HELP

Home

Browse

Sell

Services

My Homepage

Help

Home > Help > Buyer’s Guide

How to Buy – Vehicles
The following information relates to buying all of our vehicles.

First Step
The first step in purchasing a vehicle on this site is to Register. Please do so now if you have not already done so. It only takes a few minutes and once you have done so, you can start the buying process.

Searching
Within this site there are various ways to search for your vehicle. Many pages including the home page and the individual listing pages have search boxes. In addition, more advanced searches can be done for specific passenger vehicles, motor vehicles (such as motorcycles, atv’s or snowmobiles) and other vehicles (buses and r.v.’s) by clicking on the “search” tab on the navigation bar at the top of every page.

How to bid
Remember that as part of the registration process, the user agreement you agreed to specifies that when you bid, it is a binding agreement between the seller and buyer. If you win the auction, you are obligated to pay the seller the amount you bid. Not paying entitles the seller to seek all legal remedies, and it will lead to negative feedback and being banned from this site.

One of the key considerations you should make is how much you can afford to bid. The following costs should be taken into consideration:

The actual final bid amount to be paid for the vehicle
Shipping for the vehicle (if necessary)
Taxes to be paid on the vehicle
State Motor Vehicle fees (which vary state by state)
Insurance Costs (which will be an ongoing monthly amount)
Any maintenance or repairs appropriate for the vehicle
And of course the ever present costs for oil and gasoline

One of the ways to decrease the shipping costs is to use our location filter in the Search page. This filter will limit your results to your state or province. You can also pick up the vehicle yourself. However if the car you want is located a great distance away, shipping with our preferred shippers may be your preferred method to obtain the vehicle.

If you are unsure about the specifics of the deal, we strongly advise you to have them clarified even before bidding. Email the seller so that you clearly understand the payment terms (by credit card, personal check or other specified methods) and any other issues that need to be addressed before you bid.

Evaluating a vehicle
We strongly urge and advise all buyers to properly evaluate a vehicle even before bidding on it. There are four main ways in which you can do this. You can check the car’s title, test drive the vehicle or having it inspected, and check person’s feedback who is selling the vehicle.

Title Search/Lemon Check
One method of evaluating the vehicle is to check its title and make sure it is not a lemon. Carfax.com is one our ancillaries and offers a free lemon check by simply typing in the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) from our listing page into their site. For additional fees to Carfax.com, you can get a more detailed history on the vehicle.
Another good evaluative tool is to test drive the vehicle yourself or have a mechanic do it. (This would particularly apply if you limit your search to your geographic area). Most sellers will offer this option and we recommend you avail yourself of it. We also suggest you do it in daylight hours and meet the seller in a public place with a friend or mechanic.

Inspection
If the Seller is listing the vehicle in the pre-inspected category, then an inspection report should be attached to the listing or you should be able to obtain one from the Seller. If the vehicle is listed in the conditional sale category, you can ask the seller to take the vehicle to one of our 5 fixed bay inspectors. These inspectors include any Ford, GM-Saturn or Dodge dealership. Or you can ask the Seller to take the vehicle into any Midas or Firestone shop for an inspection. Prices and what is included in the inspection varies, so be sure to check what each inspector offers and choose what is right for this vehicle. The seller will receive an inspection report on the vehicle and can either upload it to the vehicle auction listing or of course fax it directly to you. You can also use our mobile inspector affiliate Carchex who will come right to your door.

Check the seller’s feedback
As a buyer, you can check the seller’s feedback in their profile. Before you bid, you can find out what other recent buyers have commented on with respect to their specific transaction and what the seller’s business practices were like and their integrity throughout the process.

Now you are ready to start bidding – The Auction process
Before you bid on the vehicle you would like to buy, it is important to understand the main auction types and terminology used. Online-Auto-Auctions has an extensive Glossary section that you can consult to explain common auction terms.

In addition, there are two main auction types:

Reserve Auctions – in order to win a ‘reserve’ auction, you as the bidder must meet or exceed the reserve price and have the highest bid.
No Reserve Auction - if there is no reserve price, then you just have to be the highest bidder to win.

Bidding process
In additon to the two overall categories of bidding (reserve and no reserve) Online-Auto-Auctions has three types of auctions:

Pre-Inspected – where the seller has already had the vehicle inspected and the results of that inspection or inspection report is attached to the vehicle listing.
Conditional – where the buyer bidder places a bid and if the highest bidder, the sale of the vehicle is contingent on the buyer having the vehicle inspected and if satisfied, the buyer would pay the full amount of the bid. (Seller’s still normally require a deposit).
As Is – Final – auctions where the buyer will buy the vehicle no matter what the condition of the vehicle as disclosed by the seller.

In bidding on an vehicle, it is also important to bid the maximum amount you are willing to pay for the vehicle at the outset. Online-Auto-Auctions system will employ proxy bidding and make automatic bids to the level you set in your bid. If another bidder outbids you, the system will notify you by email. You can then re-bid the vehicle to a new maximum.

Often however, your first proxy bid is sufficient to win the vehicle. For example if you set your maximum bid for a vehicle at $6,000 and the minimum set by the seller is 4,500 then your initial bid will be set at $4,500. If another bidder entered the auction and had as their proxy bid $5,000, their initial bid would go in as $4,525. The system would start bidding on behalf of both bidders until there was only one bid & bidder left. You would win the vehicle in this auction with a bid of $5,025. That would become your purchase price, shipping, taxes state motor vehicles fees would have to be paid thereafter.

Withdrawing a bid
You should only withdraw a bid in exceptional circumstances. Remember that this could incur negative feedback in your profile. Ensure that the bid you place is exactly what you can afford (see how much you can afford above), and if necessary pre-qualify before your bid with a car loan from a finance company such as E-Loan.com. This will place a dollar limit on the bid you make beyond which you cannot afford. And if you are the successful bidder, it will make the transaction go quicker. You will know with certainty your monthly payments including interest and any other charges.

Vehicles or vehicles worth $20,000 or more
Online-Auto-Auctions requires that if you are bidding on any vehicle over $20,000, that you put must use our OAA Escrow Service. It is part of the User Agreement that you agreed to in signing up for a membership.

During the auction itself
As the auction proceeds, you can keep track of the vehicle’s price by a number of ways, including:

Saving it as a “favorite” through your browser;
Clicking the “watch vehicle” feature on the vehicle page itself. Then you use the My Homepage function at the top of each page. This is personal homepage function that will track vehicles that you bid on, won, lost, are selling and are watching as the auctions proceed. (The homepage also contains your favorite categories, searches, sellers and the feedback registered under your name).

Auction’s length
An Online-Auto-Auction can only last 1, 3, 5 or 7 days and as such returns faster results to you the buyer and/or seller. In addition, Online-Auto-Auction is home to Internet’s fastest grouped “Flash Auctions” for every single category on this site. If you are looking for an immediate transaction of an vehicle that you have the funds for today and want to transact for that vehicle today, then just look for your vehicle’s category of “Flash Auctions” to see if that vehicle is listed. Flash auction vehicles will have descending time frames of last 24 hours and 2 hours remaining in the auction.

After the auction – contacting the seller
After the auction ends and you are the successful bidder- you will get an email notice advising you that you won and the final price of the vehicle. The email will provide a link to the seller’s contact information. You can also contact the seller yourself by simply filling the memo section on the bid page.

If you are not the successful bidder, but are the next highest bidder – keep in mind that the transaction with the highest bidder may fail, and the seller may contact you and offer you the vehicle at the last price you bid.

Payment
Given there are three main auction types with Online-Auto-Auctions, the method of payment depends on the type of auction. It is common practice for the seller to require a % of the final auction price to hold the vehicle once the auction is complete. Always check the terms section of the vehicle page to know this amount. Overall, it is good idea to be prepared to pick up the vehicle in a short amount of time to complete the transaction or be prepared to have the vehicle shipped to you.

If you have won a auction where the value of the vehicle is over $20,000.00 USD then you must use the OAA Escrow Service. This service will hold your payment and send it to the seller only after you had the vehicle inspected and given your approval. Similarly, if for some reason the vehicle was sent back, the same opportunity to inspect and approve will be given to the seller before the buyer is refunded their money. [This situation would be very rare occurrence].

During this period before final payment it is always a good idea to check that there is no lien on the vehicle itself. Most if not all finance companies have special requirements and conditions to deal with this issue. Checking with them even before you bid after you qualify is also a good business practice.

We still advise the use of Escrow service particularly if you are having the vehicle shipped and you do not know the seller and the seller has little or no feedback. It just makes good business sense not to turn over the full amount of the agreed to auction funds until you are satisfied with the vehicle and it was fairly represented by the seller. {See our NetSafety & Fraud Protection programs under our Assurance Services for more information}. In addition, sellers will not transfer ownership or sign the vehicle title over to you until they receive the full payment agreed to.

Title & Registration
Once the vehicle has been paid for in full and the seller signs over the title, you then contact your state’s Motor Vehicle Department to register the title transfer and pay appropriate taxes.

For a list of STATE MOTOR VEHICLE DEPARTMENTS (websites), click here.

Registering Feedback
Finally registering feedback on the seller is important for future buyer’s to rate that seller. To do this you click on the leave feedback link halfway down on the vehicle page.

Fraud Protection
A reminder to buyers to read Online-Auto-Auction’s NetSafety program and our Fraud Protection program under our Assurance services. Buyers in cases of materially misrepresented vehicles, illegally listed vehicles and fraud can utilize both these programs. These programs are there to protect you as a buyer and assure the integrity of the auction process.