Did My Japanese Car Exporter Steal My Money?

Hi guys,

I just wanted to let everyone know that the "Vehicle Markup Scam" is going to get more popular now.

What is the problem?

Vehicle Markup Scam - This is a scam done by Japanese car exporters when buying from auction. Your Japan car exporter tells you that they won an auction car for you, but tells you a higher price than the actual price the car sold for at auction.

Example -
Exporter says the car sold for 685,000 yen
Actual selling price was 655,000 yen

The above example is real and comes from someone that emailed me.

That exporter got an extra 30,000 yen profit at your expense. It could be 80,000 yen, 100,000 yen, or more. This happened to me personally for 100,000 yen.

While this has been happening frequently over the past few years, we are going to see it more frequently now. This is because USS auctions has locked their data last month. USS auctions account for 80-90% of exported cars. Now the public cannot see how much the vehicles sell for at all USS auctions.

To know the selling price of a car, you need to ask an exporter that has a USS auction membership. USS keeps data for three months only on their system.

If you want me to check using our USS membership, please email us this information

Vehicle name
Auction name
Date purchased
Price on your invoice

Email address is - info@pacificcoastjdm.com

 

Derek helped me out with this exact issue less than a month ago. I was only being given the "total cleared customs" price by my agent, which included exporter fees, vehicle costs, shipping, insurance, customs brokerage, etc. I wanted to know the actual sale price of the vehicle and I could not see it using my agents portal. Derek pulled it up for me no problem, true asset to the community!

 

this sucks for many reasons!

it sucks to see someone getting scammed by paying more, and it also sucks because my favorite pastime was checking sold prices .. what am I going to do to fill this void now :s

 

Thats a real problem locking USS sale prices, how the heck are we supposed to find stats on what things sold for? not only is scamming a problem now, but that is a HUGE problem in buying cars, can't see sold prices, rediculous.

 

Same here

 

Thank you for the offer to check but I have question.

How do I know what you tell me is real if I use your check service and how do you prove it to me. I have read elsewhere that some exporters when asked old sold prices lie about it to make themselves look good to get new business.

How do I know you have OUR USS MEMBERSHIP, I did research recently and found out differently on another forum that you do not have OUR USS MEMBERSHIP. You bought car for some one and used another exporter because you do not have your own membership, you even say that on the forum when you got found out.

Please email us VEHICLE NAME, AUCTION NAME, DATE PURCHASED, PRICE ON YOUR INVOICE, why do you need to know price on invoice when you are meant to tell me what it sold for. Should we not email you AUCTION NAME, DATE BUY and CAR NUMBER and you then tell me sold price instead of me telling you the price. This is what make me think my first question maybe right.
Then I have to believe what you tell me to be correct, I am not saying you are the lier but maybe who tells you is or maybe you are how do I know, this is all I ask.
Screen copy auction invoice can be changed, I read this as well where you gave customer changed auction invoice.

 

Derek, thank you for bringing this up to our attention. I wouldn't have ever thought that this sort of thing has been happening. It's important to have solid trust between the broker and the client.

 

But how do I know he really have the membership. When I read through the problem on another forum his customer think he had the membership before buy when he did not.

Today I ran a marathon, that is what I tell everyone.
Today I have auction membership, that is what I tell everyone.

You do not know which is true.

 

Well when I emailed Derek to find the sale price from USS Tokyo, I didn't tell him what I thought it sold for (because I had no idea), and he told me a specific amount. A few weeks later I recieved all my original documents from the export company and the price on their documents matched exactly with what Derek told me.

 

I second that. I trust Derek as myself. That is why I've got my last eight imports from him, and I have no doubt the next one will come with his help!

 

Is there no transaction document the auction issues that the buyer can request? At least if they try to forge something like that you'll have a paper trail to compare to.

 

Hi Tyler,

Sorry, this post got really long.

I don't want to get off topic here because I want everyone to think hard about companies that steal. I want customers to get educated about this. It is not fair for honest exporters to have to compete against these monsters, yet make less money. It is not fair that people get their money stolen. When exporters cheat: Customers lose... good guy exporters lose... bad guys win.

Though I have noticed you post similar things on our Youtube channel so I would like to discuss this with full resect to you and others asking the same questions.

I don't post on forums much any more. Two reasons for that -

1 - We have built enough of a reputation that we no longer need the exposure.
2 - Forums tend to be a place where competition comes to attack you unfairly. It ruins the fun of enjoying a community knowing others are eager to push you down. That's business though... which is fair, but I don't like it so I don't post often.

We have had several of our competitors lie about us or try to shut down what we say. I find this type of conversation to be unhelpful because it confuses customers. Buyers need good information to make a rational choice but that was not what was happening. We have to be careful that these forums don't become echo-chambers of ideas. It is really easy for dominant members to sway the group attitudes about things. I could go into details but will save it for another time.

That being said...

I like that you are being inquisitive Tyler. You seem like a person that values honesty. That's great!
I would like to clear up two things you have mentioned publicly about us.

1 - Yes, we have a dealer license plate. It is the red-box plate that we can put on any car and drive it (with insurance). In fact, we export enough cars to get about 5 sets of dealer plates but we only have one set out of necessity. It is how we could drive cars for the Let's Drive Japan Youtube Channel.

2 - Yes, we have USS direct membership. We received it recently (after being in business since 2008). Our company was very unprofitable before we got membership because we still needed to charge market rates for our service, yet we were profiting less than our competition. I had to work my butt off through long hours. It was by far the hardest thing I have ever done. I worked it out a few months ago and we lost over $500,000 in profits had we been a member from the start. But hey, you have to start somewhere.

There are exporters out there (I am sure you know) that is set on "educating" people that other exporters without USS membership cannot be trusted. I don't agree with that. We have hundreds of customers that trust us and just about all of them started buying from us before we were not a member. At that time, we offered all the same services as direct members without exception. It is a myth that non-USS members have limited services. From what I have seen, many of the largest exporters are the ones with the lowest ethics (and most likely to steal money as in the original post). They all have USS membership. Another surprising fact is that there are many (many many many) exporters without USS membership. Several of them are larger than we are. As a card-carrying member, I am not going to tell you that those exporters are not good or that you can't trust them. It's simply not true. The only benefit of being a USS member is the lower purchase and selling fees at auction. We competed with others while making less money, it was fair business (though I wouldn't do it again... yeeesh).

I am going to give the benefit of the doubt to the exporter that is telling you these things. I think that he just doesn't know. Though I disagree that this exporter needs to say these things as a way to compete with others. If it is who I think it is, he provides exceptional service.

I don't feel like I have to bend the truth to compete against people. I think that we have an excellent value proposition and have some of the best customers in the world. I am not out to tell everyone that we are the best. I am happy where we stand.. and the market agrees with it because we are increasing sales steadily. Next I want to work on how I can relax and enjoy my life a little. this kind of stress might take years to smooth out.

Tyler, if you would like, I will email you a picture of my member ID and you can see for yourself... if you need a video to make sure it is not photoshopped, I can do that... heck, if you are in Japan, I can meet you and show you.

To answer your last question- If I bought a car from another exporter, then ask you for the price, how do I know you are telling me the right price? How do you know if you are being honest?

Well, as others say, you would have to trust us. BUT.... Feel free to ask 2-3 other exporters but to be sure.

...But think of it this way- If I give the wrong number to you, then you go confront your exporter, I will look stupid if I am wrong. I don't like looking stupid.. and especially if that information gets out to the public. I don't have any way to stop that from happening... you get what I am saying? If I tell you incorrect info, it opens the flood gates of the other exporters that want to make me look like a fool. I would have to be impressively stupid to knowingly tell you the wrong selling price of a vehicle.

If you bought a car from us, please feel free to ask any of the other exporters on this forum and they will do the same for you. This post is about how to help people that have been victim to fraud. Let's continue to stay on that topic. If you want to discuss how we do business and you think it deserves public posting, feel free to make a thread for that.

All the best to everyone

 

you're the best Derek

top quality posting right there, folks.

 

You stop showing USS vehicles on your weekly video because USS auction had threaten members for showing vehicles and would cancel their membership, you mention in your videos.

I also notice other agents in Japan have also stopped showing or telling stuff about USS.

But then you now offer this service on a public forum to check sale prices of USS vehicles for everyone, either you are not worried about losing your membership to USS or you do not have membership to lose which is what makes me wonder if genuine about what he tell or will show me.

I have brought 6 cars from Japan during the last 7 years and my agent Steven Smith was very honest. I never meet him in person but we become good friends, he tell me he own yard (no rental), member of many car auctions plus USS and so on. He even send me photo of him standing in auction once. Then last year he disappear with many peoples money and will not reply to emails, not answer phone, nothing. I recently find out he not own yard that he said he did, did not have auction membership of his own and so on. Many people are complaining about the same thing on another forum so when you are lied to after long business relationship and lose money you are suspect even more when looking for new agent.

Thank you for offer to email me your id but why can you not post it here, why does it have to be hidden from everyone. I do not know how to tell real one or not but maybe if you post here someone can.

 

My guess is since another exporter has used Derek's publicly available documents to forge a US import in the past he would be reluctant to give that out to would be scammers.