I found a car I'm interested in but the website won't sell it to me because I'm a Japanese resident. Apparently, they only export. I have no idea why this is. So I tried to search online but all I can find are tons of export-only sites.
So I'm trying to locate the owner of the car I'm interested in but only have the location (Yamanashi). Any ideas for how to proceed?
Thanks!
by enspan
3 comments
Sounds like you’re dealing with a consignment exporter rather than a car dealer?
The most likely reason for the problem is the owner didn’t pay the correct import taxes on the vehicle importing it for personal use rather than resale so there is a hefty tax bill waiting if the vehicle is resold within a certain time frame (I want to say 3 years). So to avoid that (and the corresponding headaches) the consigner is only willing to act as the agent for export.
An acquaintance in Yamanashi ran into this while trying to help some military folks sell a motorcycle they’d brought in and didn’t bother to disclose all the details of the import. He sold the bike the new owner got a tax bill for some huge percentage of the sale (way more than his fee) and then he was dealing with trying to just break even and not get sued to get his customer the money for the taxes he didn’t know would be owed and the money back to cover the extra expenses.
Are you using some kind of search engine like BeForward?
There’s a lot of exporters who just repost dealer listings from Goonet. When you reach out to them, you’re talking to the re-seller, not the dealer.
What you need to do is probably find the car Goonet and reach out to the dealer directly.
[removed]