The location is the test
Suggest a designated safe-exchange spot for the meetup. Half its value is the cameras; the other half is watching how the stranger reacts to the idea.
From years of people comparing how their meetups went — including bank staff correcting the internet's favourite bad version of this advice from the other side of the counter.
Somewhere between “sold!” and the handshake, every private sale has the same unspoken question: what if this stranger is the wrong kind of stranger? The standard answer — meet somewhere public — is fine and incomplete. The complete version has a mechanism in it.
Suggest a designated safe-exchange spot, and treat the other person’s reaction to that suggestion as the real answer about the deal.
The spot itself is the smaller half. Many police departments across the US and Canada now keep a marked, camera-covered parking space or an open lobby specifically for online-sale meetups — worth one search to find yours, and worth knowing the value is deterrence rather than protection: officers will not referee your phone sale, but someone planning a robbery has no interest in performing it on a police department’s cameras. That is the point. The location does not have to stop crime. It has to be a place crime declines to attend. If no station is near, the same logic accepts substitutes: anywhere with staff, steady foot traffic, good light and cameras — a busy fast-food place, a big-box car park, a library, a staffed petrol station — in daylight, with a friend along if you can manage it.
And one honest note the sources insisted on: a police forecourt is not a comfort to everyone. If your own history or your community’s experience means standing outside a station makes a deal feel less safe rather than more, the busy-bright-staffed rules above do the same job. The mechanism below works from any safe location you would actually use.
The suggestion is a filter
Here is the larger half. When you propose the safe spot, an honest buyer or seller shrugs and agrees — it costs them nothing. The person with other plans suddenly has a problem, and watching them solve it tells you everything: the meetup that has to move somewhere quieter, the agreed location that becomes “actually can you just come to my place”, the ghost who reappears needing to meet right now, somewhere else, tonight. People who trade a lot treat any of those as the end of the conversation, not a negotiation. You are not being paranoid; you asked a free question and got an expensive answer.
The same filter runs on money. Agree the payment method along with the place, and treat a late switch — check instead of cash, an app you have never used, an overpayment needing a refund — exactly like a late change of venue. The FAQ below covers the cash mechanics, including why the bank-lobby version of this advice, repeated everywhere, is the one part the people who work in banks keep asking the internet to stop saying.
A few small pieces complete the kit. Buying a phone? A carrier’s own store can check whether it is blacklisted before you pay — call ahead, since staff knowledge varies. Never hand out your home address as a first resort, and check what your marketplace profile shows a stranger, because the scouting happens before the meeting. Sell in daylight. Deposit cash the same hour. And keep the only rule that outranks the location: a deal you can walk away from is the only kind worth walking into.
Common questions
Isn't a bank just as good? You can check the cash there.
This one circulates widely and the people who work in banks keep correcting it: a bank lobby is a private, security-sensitive space, staff are trained to notice people conducting non-banking business, and accounts from the inside say you will be watched, questioned or asked to leave. The narrow version is right, though — a bank is exactly the place when the transaction is actually banking. Selling something for serious cash? Meet nearby, then walk your money straight in and deposit it, which also settles any worry about the notes on the spot. Signing over a vehicle title? Some branches offer a notary. What does not work is treating the lobby as a free security service for testing someone's laptop.
What about a couch — something I can't carry to a parking lot?
Honest limit: this advice was built by people trading phones and bikes, and a sofa cannot come to the police station. What translates is the principle. Daylight. Another adult with you — the single cheapest safety upgrade there is. The item staged as close to the door, garage or driveway as you can manage, so a stranger is not walking your whole home. Payment settled before anything heavy starts moving. And the same screen still applies: a buyer who resists every arrangement with a witness in it is answering your question.
How do I know the cash is real — or should I take an app payment instead?
For in-person sales between strangers, physical cash you deposit promptly remains the least reversible, least disputable option — and depositing it straight away both protects the walk home and lets the bank machine-check the notes. Two cautions from people burned: an official-looking check is not cash, because banks can and do place holds even on official checks while they clear, and a buyer who agrees on one payment method then pushes to switch at the kerb — to a check, a payment app, an overpayment story — is running a script. The method changing late is the same red flag as the location changing late.
Full tip: https://findangel.org/tips/the-location-is-the-test · FindAngel.org — free, always.