For five years, Cars & Bids has pitched itself as a more value-oriented online car auction site than Bring A Trailer, but it looks like that’s about to change soon. Last week, Cars & Bids laid off its entire business development team while cutting jobs in community moderation, accounting, and human resources. This week, the site announced in an email to users that it’s raising buyer fees starting end-of-day Tuesday.
Since the site launched, Cars & Bids charged buyer fees of 4.5 percent, up to a cap of $4,500, with a $225 minimum buyer fee. As of 5:00 p.m. PT on Feb. 25, those figures jump up to a five percent buyer fee and a cap of $7,500, with a $250 minimum buyer fee. Depending on what you end up buying, you could end up paying between $25 and $3,000 more than before.
Those new figures match the minimum, percentage-based, and maximum buyer fees seen on Bring A Trailer, and while they should boost the bottom line of Cars & Bids, they take away one of the big advantages the site previously had over Bring A Trailer. Assuming identical winning bids, the amount a buyer would actually pay on Cars & Bids would be lower, so long as that bid’s placed before end-of-day Tuesday.
Increasing the buyer’s fee cap seems like something that should’ve happened a long time ago. After all, a $4,500 maximum fee at 4.5 percent caps out at a winning bid of $100,000. Considering the means of people generally shopping above that bar, a few extra grand on a six-figure car probably isn’t the end of the world. However, now that Bring A Trailer seems to have opened itself up to more examples of reasonably priced enthusiast cars, encroaching on Cars & Bids’ niche, increasing minimum and percentage-based buyer fees could lead to more mainstream bidders being platform-agnostic.
So, with Cars & Bids soon matching Bring A Trailer on fees, why choose the platform? Well, disclosure of modifications seems more transparent, the user interface is slicker, and critically, more cars seem eligible for purchase through a streamlined escrow service. Escrow can be particularly important when buying a car sight unseen as a trusted third party, in this case, KeySavvy, taking care of payment and title transfer can prevent issues from arising and even potentially unwind a deal if fraud seems to be taking place.
In addition, Cars & Bids seems to focus on more driver-spec examples of cars that may have a few imperfections but also have values to reflect that. If that’s your jam, there still may be relative savings to be had on the platform on a case-by-case basis, although cheaper buyer fees can no longer be counted on. In practical terms, buyer fees on a $5,000 car will soon be going up from $225 to $250, buyer fees on a $10,000 car will be rising from $450 to $500, buyer fees on a $20,000 car will be rising from $900 to $1,000, and buyers fees on a $30,000 car will be rising from $1,350 to $1,500. While not enormous, every dollar makes a difference, especially to the pocketbooks of average enthusiasts.
Given that the enthusiast car market is returning to earth, that Cars & Bids leans heavily on buyer fees for revenue, that the online auction site has already laid off employees, and that the business seems to be somewhat stalled on volume, squeezing up buyer fees isn’t a surprising move. Will this current mixture of cuts and fee increases be enough? That depends on the targets of current management and how consumers respond.
While internet car auction sites have caught accusations of affecting the transaction prices of enthusiast vehicles, Cars & Bids does bring some welcome balance to the space. If private equity decides it’s had enough and strips the firm for parts, the mainstream virtual car auction world would essentially boil down to a Bring A Trailer monopoly.
Top graphic image: Cars & Bids
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Should we all just accept that when private equity arrives, it’s the beginning of the end?
Just another day at the private equity firm. Why are we paying all these people without MBAs they aren’t saving us money.
It’s almost over. BaT won.
Cars & Bids > Bring a Trailer
Is that you, Doug?
I may not be an expert but is this the break in the dam that admits you can’t buy and sell cars on the Internet? Only so many people stupid enough to buy a car sight unseen on the Internet. Much like EVs it is a small market of stupid people who after a few years the market is gone. No test drive no smell test no windows unless you fight for your rights.
I don’t know how you got “fight for your rights” out of an article that’s reporting on C&B’s increased fees
C&B is big on modifications, history and general transparency. If you find a car that you really want on C&B, nothing stops you from traveling out to the car and giving the car a good ol’ tire-kick before bidding
No, because there’s still plenty of it going on, dealers are doing more and more sight unseen business every day. This is just an enthusiast market reckoning with the fact that its oversaturated for “normal” times where buyers are a bit less likely to buy wants than needs.
You don’t have the reach and the name recognition – but go ahead and raise your prices to that of your biggest (Literally – about 32x bigger) competitor.
Good luck w/ that.
I’m glad Doug got his money out of the site when he did because Chernin Group massively overpaid and they’re going to clearly wash the company from their books in a few weeks for pennies on their dollar.
Good for Doug to cash out while screwing over all the employees who did the actual work of building the site?
The millionaire worship in this country is just disgusting.
They wouldn’t have had a job in the first place. So, maybe tone it down on the hate, lol.
We are just so fortunate that people born into money can hire us to make them even more money, to then get thrown to the curb when its financially expedient.
Please trickle down on my face some more daddy!
It’s telling that you think Doug did nothing in building the company.
Something something ‘born on second base, didnt hit a double’.
It is certainly possible that several things can be true at the same time. Doug worked very hard to build something that loads of people have failed at. Being born rich is a huge leg up in life but alone it is not enough to be successful.
It might also be true that in spite of his obvious talents (and leg up), he didn’t work hard enough to protect his most vital asset – the employees that make the place work.
While I certainly don’t think Doug was born with a silver spoon, I do agree that outside of a few core employees C&B grew much too quickly for it’s own good. Was that Doug and Fil or was that TCG? I don’t know and ultimately I don’t think it matters, PE needs to see profit every quarter and if they don’t they cut costs. The PE model fails to take into account that the culture and employees of assets they purchase is what makes the thing “good”. But hey, maybe if they write it off Doug can buy it back from TCG for not much and then we can really see what’s going on.
Partnering with PE is a Faustian exchange with the sacrifice borne by those fired employees, and not by Doug who walks with $3M+ in supercars.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like Doug’s work and I hope the best for him but I also hope that those fired employees received adequate recompense for their sacrifice.
I too hope the severance packages are adequate, I guess I just don’t think it’s some immoral act to reap the rewards of your hard work and risk taking.
They need to charge a reserve fee based on the reserve and not refund that fee even if the reserve is met. They should also disclose the reserve as soon as it is met, or after the auction ends if it doesn’t meet the reserve.
Both your takes are very anti-seller and the site is never going to do those things because they can only exist if a steady stream of new cars are being submitted for auction on the site.
You are right but you need what is stated to eliminate I know what I got sellers who want to much.
I looked at selling on there a couple years back and they told me they would only sell my vehicle on a no reserve auction. They sent an email showing similar vehicles with no reserve and how they actually sold for more than those with a reserve. I think they do a pretty good job of policing this.
I hope the equity partners will be ok.
Don’t worry, will write it off on their taxes for the next couple years
So basically your taxes will offset this gamble
The shareholders thank you!
Can’t you see it’s the last act of a desperate company, and not the first act of Henry VIII.
Doug’s gotta make the payments on the Carrera GT somehow!
I want to believe these higher fees are going to pay for outfits for Noodle.
You mean Dog DeMuro?
With all his Quirks and Fleaturesâ„¢
VeryMindfulVeryDeMuro?
Wait, laying people off and raising fees in the same week? You’re supposed to wait a little bit of time between those two things so you can make it look like a phased approach. You aren’t that DOGE guy whose name I refuse to mention.
You mean the smartest richest man in the world as opposed to?
Sarcasm I hope?
I like BaT for it’s historic data on vehicle OEM/Model/MY/Sale date. Does C&B do that?
Yeah that is nice on BaT, but honestly that’s about the only thing I find better. As a Platform BaT is obviously better because it has more reach and is that much larger with name recognition, but without the scale and reach, I think C&B has a much much much better interface. Better search, better organization of images, waaaaayyyy better organization of information and main points of the vehicle, question blocks, etc.
I bought my GTI on C&B. When I can’t remember the mods I always go back to the old auction site. I appreciate that.
So, the site is now “reporting” on other internet sites like a 12-year-old girl with gossipy stuff?
DT. Not coo. It’s beneath you. Stand on your own two feet, dude. Fuck them people, lol.
what? Dude this is an automotive journalism site and C&B is a car auction site, the two are nowhere near close to competing and you’re acting like they’re taking pot shots at the lightning site or Car and Driver for clicks. This is incredibly relevant info for the people who read here.
Have you read the other comments? It’s all bullshit hate. Predictable.
How dare a car news site report on car related news. What’s the relevance of them both being internet sites? Is that not the universal standard for…everything?
Though it would be great if they eliminated political stuff from we writers or commenters. Myself included
Car related? It’s an auction house that went bust. This is about as relevant as a dog poop channel on slack, lol.
It’s an auction house dedicated to vehicles, of which there are few, and most of them are fairly recent phenomenons. How they do can be seen as an indicator of the car collector market at large, and perhaps extrapolate to collector car values in general.
I don’t mean to talk down to you, but the site in question has, in its very name, the word “cars”. In fact, “cars” is the first word in the name. It also sells cars. And people interested in cars often visit this site.
Then if we think bit deeper on this complex and nuanced subject, I think you would have to agree that, in general, an auction house with the word “cars” it its name is more relevant to the overarching topic of “cars” than a Slack channel about canine excrement.
So to summarize:
You don’t have to click on articles you don’t want to read! I wanted to read this one, so here I am.
Phew. Thanks for that!
Yet curiously, here you are, arguing about it. Make your life better, disengage.
This isn’t covering the downfall of crypto scammers or youtube / tiktokkers.
Doug DeMuro has been around automotive blogging for a long time, and a lot of the writers here have worked with him along the way. BAT and Cars & Bids are definitely relevant to the enthusiast market, even without that connection.
That’s not the point, lol. The Autopian is above this, unless you want that slop…
It’s not slop for a lot of people here. This isn’t a story about Lady Gaga or some other famous person that is miles isolated from the readers. A lot of the people here have been reading / watching Doug since his start on the internet.
If this is the start of the downfall for BAT Lite (C&B), then it may be significant in the slowing in the enthusiast car market. That’s a market that a lot of readers here are either actively involved in or watching closely.
They can skip a lot of the pretence in covering C&B versus other sites because they, and al, of us, are pretty familiar with the back story and don’t need to be brought up to speed.
I already talked to whom matters. Thanks, though 🙂
Hey, Stoney, go fuck yourself.
Wow, pal. haha.
You do you.That sucks you are angry like that.
You haven’t actually made a point, so cosigning “Go fuck yourself.”
Aren’t you a ray of sunshine, Logan?
Thanks for the input, dude.
Not Cool
Ha! In which way?
As someone who buys cars on other internet sites, I’d kinda like to know what goes on there.
The transparency about modifications and updates is imo C&B’s biggest plus. One of my biggest gripes about BaT’s approach is they paper over major repairs, engine swaps, and modifications like they’re just an oil change.
I mean, they’ve already killed BaT’s marketshare. At this point, you’re probably listing on Dougie’s site first because you’ll get more eyeballs on your post anyway.
The lessening of auction numbers and layoffs seem to say otherwise, no?
Two different things. Layoffs are not indicative of company health, especially since it is after private equity investment. That’s their MO. Cuts costs, raise prices.
Fair on the layoffs… but the lessened number of auctions doesn’t seem like a healthy sign
BaT did over $1 billion in business last year – I don’t think C&B has killed anything.
THIS is a buyers fee
Remember when Bring A Trailer actually meant you needed to bring a trailer to collect your latest prize?
Pepperidge Farms remembers…
OK Boomer 😛
Yeah, but now BAT has sort of lost the idea of what made it great.
It’s all about flipping cars on these sites now.
It really does feel like it was that long ago…
I feel like it wasn’t, but I tend to remember decades like I used to remember years.
I used to love the weird abandoned stuff and racecars that used to show up on BAT.
Barnfinds.com is pretty close to the old BaT, but even they are starting to lean into auctions now.
It earned the new name Bring a Butler years ago. Both it and C&B got caught up in catering to people who speculate on cars like they would with land. Then C&B accepted a giant bag of private equity money, and the layoffs began.
I do miss old BaT, though it was mostly a site I liked to cruise to learn about weird old european sports cars I knew nothing about and would probably never buy.
I miss the days of BaT being only user submitted craigslist listings and things like that. My morning routine in college was to get breakfast before my early class and catch up on the BaT listings from the day before. I’ll still browse it from time to time if I’m waiting somewhere and need to kill time but it just isn’t the same
YASSSSS (trailer) QUEEN!
Bring An Enclosed Trailer (BAET), because the car probably cost more than a lot of houses.
Back when being a “car nerd” meant going to TTAC for Jack Baruth, checking out barn finds on BAT and thinking “I could totally fix that” (I couldn’t) and reading that other site for car news from Spinelli.
Nostalgia…
For a long time, I’d type thetruthaboutcars.com into a URL bar out of habit
And now it’s an alt-right shitfest
Have you seen barnfinds.com?