Turners Car Auction

[SuperDan]

Hello,
I thought I will share my experience with today's Turner's Car Auction in Penrose.
It was the first time I attended a car auction, and it was actually just to get a feel for a car auction, although I have had a look at some cars on the Internet catalog (www.turners.co.nz).
To find the cars in the big hall is quite an easy task, as everything is well organized. Since I did not want to get into temptation of bidding, I also did not register.
Some cars have the pre-auction test results displayed, some don't. I have actually just had a look at cars that were pre-checked (all had the result N), although I do not know how accurate the results can be, especially since they have a vehicle inspection station on site, which was not very busy though.
At 12.00pm the auction started. It was quite hard to follow the first couple of cars, since I was not familiar with the procedure.
In general, I think they start at a certain price. I want to take a Mazda, which I have had a look at, as an example (Ref. Number at Turners 740028)
On the website they expect a price of around 6.000 - 7.900. I think the auction started at 6500. Then he went down to 6000. Still no bidders, which made him come down to 5300, where the first bidder raised his hand. The bids went up to 5800, when the auction was ended. However, I do not think that the car was sold, since the green "Getting Close" did not flash. Neither did obviously the blue "Selling Now" sign. I could not figure out at what stage the Getting Close Sign, and at what stage the Selling Now sign will be activated. I guess, as a seller you give them a minimum selling price. Once the auction was over, they usually close with the words "We will negotiate", however, I do not know if you are obliged to negotiate.
Once the "Selling Now" is on, and you win the auction, a Turners employee will come right away, and take you to the payment office.
I do not know, if you can take the car right away with you, and if they issue license plates right away in the payment office. I think they should, as you usually pay the on road fee of 395 (in addition to the buyers fee of usually 305 in the mid-car market). So on every offer you need to add another 700 on top. So if you think you bought a car for 6000, you will actually pay 6700. I also do not know, if there is some kind of warranty along with it. Buy Now cars do have a 6 month motor breakdown insurance.
Hope this could give a little insight into Turners. I think I will be back on Sat. - This time however, with some cash in my pocket :-) The cars in general look very good, polished, etc. I guess there is always a certain risk, but I think the risk at Turners might be lower than at Ellerslie Car Fair. Maybe I am wrong though, and somebody can share their experience.

[dilanium]

Yes you can take the car then or wait, but if you do not take it within 24 hours they will charge you a fee for storage. The plates come with the car and they have all the paperwork when you buy for them to register the number in your name.

[dilanium]

Oh and they offer you a warranty, but we did not buy it nor did we need it.

They also offer insurance IRC but it's not worth it, you can get insurance elsewhere for less (AA for example).

[jeffanar]

I guess there is always a certain risk, but I think the risk at Turners might be lower than at Ellerslie Car Fair. Maybe I am wrong though, and somebody can share their experience.

From my experience with the Ellerslie car fair, these days it seems like half the cars come from Turners anyway

[cappuccino]

Here's my Turner's story (Oct 2007)

I bought a car at Turner's Auction in Auckland (Penrose). It was a popular car and attracted lots of interest. I paid for the 'independent' on site inspection who gave it the thumbs up but said it needed 2 new tyres and a WOF certificate. I won the auction, took the car round to a nearby garage to get the work done and left it there overnight. Following morning I got a call to say that the car I had bought was a 'lemon'. On inspection, the mechanic had found that

a) car had been in an accident (onsite inspection said it hadn't)
b) airbags had been disconnected and removed
c) odometer had been tampered with and not correctly aligned (onsite inspector should have noticed this).

I drove the car back to Turners, had a word with the salesman who said basically "tough!" but I insisted on speaking the Manager and after staying calm and explaining the situation he agreed that I could have my money back including the cost of the new tyres/mechanics time and that I could also have the option of taking another car but not go through the auction process as long as I paid the 'reserve price'. Bit of a dilema as you can imagine but I agreed to look at a couple of his cars in the yard and narrowed it down to one which looked a good deal. I then asked for an independent inspection that I didnt have to pay for and that wasn't to be conducted by the 'onsite' inspection company that I had initially used.

They agreed and we all drove round the corner to another garage who put it through an inspection and gave it the all clear (apart from telling us there was a very slight oil leak but don't ask me to get technical cos all I know is that it wasn't serious!)

Drove the new car away happily and had 7500 trouble free kms driving around North Island for 7 weeks (oh and 3 speeding tickets, but that's another story ;-)

[72andsunny]

Just a couple of things to add:

In addition to the charges mentioned above, a service contract is available (around $400/year). If you are paying by credit card, there is an additional 1.5% charge. Payment is expected the day of the auction (or the next day for evening auctions).

If you have your eye on more than one car: Get there early!

[constablechuck]

Unless you get a really good deal then Turners is usually not the best value for money. They are in my opinion quite greedy, they hit both seller and buyer with fees, the mechanical warranties they offer are next to useless given the excess and restrictions on what's covered. Their onsite inspections are peripheral and they depend on the skill of whatever inspector happens to do it. I have gotten a few good deals there but they are few and far between.

If you don't mind putting a bit more time and effort into it you can usually find much better deals on Trademe.

[SuperDan]

Unless you get a really good deal then Turners is usually not the best value for money. They are in my opinion quite greedy, they hit both seller and buyer with fees, the mechanical warranties they offer are next to useless given the excess and restrictions on what's covered. Their onsite inspections are peripheral and they depend on the skill of whatever inspector happens to do it. I have gotten a few good deals there but they are few and far between.

If you don't mind putting a bit more time and effort into it you can usually find much better deals on Trademe.

Well, that's the point - time and effort. Turners has the advantage of finding 5-6 cars that are of interest at the same spot. With trademe you need to call, make appointments, meet the person, etc. Really time consuming. I have done my apartment search via TradeMe and it was quite annoying and time consuming, as there were some real dumps advertised as 1 BR apt. I guess it is the same with cars. Maybe a different picture to the actual car, some details were forgotten to mention, etc.
I think, however, that Turners offers decent cars on decent prices. And I doubt that real "lemons" are that common as they might be on Trade Me. But I agree that they on-site vehicle inspection station is kind of useless, since it belongs to Turners, doesn't it. I am in good hopes that 2002 cars with around 50000km are quite OK. Selling price should be something around 6500. I think thats realistic.

[mylesdw]

Agree with Constable Chuck, I don't really consider Turners to be an auction house, more a dealership that drives its cars past an audience. The idea of an auction is that you can buy a car for what it's REALLY worth the downside being that there is a risk involved. At an auction you should be paying the trade price, not retail but this is not true at Turners. Turners have high reserves on pretty much everything and you can sit for an hour or two and see nothing sell. They then try and haggle with the highest bidder so the auction was pretty much a waste of time anyway. Remember that the highest bid is EXACTLY what the car was worth at that place and time. If you pay more than that you are paying too much.

You'd probably get much better deals and service from a smaller well established dealer. Here in Chch there are whole streets of them holding, in total, far more cars than Turners and with the benefit of intense competition.

When looking at a car to buy it is always worth taking another set of eyes (or two). Even if the helper isn't a mechanic it is amazing what another person will see, especially if they are not the buyer.

[pcsourcepoint]

I have brought low priced/budget cars to repair to resell, but it included a $200 fee I think, but I found far easier/cheaper on trade and exchange for budget cars. Also I noticed ounce or twice people form "upstairs" bid , but I wonder if they are genuine bidders...