Mashamoto vehicle auctions..
 

anyone ever used them ? any good ?

possibly going to use them myself....asked the same question as you yesterday!
i spoke to them yesterday (guy called matthew).

must be a fairly new company, cant find any info on them at all

just read your thread, my budget is about the same too...

when you spoke to him did he say if theres a set price on how much extra it costs to ship it to the uk, get it legal etc ?
theres things like ver 2 sti ra's that have only been about 2k!

i've known the guy for a few years, seems fairly clued up.

was going to get a classic WRX wagon from him until i got my insurance quote!

basically i told him i would be looking for a 96 wrx low miles good condtion, and my budget would be a max of £4k. he said i would be looking at spending 400,000yen (about £1700) on the car and then the rest would go on import fees etc. he said there would definatley be change out of £4k to have the car on the road, and i would be looking at cars with about 50/60 thousand kilometres :eek2: (only about 30k miles)

certainly sounds promising, mailed him and was told around 4k for a good condition sti ra
if you go ahead with this before me let me know how you get on :)

Ill be keeping an eye an this sounds good.

id suggest talking to GC8 Simon ;)

I remember that username from when I asked about importing on here a while ago... looked back to the thread... guess all I need to know is if mashamoto are any reliable as according to what it says on the website you can see the auction sheet before bidding on anything

the guy at mashamoto has set me up a 30 day account (free) and has said if i saw any car i want that i could bid on it, but only after leaving a £650 deposit, which can be returned if you decide not to import. TBH the guy is more than helpful, a mate of mine has been in touch with him for a few weeks/months as he is going to use them to import a gtr r33 v-spec and has also found him to be very helpful.
i got a uk car to look at on saturday but if i dont have any joy with it then im going to be sending my deposit to mashamoto!

I set up a 30 day account too, saw them advertised in autotrader when I was looking through, dunno if this company is the only one of its kind or if there are other people/companies offering the service for private buyers

guy's just watch out for the condition of the car
and its rating, 3 4 5 and so on..
ive just looked and loads are a 0. rated :mad: car

the costs to get it over here and reg: in your name with a plate are not
alot of money all can be done
within £500, or they will do it for £1000
your call on that part.

ive looked at jap sheets for the last month
within ratings and damage
and some are pure shocking to
what your going to get.
or what happens when its
on the jap side of the turf,or in its shed for the weeks shipping
the pictures do the car the world of good imho of course

steve

i've been reading up/asking round, seems to make sense to put it through the MOT etc yourself and get it as it comes off the ship from japan

finding the right agent/car is the biggest problem I can see..

ive got a agent and a good one..
that can ship and get all thats needed to be road ready,
but finding a car is a piss take
all on that site..:lol: above
are all write offs....

think il have a walk along and say no thanks..

so...the way to do it is have someone take care of getting it shipped, road legal etc
but not mashamoto... ?

the car im thinking of is an sti ra (95ish), is it even worth importing it or am I aswell looking at one that's just been imported/ in the UK for a while

maybe i'm not looking hard enough but from what I can gather you could save a few grand easy

after reading some of the comments in this thread i thought it best i make a post.all be it several years too late.
i am matthew (owner of mashamoto who many of you guys have already spoken with)

i will reply with quotes from the posts

hello solo steve,

as you have mentioned grades vary from -1/*** upto usually 5 or 9 depending on the auction house 5/9 being a brand new vehicle.

we dont own the 250,000 vehicles we auction weekly we simply provide a site where all can be viewed in one place from 120 different auction houses nation wide in japan. we have at least 2 vehicle inspectors at the major auction houses and can send someone to the smaller ones if we are given enough notice.

our customers choose which vehicles to bid on after they have had a translation of the auction sheet, and even then the vehicles are inspected in hand to ensure they match the condition details we have provided to a customer and that they actually are good cars.

if you think you can get a car in and reg it for £500 sounds like your doing
something illegal tax evasion perhaps ?

as you know when cars arrive in the UK we have 10% import duties, 17.5% vat, £50-£100 customs clearance depending on port, then you have your £25 for an mot, £100ish for road tax (depending on car) £60 registration and then the prepwork for the mot

We do not and have not ever charged a fee for registering vehicles for customers.

And i agree unless your wanting a parts car or are certain companies who most you guys have heard of then i would stay well clear of the accident damaged / repaired vehicles.

OK so all the cars on our site are write offs ? id love to know where you get your information from , can i ask where you buy your cars ? considering we cover every major auction house, process over 250,000 vehicles PER WEEK and then we have most major export dealers paying to advertise their cars in the buy it now section i really cant see where you get your cars from as anyone who is someone of relevence is advetised on our sites so chances are your either selling cars that arent on the radar which would concern me if you did ever have any come backs , or your selling cars that we advertise, ... or is that the problem, your customers can see just who and where your buying your cars for and at what price so your trying to deter people from coming to our site as so they dont see this information ?



auctions alone here is what we have covered weekly and theirs still another 20-30 smaller houses we can attend

Monday
AUCNET(mon)
Honda Fukuoka
Honda Hokkaido
Honda Kansai
Honda Nagoya
Honda Tokyo
JU Tokyo
USSR Aichi-Nagoya
Tuesday
ARAI Sendai
CAA Gifu
CAA Tokyo
JU Mie
JU Nagano
JU Saitama
JU Shizuoka
JU Yamaguchi
SAA Sapporo
TAA Kinki
TAA Kyushu
TAA Minami Kyushu
USS Kobe
USS Yokohama
Zip Tokyo
Wednesday
Bay Auc
BCN
CAA Chuubu
Hiro
JAA
JU Ibaraki
JU Ishikawa
KCAA Ebino
LAA Shikoku
USS Fukuoka
USS Sapporo
USS Tohoku
Thursday
AAAI Fukuoka
AAAI Oyama
HAA Osaka
JU Aichi
JU Fukushima
JU Gunma
JU Hiroshima
JU Kanagawa
JU Sapporo
KCAA Fukuoka
LAA Kansai
NAA Nagoya
NAA Osaka
SAA Hamamatsu
TAA Chubu
TAA Kanto
TAA Touhoku
USS Tokyo
USSR Chiba-RTokyo
Friday
AAAI Bayside
AUCNET Quick AA
JAA Tsukuba
JU Chiba
JU Fukuoka
JU Miyagi
JU Niigata
JU Okayama LAA
JU Tochigi
KCAA Yamaguchi
NAA Tokyo
USS Nagoya
USS Ni****okyo
USS Osaka
Saturday
AAAI VT
AUCNET(sat)
HAA Kobe
IAA
JU Gifu
JU Nara
NAA Tokyo Nyuusatsu
TAA Yokohama
USS Gunma
USS Kyushu
USS Okayama
USS Ryuutsu
USS Shizuoka
Sunday
AUCNET(sun)




as mentioned above , every car has its auction sheet translated , every car is inspected if its a bad car it doesnt get bought, we even do the equivelent to a japanese HPI check and all FREE.

you can even go on our site and browse the prices the cars sold for.

dont really get the time to follow forums so if theirs any follow ups or anyone wants any specific info feel free to email me direct dont want to seem like im spamming the forums so just type in MashaMoto on google , we only get 85,000+ results so shouldnt be very hard to find us

Mashamoto...a curate's egg
 

I have personally experienced Mashamoto (Hi Matthew) and as my title said the experience was a bit of a Curate's Egg...

I could write an absolute tome on my experience but let me be succinct for the interests of brevity & I hope interest & maybe a warning!

Mashamoto operate a great online system...easy to use...powerful tools...and I think they are as good as any in the market.

Its June 2009 and I'm in Abh Dhabi and have made the decision to import a car from Japan back to the UK where I am due to return.

I make my deposit of £650 (you need that to access their auction system - some companies allow you to do that for free) and pick out my 2nd car of choice (first one I was outbid) and put in my bid...great news as I win the car within budget!

I get sent my invoice promptly which I pay equally as promptly.

Then I get an apologetic email saying that I should have had the deposit (£650) taken off the FOB price. I'm offered a separate refund unless I want to possibly stay on the site in case I want to bid on another car. I opt to stay on for a while as I am happy with the service and frequency of contact with Matthew.

We had some issues with the shipping which weren't Mashamoto's fault and the documentation went astray resulting in me getting stuck with a couple of days of storage costs. Mashamoto stepped up and offered to refund me the cost as they admitted liability - less than £100.

Anyway I got the car and it was great...

I then opted to have the deposit back as I decided that I didn't want to bid on any more cars and needed the cash (who doesn't in this current climate)...that was in October last year...Mashamoto agreed immediately to refund the money...and then nothing happened...I waited for a few months and then wrote again...response promising to pay and apologising...

I had some more email contact which I won't bore you with but essentially Matthew was either ill or there were reasons that were plausible which he promised to share...but never did!

I eventually reached the end of my tether and threatened legal action to recover my deposit (it really was a last resort) in May...suffice to say I've heard not a peep from Matthew or Mashamoto.

This is my last offer to let them do the right thing...guys you stole £650 off me (I'll even take the storage costs on the chin as a good will gesture) and have offered to pay me but its taken you 12 months to turn words into action...come the moment come the man?

Moral - watch your finances like a hawk and check that first invoice to make sure they have taken off your deposit because like me you may never see it again...having said that they do deliver on the car...I'll let you decide how morally repugnant you find this story!