Anyone ever buy a bike from Copart/Crashed Toys?

Like the title says? I'm trying to get a good idea for how this shit works. Been looking at bikes and bidding on them for weeks, and finally today I "won" an auction...or so I thought. Haven't received any info from them and when I look in my account, I found it under "lots lost", saying I was outbid...even though I watch the thing say SOLD on my bid. There was no other bid after mine. So confused now...

 

I tried to buy from them a few years ago. had the same thing happen twice. There also seemed to be a mysterious reserve price. I was high bidder on three occasions but I would get an email saying it was to low and bike was still for sale. I gave up after that.

 

I tried bidding once. I stopped bidding when I hit my budget and watched the bids go stupid high. I mean a crashed bike going for way more than you could find un crashed ones in good shape.

I later heard that those sites false bid to get the price higher...screw that.

 

Did you ever try contacting them about it? I plan on calling tomorrow, but I also sent an email to the general manager from the particular auction site I bid from. I don't expect to get a reply from him though. I know a guy who's bought several bikes from there, most of which were at really good prices in decent condition. I guess he never ran into this problem though based on my short conversation with him. I think some of them do have a reserve and some don't. Just depends on the type of sale, possibly the state too. I know I can only bid on bikes in certain states, others require a dealer license. I just wish they'd have all this info spelled out somewhere so people can figure out what's going on, and how everything works.

The other thing that took me a while to figure out is bidding on something means nothing. It's not like ebay when once the time runs out, the higher bid wins. All it means is when the time runs out, a live online auction starts with a bunch of vehicles from that particular site location, and the highest bid is the start point of this live auction. If everyone knew that, people wouldn't ever bid until the online auction and that would make the starting price much lower.

 

Well that's a possibility if someone wants it that bad...I don't see why though. Most the ones I've seen went for really cheap. While I was waiting for the bike I was interested in today, I saw a few nice 600s go for around $2000-$2500, that just had a bit of cosmetic damage. A friend of mine bought an almost new R3 for like $700-800 with just cosmetic damage. The one I supposedly "won"...or should've won....stopped at $1450, which was my bid and the last one. That was also for an R3 in good shape with just a few thousand miles. If I get get something like that for that price, as long as it runs and just has cosmetic damage, I could have a decent little race bike for under $3000.

 

Just do your research first.

 

I bought mine, a salvage title from Cranky Ape several years back. It was an easy purchase.

site unseen, so to speak, from Az and had it shipped to me

 

Never heard of it. I'll look it up. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Yep I second cranky ape. Bought an SV from them and had a buddy bring it down for me. Smooth transaction.

 

Copart units often have a reserve on them and all that crashed toys does is bid for you and charge you a fee if you win. I used to buy alot on copart but it started to get way to expensive as its global. The live action was swamped with middle east countries that would bid way to high as alot of the product they do not have direct access too or a cbr would msrp in their homeland for 25 grand.

 

I bought a crashed bike from erepairables.com. From what I understand, they operate the same as most of the other sites.

They run an auction on their site for the 30 days (or whatever length of time) prior to the real insurance auction to purchase the bike. The auction on their site is to buy the privilege of them representing you at the real auction. Whatever your winning bid was on the site, is what they bid up to at the insurance auction.

So it's possible to win the bid on their site, but when they went to the auction to bid for you for real, they got out bid. It happened to me a couple times too before won one. Erepairables.com was $100 for a year membership to bid on whatever I wanted. Didn't have to pay anything else until I won a bike

 

Checked 'em out...they seem to be VERY small though. They had like 3 motorcycles in total when I checked last night lol. Copart has hundreds or even thousands.

 

I wondered about that because during the live auction it tells you the location of the other bidders that are bidding on the vehicles and I kept seeing random towns from like China, South American countries and other places. My thought was "WTF are these people trying to buy crashed bikes from freakin Lincoln, Nebraska???" Pissed me off cuz I lost out on one to someone from China on a CBR earlier this year.

I wish insurance companies would just sell them directly to people if they have someone interested. I have a friend who's a State Farm agent in Chicago and asked him about this but he said they can't do that. All the bikes they salvage go directly to Copart/Crashed Toys. Otherwise I would've asked him to keep an eye out for certain models and when one comes up that he salvages out to sell it to me directly...why must things be more complicated than they need to?

 

Did a Copart thing on a 1098. It was going from NJ with a NY salvage title to LA where it needed to first be titled in MS...
Round about way for paperwork, it was goin' back on the street, but gettin' the bike wasn't a big deal. Showed up, looked at it, gave the guy a check.

 

Yes it is smaller. Less head ache also. Never said it was a big site.

 

Bought several from Copart. Sometimes you win, sometimes you get a shitbox.

 

How do you win though?? That's what's baffling to me. I "won" the online auction, and then heard nothing. A few hours later I checked my account and found it in "lost lots", saying I was outbid. So how does it work? What do you have to do to actually WIN? And don't say "bid higher" lol....like I said, my bid was already the highest one.