How to Tell a Licensed Car Buyer From a Curber

The most common worry sellers bring to us is not the price. It is whether the person coming to buy the car is real. That is a reasonable thing to worry about, and in Alberta it has a name, a regulator and a public register attached to it.

The name is curber. The regulator is AMVIC, the Alberta Motor Vehicle Industry Council, which licenses vehicle businesses in this province, keeps that licensing on a public register and runs a consumer line at 1-877-979-8100. Curber is a word usually aimed at the buying side. This is the same question from the other side of the driveway, because a seller is the person a curber actually needs.

What is a curber?

A curber is somebody who buys and resells vehicles as a business without holding a licence to do it. The name comes from selling cars off the curb. On the buying side, a curber is the person who sells you a car while presenting themselves as its private owner. On the selling side, they are the person who turns up to buy yours.

We buy under AMVIC licence B2036941, and we hand the number over before we turn up, because it is the one part of a buyer's story a seller can check without taking anybody's word for it. This is a different question from the outright private sale scams, where the money itself is fake. A curber is not a fraudster by definition, and how somebody behaves in your driveway is not evidence in either direction, because manner cannot be checked against a record. What is missing is everything behind them. A licensed business has an entry on a public register, an address and a regulator. An unlicensed one has a phone number you were given yesterday.

Why does it matter who buys your car?

Two reasons, and the price is not one of them.

• Recourse. AMVIC licenses the business, keeps that licence on a public register and runs a consumer line at 1-877-979-8100. A licensed buyer is answerable in a way an unlicensed one simply is not, because there is nothing to be answerable with.
• Identity that outlives the sale. A licence number resolves to a business that existed before you contacted it and will exist after the car is gone. A social media profile resolves to whatever it said this morning.

How do you check whether a buyer is actually licensed?

Ask for the licence number, then look it up yourself. AMVIC keeps a free public register of the businesses it licenses, it is open to anyone, and the search takes under a minute.

Ask for the number rather than the name. This is the part most people get wrong. A business can be licensed under a legal name that is not the name on the website, on the truck, or in the text message you received, and anyone can call themselves anything on Marketplace. A number points at one specific licence in a way a name does not. Ours is B2036941, and the number is the thing worth checking.

A buyer who will not give you a number, gives you one that returns nothing, or tells you the licence belongs to a friend or an employer they will not name has already answered your question.

What does a licensed buyer do differently on the day?

Here is what our side of it looks like, and what you should be able to see from yours before anybody signs anything.

• We arrive on dealer plates. The car leaves on ours rather than on yours.
• We put a business on the bill of sale. A company name, spelled out, rather than a first name and a phone number.
• We pay in a way that records who paid you. Usually a bank draft issued at a branch with both of us standing there.
• We have an address and a phone answered as a business. We hold an Edmonton business licence alongside the AMVIC one.

Is it a bad sign if the buyer never registers the car?

Not on its own, and this is the detail that trips people up, because it looks identical from both sides.

On our side of a sale we do not do a registry transfer. We sign a bill of sale and the car moves on our own dealer plates, which is how a licensed wholesaler operates. A private buyer is in an entirely different position. They have to register the vehicle in their own name, and that obligation is theirs.

So a car that stays unregistered is routine with a licensed buyer and a live problem with an unlicensed one, and the only thing separating the two situations is the licence. That is the whole reason the number matters. You are not checking whether somebody seems honest. You are checking whether the thing they are doing is a thing they are permitted to do.

Either way, keep your signed copy of the bill of sale and take your plate off before the car leaves.

What should you ask before anybody comes to your house?

1. 1Ask for the AMVIC licence number. In writing, in the same thread you have been messaging in. A licensed buyer sends it without being asked twice.
2. 2Search the number on the register. Free, under a minute, and done before anyone has your address.
3. 3Ask who the bill of sale will be made out to. The answer should be a business, and it should be one you can put next to what the register returned. Never sign one with the buyer's side left blank.
4. 4Ask where the money is coming from. A draft issued at a branch while you watch leaves a record of who paid you. A stack of cash in a driveway does not.
5. 5Decline anything that only works today. Urgency is the one tool available to a buyer who cannot be checked.

Is a higher offer from a buyer you cannot check worth taking?

A seller came to us recently holding a higher number from somebody else. She did not trust the person it came from, so she took ours instead, and she was happy with the way the deal went.

Ten other buyers are often already working the same listing, and a good number of them are in the trade rather than looking for a car to drive. Asking which of them is licensed costs you one message.

The tell is never the manner. Somebody who is pleasant, turns up on time and brings money has told you nothing either way, because none of that can be checked against anything. The tell is whether what they have told you about themselves sits on a record that existed before the two of you met.