There are many auctions in Japan,why this one?

The current car I have I bought it from Jp-c site via bidding. 2 and half years ago. I actually think I still have the account active. Will login and see. Let me share my personal experience with them.

1. I was dealing with a local sales guy/Japanese sales guy. The local guy did nothing literally she always worked under my orders, The japan guys did everything.i.e Approval for bids

2. Bidding takes time, believe me it took about 2 months to win a bid, 1 month transport. But I was abit choosy maybe why, but the process was slow about 5 months. Let me explain why it was slow.

3. I wanted a C200, some weeks would pass without new Mercedes cars in stock, like a whole week no 8 year car/ some were accident cars/(no grade 4.5) and when I get its a 5/4/3/2 year car). The mercedes were few, and got picked up very fast.

4. Sometimes i would place a bid and the Japan guys would cancel it (yet its a good car). They would say the bidding location is very far from their office.

5. I had to learn to read the charts and the symbols i.e X, to avoid accident cars etc. Fortunately those guys were so professional they would assist me and they normally rejected many cars. They once rejected a car with a crack on windscreen.

Basically bidding was mostly at night/evening, I would select up to 3 cars, bid and find all rejected the next morning (Ofcourse with good reasons). The Japan guys mostly worked at night so the Kenyan guy never helped much apart from placing bids or reviewing the cars I wanted.

I always missed bids with as little as 10000 yen so i opted to increase the price so I can get a car faster.

The smoothest part was registration & transportation after winning, everything is uploaded, documents uploaded and i would follow the process online easily.

I paid 100K they opened an account for me to start bidding. The final cost was ("Car Cost" -100k). They charged me a few dollars for registration.

Note: This experience is 2 years old, maybe they have improved now. I think the experience would have been better if it was a different car model


I got a very new car 30K mileage at a bargain. The best grade 4.5 after the damn hustle. I still think the hustle was worth it.

After the car arrived I estimated I saved roughly 300-500K if I had purchased same exact car in the market (used cheki.co.ke to compare/and insurance valuation to come up with that figure).

Yes I would do it again just for quality, but 5 months was too much.

Just noticed my bid account is still active I can share with you,contact me directly but it has very personal information. If you insist may share screenshots without personal data

They charged a total of 180K (This included everything registration, transport etc, delivery to Mombasa)

So I paid ="Car bidding Price" - "100K deposit to open bidding account" + "180K"

If you look at the photo below you will understand how they ship. Everything is posted as it moves i. once they register you click the blue box and download registration documents, once they send key via DHL you are alerted in the DHL box, shipping dates etc.
Shipping was as simple as tracking the blue boxes week in week out

If you know about the X, C, scratches, accident parts on the graph you are good. Also watch out for this

i). i.e you looking for an 8 year (for minimum tax) but you realize CAR A was Registered in Month (Dec year X), but it was Manufactured (January year X). Basically Month of Manufacture vs Month of Registration- This was rampant because it messes up tax calculation
ii). Watch out Left hand/Right hand and
iii). Petrol/Diesel. Small things in Japanese that took me/my kenyan support guy so long to explain.

2. When shipping add 1/2 months so that by the time it lands it has the right month for tax. They are always lenient they can store for an extra month free of charge so that you hit the right month/year for lowest tax immediately it arrives.

1. What winning bid price did you get your benz at?

There were several versions: Classic/Avantgarde/Elegance/ & AMG (sport version). The sport AMG always had high bidding amount, then the Classic was a very basic version. Our average calculation showed Avantgarde/Elegance had an average of 850K bidding. So we began with 800(lost all bids had to add some little on top).

2. The $1,000 fee paid to participate in the auction was a life-time account activation + auctioneer fee included?
The $1000 was for opening an official bidding account, they lock you once you give them $1000. I actually doubt they can refund. At some point after failing many bids I was very frustrated and knew my $1000 is gone Kaput. So was forced to go ahead and finish. Immediately you pay after 2 days its reflected on your account at the top. Once you win its subtracted and you asked to pay half of remaining/full so they can ship to Mombasa and you clear balance.
I still have the account 2 and half years later with all details, but I doubt I can bid(because one has to get intouch with them first. )

3. When they cancelled your bid for a distant auction, does that mean it was located in another country outside of Japan? (I saw you could bid cars for various countries).
It was cancelled because it was in a different "town" I was mad waking up to someone winning at a lower-price from what i placed. They just explained "that the office was in i.e Nairobi but the bidding place was far i.e Mombasa and they never had a representative there so they pulled out before the bid began. I never tried different country, was very specific on model..etc and all of them were from Japan. Maybe other models had more countries.

Also as bidding approaches in some scenarios i.e an hour to or minutes to biddinf you are able to see other peoples bids, so you can know in advance if it will go through or fail. Unfortunately it always happened at night, there is nothing much you can do since the Kenyans were asleep. You find a situation where the bid above you bid is more by Ksh 5000, the kenya support guys are are asleep, the Japan guys approved the bid during the day you cant alter it. You bang the laptop and sleep. Come next day morning the guy on top won it by Ksh 5000.

Thank you very much for your concise response especially the registration month issue, the difference may mean an extra 280k in taxes. Really makes things clear and planning a viable process quite straight forward. I'll definitely be in touch should I run into any trouble or may need further clarification. 5k! only just to take that car from you?! I think one day kesha is worth the trouble for me, I'd do it!