Importing

Tanabe

Hi Folks,

I'm thinking about importing a car from Japan at the moment & have made contact in relation to a particular vehicle. They have sent me a pro-forma invoice which asks for ALL of the money UPFRONT. Is this the norm does anybody know?

You can understand my concern! Below is a link to the website with whom I'm dealing with:

http://www.tradecarview.com

Cheers:)

Seth Brundle

I have never heard of them but I don't make a habit of looking at importers stuff.
However, from http://www.tradecarview.com/information.aspx

carview was established in 1999 as an online automobile information provider.

Their .com domain was first registered in Dec 2005!

Tanabe

This doesn't look good!:eek:

Seth Brundle

have you given them your money yet?

Tanabe

No but they rang me yesterday & said if they receive the money in the next 2 or 3 days they will do their best to put the car on a vessel which is leaving on November 1st.:rolleyes:

What kinda questions could I ask them/checks I could run on them to try & suss out are they legit?

Seth Brundle

"Give us money and we'll do our best..."
There must be something special about this car!

Tanabe

I totally agree with you! & those were their exact words!!

BTW how do you run that check to establish when their domain name was registered?

Cheers.

Santa Claus

What type of car is it anyway ?

Tanabe

Honda Integra

Chonker

Trade cars have only been trading online since 2005 but they source from dealers all over Japan. So it really depends on the garage you are purchasing from. Some are good some are bad, like our guys. you can be 99% sure you will get the car, 75% sure it will be as they say it is, and 00% sure that its never been clocked?

Seth Brundle

Tanabe wrote:

BTW how do you run that check to establish when their domain name was registered?

This test is called a WHOIS. Have a look at www.whois.sc for .com/net/etc. or www.whois.ie for .ie domains

Tanabe

Chonker wrote:

Trade cars have only been trading online since 2005 but they source from dealers all over Japan. So it really depends on the garage you are purchasing from. Some are good some are bad, like our guys. you can be 99% sure you will get the car, 75% sure it will be as they say it is, and 00% sure that its never been clocked?

So have you heard of tradecar before then? If I heard about somebody who used them before that would be a start. Your totally right though that it depends on the garage in particular & your statistics also (which are much the same as when importing from anybody else too)!

So the BIG question - would you give 'em your money up front

@kbannon thanks for that info, handy to know;)

Seth Brundle

Tanabe wrote:

So the BIG question - would you give 'em your money up front

As I said before, I know nothing about this company but there is an old saying "a fool and their money are easily parted"

bf

Tradecarview is a carzone of sorts, it just lists various dealers stocks - I have used the site before to look up cars I was interested in importing. To be honest I found that they were all more expensive on this site than cars bought from auctions.

The dealers are buying them from auction & marking the price up, so you would be better using someone like www.japaneseusedcars.com to buy directly from auction for you and saving a few quid.

Rudolph Claus

What kind of integra are you after, a type r or a 1.6non vtec just out of interest. Half thinking of getting a 1.6 one myself.

Tanabe

Type R DC5 model;)

No point in buying a non-vtec:D

drdre

Tanabe wrote:

Type R DC5 model;)

No point in buying a non-vtec:D

that website had a savage looking black dc5.i think it was 2003 model.it looked so cool
how much difference would there be from the jap price than the irish price for a dc5

heres the dc5 http://www.tradecarview.com/stock/photo.aspx?id=79244&p=2

nxbyveromdwjpg

Its totally normal to pay up front with those online jap importers.

Would you put a car on a ship bound for the other side of the world before it was paid for?

Its exactly the same as buying anything else online.

nxbyveromdwjpg

drdre wrote:

that website had a savage looking black dc5.i think it was 2003 model.it looked so cool
how much difference would there be from the jap price than the irish price for a dc5

heres the dc5 http://www.tradecarview.com/stock/photo.aspx?id=79244&p=2

And with that spoiler you'll never be stuck for an iron board or a breakfast bar!

drdre

so tanabe did you get an import from japan yet? What did you get? and what was the outcome of tradecarview, are they good or bad

Tanabe

Still waiting for the vessel to arrive in Dublin dude! It is due in any day now thank God, can't wait!:) God delayed by a few days, all you need is patience;)

Like somebody said here earlier, tradecarview is like the Japanese version of carzone, the dealer I was doing the biz with was VERY helpful & I would recommend them to anybody.

By the way, I'm now accepting any donations towards the VRT so any help appreciated.