Caprice auction April 22 - Charlotte, NC

[elc32955]

Hey all,

In browsing I ran across an auction on Proxibid scheduled for April 22 in Charlotte NC, looks like 24 Caprices from 2013-2017 are being sold off (mostly all 14 & up cars). To me this looks like a clean-up sale, the selling agency is getting rid of everything with engine problems, body damage (even to minor paint dings), you get the picture. Anyway, the auction is on Proxibid, you can follow the link from the auction site listings in the first post here in the for sale section. Just looking over photos & reading descriptions it sounds like a good portion of these cars run & drive, so this might be a chance to score cars economically that just need some paint & body work - but as always I recommend on-site inspections... buyer beware!

Good luck!
Eric

[JUNKYARD_JACK]

I just posted about this lol I have bids in on three of them my wife is going to gut me

[Ctuck21]

Let me know if any you win the bid on are in good/decent shape. I’m in the market for one but can’t make it out. I’m in Clt.

[elc32955]

Well, sale closed - prices were anywhere from $2500 to $8400. Hopefully someone here was able to scoop up a car or three....

Eric

[GammaFlat]

My brother bid on two cars (one for each of us ). He bid 4100 each. One went for over 5K. The other went for 4000?!. He followed up and they denied he bid?!

I also don't get this notion of "Live auction begins in XX:XX". Exactly what does that mean when you are allowed to bid before that?

In reviewing the bids after it was over, it seems the same bidder got the ones I was watching (Chicago Motors like organization?).

[elc32955]

Unfortunately that is a problem with how on-line auctions are conducted these days. Most of the auction companies are protected by contract terms that specify something like "The decision of the auctioneer will be final regarding all disputes", so even if you think you are on firm ground they can still ace you out.

I feel for your brother as I had a problem with the State of NC system when I went to purchase my current Caprice from them online in early 2021. The bid on the first 2015 I was after (after a lengthy approval process to sign up for access to the State's brand new on-line sale system) was at $3,600 with like 2 minutes to go, I put in a bid of $3,700 and thought the bid had took. I refreshed with like 30 seconds to go and the bid I had just placed for whatever reason did not show. I didn't have enough time to react with another bid due to their system's slow refresh/reload times and the hammer dropped before I was able to repeat the process. I raised holy hell with both the auction software company and the State of NC surplus office in Raleigh, but in the end it did no good. I chilled as there were other cars still out there and I didn't want to get labeled as a troublemaker and be excluded from future sales. So, I bid on another sale and ended up paying $1,000 more for another 2015 LFX with 106,000 miles on the clock instead of 82,000 miles - going against a dealer for the last $1,000 worth of bidding. From there in watching the NC state sale results, the local dealers discovered the Caprice market soon after and it was pretty much all over for reasonably priced cars - I was just lucky to grab one in a sweet spot. A few weeks after I got my car home I browsed CL to check for good deal Caprices and what did I find.... the original car I bid on was listed by a flipper/private seller at $6,000. GRRRR....

The best systems out there are the ones that return to you a bid acknowledgement message that you can print that has an actual transaction number and/or time stamp, THAT is something you can slap on someone's desk for solid evidence if there's a question or a dispute. Without that kind of data to present there's not much you can do without getting down and dirty with an IT guy and doing things like checking server logs at Proxibid against your IP address & submitted data, etc.... But that takes time, money, and access to their records - not worth the hassle in most cases.

Now if you want to make this auction company's life interesting you could always call the City of Charlotte's Purchasing Department and raise cain. I'd follow that up with a call to the Charlotte Mayor's office asking why Charlotte is using an auction company that just cost the city money through errors in their on-line process. Involving the political types and telling them they lost cash due to screw-ups always generates questions down the bureaucratic chain, because as you know most politicians never met a dollar they didn't like. If nothing else maybe it'd be enough push to get the auction company to take a serious look at things with Proxibid instead of blowing your complaint off. The days of having a real live auctioneer on-site for most of these larger sales seems to be over since Covid protocols changed everything....

Eric

[GammaFlat]

I guess you could call it lack of courage or maybe pragmatism (to complain). It surely doesn't seem to make sense to stir up a hornets nest in the place you're hoping to conduct business ("never wound a king" comes to mind).

I did ask my brother if he got a confirming email. Nuh uh. Screen shots of all transactions would be a "nice to have".

From the perspective of the auctioneer, I can see wanting to deal with a limited number of guys/orgs instead of 25 rando's. Also, you have to always leave room for honest mistakes by either party.

I lean toward nefarious or at least negligent problems.

auction results.jpg (24.72 KiB) Viewed 662 times

[elc32955]

In the Govt. world dealing with your favorite vendor all day every day and overlooking errors in a competitive process in their favor is called "Cronyism", and when found out results in bad juju for all parties involved. Your decision in whether to pursue this or not, but from my perspective you have absolutely nothing to lose and maybe a car to gain. Of course you have to be absolutely confident that your brother didn't make an error when he placed the bid, but that goes without saying. It's a quick, convenient decision by the auctioneer - however it throws the entire on-line auction process into doubt as to it's error ratio & result validity when a situation like this comes up. Same thing happened to State of NC last year due to system lag, but it happened to a bunch of sales over time - which resulted in them voiding and re-running a number of auctions due to the process error. Don't let the steam roller of "it's your problem, not mine" fool you for a second.

One other thing... Google the term "Proxibid problems", you might find those search results very interesting. I sure did!

Just my .02 worth, whatever you decide good luck!

Eric