Cars & BidsReviews of carsandbids.com

I Won Bid..For 1998 Toyata 4Runner ssr with 62120 original miles..Prestige Imports..Of Tampa..They Are The Real Deal..Jimmy Made Extra set of keys aty request..Andrew Made All The Paper Work A Breeze..If You Are In The Market For A Vehicle..You Should..Consider This Business.. Glad I Did..62120 miles..Unbelievable..

Why I gave them 1 star: I do not usually write reviews and I set up this Trust Pilot account to specifically submit this review: I refer you to the auction of a Mazdaspeed 6 Sport set to end on 1/22/24. Open my flagged unbiased comments that were well-received by the community before my ability to comment was "temporarily suspended" and only those comments of mine that could be perceived as unfavorable to the seller were flagged as inappropriate (this after the Seller to his exclusive benefit, misconstrued and misrepresented what I stated in one of my unflagged comments) and another commenter correctly pointed out rust-through on the subframe of the car and rust bubbles on the floorboard of the car that were covered by rustproofing. It is apparent that based on this experience, C&B's censorship of commenters favors their Sellers/Dealers so C&B can optimize their commissions. It is a free market and they are entitled to make their own decisions. You may also make your own decisions and consider this information regarding this site. By suspending my ability to comment (without providing any communication as to why it was suspended or how or when it would be reinstated), they have virtually also suspended my capacity to make requests of Sellers and so bid on their auctions. I have already bought one car on the C&B auction site and made serious bids on a few others incuding as the high bidder on another that did not meet reserve. Perhaps they wish to reconsider their decision. Absent that, I will cease to participate in any manner. I have always, in my comments been fair and unbiased and tried to help seller's provide useful information to potenetial bidders with suggestions such as the ones I made in that Mazdaspeed auction. Please, keep in mind that I reasonably expressed my displeasure when the Seller in that auction misrepresented what I had stated in one of the my comments and that my comments were selectively flagged (after receiving favorable reviews from the community), presumably by the Seller or C&B, apparently around the same time that my ability to comment was suspended. The comment that I was attemting to post when I found my ability to post "temporarlily suspended" was in response to the Seller stating that he could not get the car on a lift because he does not have one (so could not do the video that I recommended) and my post was to read as follows: Others appear to agree with rmac88 that upon zoom-in there appear to be rust related holes in the unibody subframe and rust bubbling of the floor pan beneath the undercoating in photos 52 and 53. If you are able to get the cold start video tomorrow, your auction also would benefit from (1) gettting additional video while poking at those underbody areas if what you believe is accurate (that the photos simply depict excessive undercoating spray in those areas), (2) a video of a compression test - not difficult to perform on each of the 4 cylinders -- I believe you could obtain a compression test kit inexpensively at Harbor Freight and/or obtain one on loan from Autozone or Advance Auto, and (3) check with a Mazda dealer on the other items that I listed in my earlier comment and report what you learn. You can accomplish these all tomorrow at limited or no cost. Compression test is easy. See link below (you may want to additionally temporarily pull the fuse for fuel pump and will want to assure that the plug wires are well away from anything that can throw a spark): (link to pertient YouTube video by Scotty Kilmer of how to do compression test here - links are not allowed in Trustpilot posts) The readers of this review can certainly decide whether my comments were biased and/or worthy of suspending my ability to comment...I have had absolutely no communication from Cars and Bids regarding this situation. They have my email address and phone number.

They made the mistake of suspending my commenting "privileges" without cause or notice, so here I am on every social media outlet, review site and forum. I purchased one car through C&B but never, EVER again. I'll be taking my money back to the other enthusiast auction website where I'll have a much better experience. Sad!

Great Site and wonderful staff and owner they are very knowledgeable and accommodating to the seller/buyer. Highly recommended. A+

FALSE NARATIVE!

My auction lasted a week and ended on Friday, December 8, 2023. According to the rules of the auction, I contacted the winning bidder and provided him with proof that I am the owner in the form of documents that contain very sensitive and private information. I was not very happy with the result of the auction, because the car was bided much below the market price, and I reported my concerns several times to Cars & Bids support chat, where they just issued me an invoice for payment of $300 and told me if I still will finally decide to refuse to sell at a reduced price, I have to pay this invoice. I did not pay this invoice because I needed time to make a final decision, but without waiting for my final decision they informed the buyer that I refuse to sell, although we were in touch with the buyer all day and I have all text messages and audio-recordings of our phone calls with him. As a result, the buyer refused to buy because Cars & Bids gave him fictitious and false information without waiting for a final decision from me whether I would sell or not. As a result, they published on various public websites that my car was sold and this will prevent me from selling this car in the future and therefore I am forced to go to court to demand them to remove false and fictitious information from the internet, and to compensate for the direct financial damages that they inflicted. I highly do not recommend this auction because they facilitated the theft of my identity and stole very sensitive information from me, causing direct financial harm due to the publication of false and fictitious information online about a sale that did not take place.

What a cluster. Listed a vehicle with Cars and Bids based on the reputation that Founder, Doug DeMuro has in the industry. Did everything that was asked of me. Took professional photos (using the company they suggested) and had the car lemon inspected (using the company they suggested). Accepted the lower reserve based on their industry expertise and answered every posted question in a timely and responsible manner. Once the bids started rolling in, we soon eclipsed the projected reserve and were on our way to a successful sale. That was until 20 minutes before the buy closed and a nefarious bidder spoiled the process with an offer 23% above the 2nd highest price. Of course, everyone else dropped out and once the high bid was proven fraudulent, C&B reached out to the two highest “underbidders” to gauge their interest. To my surprise, neither bidder wanted to honor their offers and so I was given two options. 1) accept a lower price or 2) agree to split the commission fee of the fraudulent offer (assuming they do not dispute the charge). In C&B's view, they did their job by bringing in a deal above the reserve price (that they themselves set). However, the primary purpose of an auction service is to obtain the highest price for the seller. Cars and Bids claims they “validate that each bidder is a serious buyer by requiring and verifying credit card information. This ensures that bidders are committed to the purchase. We also work with our payment processor to flag and avoid any high-risk or potentially fraudulent transactions, to further ensure a positive sales experience.” Unlike eBay however, Cars and Bids does not have a method in place to limit the damage of a bad-faith offer by curtailing exorbitant bids. So, if someone wants to offer 2x the value and spoil an auction there’s little that can be done to remedy the matter… Except relist the auction which Cars and Bids has refused to do. “We typically discourage relists because we've found they never seem to perform well. No matter how much we stress that the deal fell through as the result of a bad buyer and not the car or the seller, bidders remain skeptical and it's reflected in their bids. Additionally, in the few instances we have done relists, we've had to make sellers wait upwards of one month based on our current scheduling commitments and in the end, they expended a lot more time and effort only to achieve a disappointing result.” The above excerpt is from my chat conversation with Cars and Bids (there’s no phone number to call). They typically don’t relist an auction because “in their experience, they don’t do well” is an indictment of the entire process. Nevertheless, who is C&B to make that call anyway? If the seller wants to accept the risk of a lesser-performing auction they should be allowed to do so. Cars and Bids simply earns 2x the commissions and everyone wins. It’s really a shame. This company appears to be run by people who don’t understand customer service and their commitment “to support you and your buyer during the post-sale process” is nothing more than an empty slogan of techy rhetoric. Caveat emptor people. Caveat emptor. 11/30: Quick note that C&B was able to get a deal done for me with a new buyer. I still think there's lots of room for improvement here, but I am revising my review based on their final performance.

Cars & Bids (C&B) is an auction site. I purchased a vehicle at auction and was charged a commission of 4.5% on Nov6. On Nov 11 i traveled 500 miles to San Diego to inspect the vehicle. The seller refused to allow me to drive the vehicle. Instead the seller took me for a drive in the vehicle. The seller represented that the vehicle had just been serviced and was in perfect condition. I discovered otherwise. Vehicle dashboard lights were flickering and seat massage functions did not work in the Mercedes S560. The vehicle may have had other issues but without driving i could not determine that. The seller's comment was "well you are not a real buyer". I walked away from the deal and C&B refused to refund the $2925.00 they charged to my credit card. How can an auction company keep a commission for a transaction that did not go thru? If a seller misrepresented what was being sold and is dishonest i am not going to purchase the vehicle.