Today we made an bid on a 2003 Honda CRV. I say bid since we are participating in an online auction via the IBC Japan. 

Here is how it works.  To be able to bid, we needed to make a 1000$US deposit. To do that, we did a wire transfer to the company which is in Nagayo, Japan.  Once the deposit received, they gave us access to bid on the cars.  These cars come from individuals.  In Japan, environmental laws are very strict and its very expensive to maintain a car that is more than 4-5 years old, so people change cars very often.  Hence, a huge surplus of cars exists in Japan, so they auction them and boat the off all over the world.  Its important to note that IBC has a really good reputation and that I know quite a few people here that have purchased cars with them, so yes it a leap of faith, but I think we did our homework.

In the auction site, all I see is are two pictures of the car and there is an evaluation of its condition.  That evaluation is in …. Japanese, so I cant even read it.  The IBC (www.ibcjapan.co.jp) site has a “live chat support” where you can chat with a person who will translate the evaluation form and give you the cars details ; overall condition, dings, options, etc. Finally, everything is in Japanse yen.  So I we always have to divide all the amounts by 121 to get the value in US$.

 If we win the auction, it will take about 6 weeks for the car to get here.  If we dont, we will bid again on another CRV friday or this weekend.

 Say tuned.

 Here is the actual car we bid on

crv.jpg

 Here is the evaluation sheet.  Thats it!  Of course, no test drive possible. With just this information in hand, would you have bid to spend thousands of dollars?

 eval.JPG