Drawbacks of buying from an auction

[thexav]

Ive seen that you can get some real bargains from car auctions. How do auctions work? Do they all charge a fee for each car bought. Can you check the cars over first.

Do you have to be in the trade to get into an auction?

I have also heard some real horror stories of gearboxes filled with sawdust etc. Do you have any form of warantee at an auction?

Has anyone here ever bought from a car auction?

 

[prevtec]

ive never bought 1 at auction
as far as i know you dont need to be in the trade

all cars are bought as seen, so you do need to be carefull
if you know about cars, you'll be alright, but if you didnt, id stay well clear

and i only know them things because of the discovery channel, and mike brewer
deals on wheels

 

[herb]

i have only ever been 2 1 auction you get to look around the cars as they are all parked up but they were only started 5 minutes before they went into the auction room this is when everyone has the bonnet open and looking for any faults no where near long enough really (nothing like what you see on tv where they give you the keys to start it and look around properly)

then comes the bidding the rules where clearly up there on the wall (cant remember what they where)

my mate bid and won a nova for £200 went to the cash desk they rang the owner of the nova to see if he would except the bid cause his reserve was higher he said yes so my mate left a deposit and picked the car up the next day

just remember the auction is only a middle party selling on behalf of someone else so basically they are sold as seen

this was my experience of an auction and it was quite a few years ago so it probably has changed

 

[claymore]

I'v bought loads from auction in the past. and sold some crap as well, personally i think you get better bargains on ebay these days

 

[HDi fun]

Ebay. too, is bound by the general terms of auction sale. It neatly allows sellers to circumvent the Sales Of Goods Act and the terms that specifically apply to 'distance selling'.

 

[obi_waynne]

I've heard of some real shockers. All the cars that dealers can't sell go to the auction. If you see a regular popular car then you can assume there is something wrong with it.

The odd ball cars make good buys. The 6.0 SUV that no-one ones, the bright pink rolls royce and the 1.3 litre Vectra (ok I made it up but it gives an idea.)

I think you get a better deal going to a breakers yard and buying a lightly accident damaged car. You can at least see what the damage is. A friend of mine recently bought a 6 year old 1.3 Clio for £700 (including parts to fix it) which needed a new bonnet and front bumper and a major clean up. He's still running round in the car today and has had no trouble with it.

 

[MsEditor]

I used to know a guy that ran Westbury auction and my Ex used to collect most of the cars that went through the ring. This is going back a few years now so not sure how accurate I can be..

From what I saw there was a real mixture - a lot of the motors were collected from dealers, all the part ex cars that they didn't want to put on the forecourt. Of course some of these were OK but a lot were complete dogs! Then you had the absolute piles of crap that people couldn't give away so they put them through just to get something for them.

On the plus side they also had a lot of the ex mobility cars and company fleet cars. The mobility ones were fantastic - one owner from new and very low mileage. My granddad used to have a mobility car and he had to change it every three years whether he wanted to or not and he only ever went to the paper shop in it! So obviously if you spotted one of these you could pick up an absolute pearl. The fleet cars again were still fairly new but the mileage on them were all fairly high as for most part they were ex sales rep cars...

Having said all of that it really is a gamble getting something from an auction and from what I can remember if it all goes tits up on the way home... well you better have AA cover - at least with Ebay you can now go and view the car and look over it for long enough to decide whether its junk or worth bidding on.

 

[Wcnwzrd]

Here in the states every auction is different. Some have a set period before the bidding starts where you can look at the cars start em up and so forth others don't. Take your time to make sure your comfortable with the rules/terms of the auction before you go. Also, some want just a deposit ranging from 10% to 50% on the day of and the rest to follow in 30 days. Others want everything the day of.

Bank/government or impound auctions are good bets for better vehicles. I like going to the impound ones, you never know what idiot decided to get a brand new hummer and then get a dui/no license ticket in it. (Had a 2007 Hummer with 500 Miles on it sell for $13,000 last year when i went.) The private/dealer auctions are harder to get into. normally ran by banks to get a bit more out of the repos than public. If you know an auto seller or get in good wih one, you can sometimes get a heads up on what they have and put in your price with em.