After deregistering your car in Singapore, scrapping is one of the LTA (Land Transport Authority)-approved ways you can choose to dispose of the vehicle.
Unfortunately, fraudulent practices aren’t uncommon in the car scrapping industry in Singapore. Today’s guide walks you through the top scams to look out for when scrapping your car and how to avoid them.
Here are the top scams people commonly fall victim to:
Scrapping your car at a scrap yard means that the scrap car agent will pay you money for your car before they become its owner and take it apart to sell as parts.
Before hiring the services of a dealer, you will ask them to provide you with a car valuation. You may get defrauded by the offered quote as follows:
Once you deregister your car to transfer its ownership to the scrap yard, you get your previously quoted money.
A common scam is when the dealer bargains the agreed-upon amount to pay you less when it’s time to collect.
Many suspicious scrap car dealers often sell deregistered cars illegally.
So after handing them your vehicle in good faith, you may be held responsible for keeping and using the car if discovered. This may involve paying a fine or time in prison.
If a scammer learns of your plan of scrapping your car -or just by chance-, they may send you texts to swindle you out of some cash.
These texts seem legit with an official tone requesting you to pay a bill to avoid incurring a penalty. There’s typically a hyperlink included that redirects you to a fraudulent website that looks like OneMotoring’s page.
Once you click to pay, you’ll be prompted to enter your bank card information. This is enough for scammers to drain money from your account.
Here are a few simple precautions you can take to protect yourself and your money from scams when scrapping a car in Singapore: