How to get paid safely when selling a used bike or golf cart

Short answer: a settled wire transfer and cash counted inside a bank are the only two payments that can't be taken back from you. Everything else - ACH, Zelle, PayPal, a cashier's check, a credit card - can reverse days or weeks after the buyer already has your bike or golf cart.

I've sold thousands of electric bikes, dirt bikes and golf carts over the last few years since founding EMOTO. Through all of these transactions, I’ve also been on the wrong end of most of the payment methods below, which is the only reason I can rank them honestly. Use my failures to ensure you don’t end up getting scammed, people are relentless these days especially with these products!

Here's the hierarchy, worst to best.

The ones that reverse

ACH — the one that got us

An ACH transfer looks like a wire. It is not a wire. It's a request to move money, and that request can be pulled back.

If you invoice someone through QuickBooks, Square or any similar tool and they pay by bank transfer, what has actually happened is that you initiated a debit against their account. Under Regulation E, a consumer has 60 days from their statement to claim that debit was unauthorised. The bank returns the money. You delivered the bike four weeks ago.

What happened to us: we had a shady customer send us $87k successfully over ACH in multiple different transactions over a two month period. We collected his ID, got all of the proper documents needed if there were an ACH charge back to show that we delivered product successfully, and still had an $87k charge back that we are fighting as of today after doing everything correctly, and verifying all funds were successfully recieved through quickbooks.

The trap is that ACH feels settled. It shows up in your balance. Your accounting software marks the invoice paid. Nothing about the experience tells you there's a two-month fuse attached.

What to do instead: if you're taking ACH, nothing moves until the money has been in your account for at least 2 weeks, and you have called your bank — an actual person, not the app — and confirmed it's settled and not subject to return.

Cashier's checks and money orders

Federal rules force your bank to make funds from a cashier's check available quickly. That's a convenience rule about availability. It is not a statement that the check is good. A forged cashier's check can come back two or three weeks later, and when it does, you're liable for the whole amount.

Two versions show up constantly. The straight forgery, where the check is simply fake and you find out after the bike's gone. And the overpayment — the buyer “accidentally” sends $2,000 too much and asks you to wire the difference back, usually to a shipper. You wire real money. Their check bounces. You're out both.

What to do instead: go to the issuing bank with the buyer and have them verify and cash it at the counter. If the buyer won't do that, you have your answer.

PayPal, Venmo and Cash App

PayPal Goods & Services gives the buyer protection, which means a chargeback window pointed at you. Vehicles are also commonly excluded from PayPal's seller protection, so you can win the argument and still lose the money. Friends & Family has no protection either direction, violates their terms for a sale, and can still be reversed if the account was compromised.

Venmo and Cash App can both be clawed back when the payment was funded from a stolen card or a hacked account. You did nothing wrong and you still eat it.

Credit cards, if you have a terminal

This one is ours rather than a private seller's, but it's worth knowing why it matters.

When you key a card number in by hand instead of dipping or tapping the chip, the transaction is treated as card-not-present even though the person is standing in front of you. The liability shift a chip reader gives you disappears. If the card turns out to be stolen, the chargeback is yours.

What happened to us: we had a buyer who was using a temporary debit card in our space that only had the card number is not the physical card present on his phone. I was gone, and my staff decided to key in the transaction and it went through successfully about a week later, we got a charge back on the entire amount and ended up out close to $10,000 for two bikes.

What to do instead: if a buyer wants to give you a card number rather than a card, that is the entire signal. You do not need a second one.

The ones that don't reverse

A settled wire transfer

A wire that has been received and credited is effectively final. Recalling one requires the receiving bank's cooperation and the recipient's agreement, and neither happens in your favour by accident. For anything over a couple of thousand dollars, this is what you want.

The discipline: wait for your bank to confirm it has settled. Not a screenshot from the buyer. Not a confirmation email, which is trivially faked. Call your bank, or watch it post as available funds in your own account. A “wire sent” message means nothing at all.

Cash, counted inside a bank

Still the cleanest payment for a local sale, with two conditions. Count it at a bank branch where a teller can verify it, and never meet a stranger carrying that much cash anywhere else.

Our Tampa showroom is a place people have done exactly this, which is part of why we offer it.

Zelle, with a caveat

Zelle is irreversible once sent, which is excellent for a seller. The problem is practical rather than legal: most banks cap it somewhere between $500 and $3,500 a day, so it rarely covers a bike and never covers a cart.

One scam to know. If you get an email saying your Zelle account must be “upgraded to business” and you need to send money to receive a large payment, that is fake every single time. Zelle does not work that way.

The three rules that cover almost everything

Nothing moves until the money is yours. Not when it's visible. Not when the app says paid. When your bank, asked directly, says it has settled and can't be returned. The bike stays where it is until then — and a buyer who pressures you on this is telling you something.

The name on the payment matches the name on the ID matches the name on the title. Three names, one person. A third party paying on someone's behalf is one of the most reliable fraud signals there is, and it's almost never the innocent thing it's presented as.

If you're being rushed, stop. Every fraud in this list depends on you moving faster than verification allows. Urgency is the tool. A real buyer will wait three days for a wire to clear, because a real buyer has nothing to lose by waiting.

What we do about this on the EMOTO Marketplace

We built an entire Sellers’s guide to ensure that anyone listing on our EMOTO Marketplace platform has the proper information to take cautionary steps to not collect funds the improper way. Check every box and that your buyer the proper ways to ensure that you do not get scammed.