers how to identify curbstoners, as well as the risks associated with buying from them, as evidenced by the following press release.

California New Car Dearlers Association Defends Assembly Bill 1215 Requiring Title Checks on Used Vehicles

As used car values ratchet higher, more crimes are occurring based on those rising values. Here's the FBI's own definition of fraud: "In fraudulent vehicle sales, criminals attempt to sell vehicles they do not own. They create an attractive deal by advertising vehicles for sale at prices below book value. Often the sellers purport they need to sell the vehicle because they are moving for work, to include military deployments."

The Clayton County (GA) Board of Commissioners recently amended a previously passed anti-curbstoning law that banned people from parking cars for sale on public streets. Now licensed used car dealers will be exempted from the law, which brings enforcement in line with an existing exemption for new car dealers.

The city of Salisbury, MA limits the number of used car business licenses it issues to 17. As a result, many essentially defunct dealerships refuse to give up their licenses, leaving others "trying to get around the limit in creative ways." One of those creative ways, no doubt, is curbstoning.

CarLotz, a used car dealership in Chesterfield County, VA sells vehicles on consignment. For used car shoppers, this business model combines the security of buying a car from a licensed dealer with an established place of business, with the personal touch and potential cost savings of buying from a private party.

In this economy, automotive dealerships are open to new ways to bring in customers. Groupon has an excellent track record in the retail world and a large base of loyal buyers. On paper, it looked like a good match. However, this first experiment appears not to have worked. In it, Groupon offered its customers a $199 voucher worth $500 off the purchase of a new car at LaFontaine Buick-GMC-Cadillac in Highland, MI. The deal attracted only four purchases - not enough to "tip" the deal, so those Groupon customers were refunded their money and the deal was called off.

Shopkeepers in parts of Los Angeles are finding it hard to combat "pop-up" car markets that take up parking spaces for days. Some of these unlicensed dealers dropped off vehicles two or three at a time. And when one vehicle goes out for a test drive, they quickly pull another vehicle into the space so as not to lose valuable turf. Meanwhile, customers for those shops can't find parking.