Bidding & Process

A majority of Insurance Auctions, Salvage Auctions, and Auction Pool companies can sell only to a limited number of licensed and registered Salvage Dismantlers and Dealers. We possess all proper licenses and registrations and hence can acquire any vehicle for you anywhere in the country.

The actual live auction for these vehicles are not open to public, so unfortunately there is no way for you to participate. But you can participate in Preliminary Bidding. We will collect your bids and then present them during the live auction if you are the in-house high bidder. Many of our auctions are for bulk purchases and through agents and brokers so the auction price on an individual vehicle is not the same as or in any way identical to the highest in-house bid.

Bid Submission

Our model is COMPLETELY TRANSPARENT. You should enter your ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM bid/offer. You are submitting a PROXY bid/offer. When we bid with the insurance company or at the live auction, we will try to buy the vehicle as inexpensively as possible, and will only bid incrementally against other buyers up to your maximum amount. Sometimes even though we are the highest bidder, insurance auctions and companies have a RESERVE price. This means they have the right to reject a bid even though it is the highest offer. They have the option of re-auctioning the vehicle or we have the option of increasing the bid. We also work out bulk package deals to acquire other vehicles at lower costs.

• Your total purchase price will consist, in part, of the actual sale price at the auction, as well as all applicable auction fees and IAI service fees. Please use our 'Fee Calculator' to obtain a cost estimate. Your bid represents your total liability before addition of fees as above. Because of our special relationships in the industry, there is no warranty or guarantee that your final bid will be equal to the winning auction amount. We often are required to pay administrative fees, broker fees, bulk sales fees, and agent costs in order to obtain the best prices. We do insure, however, that you will never pay more than your approved maximum bid before the addition of auction and service fees.
• Most Insurance Auctions have the preliminary bidding option available to its buyers. Our system will automatically poll them and update the current auction price on our site. However, during the live auction the bidding usually goes much higher. Please don't rely heavily on the current auction price and place your ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM bid, because once the auction ends, we will not be able to increase your bid.

If a customer has the highest offer at the end of the Elite Auto Auctions offer acceptance period, the status of the offer will be determined and updated at 10:00 AM (EST) (2 hours after auction closing). It is the customer's responsibility to check his e-mail and invoice by selecting the 'My Account' menu and then the 'My Offers' option. The customer must then guarantee his offer with a security deposit of $600.00 or 10% of their highest offer, whichever is greater. In some case it might be $1000 or 20% if the vehicle begins with the inventory number that has the letter 'i' in front of it.

Next, one of our authorized affiliate dealers, on your behalf, presents the offer to the Insurance Company (closed to the general public). If the offer is accepted by the Insurance Company, our authorized affiliate dealer acquires the vehicle for the customer.

Up until the Elite Auto Auctions acceptance period expires, we notify customers when they have been outbid. We recommend customers to regularly check their offer's status in the 'My Offers' (or their e-mail) page before the acceptance period expires.

If an offer is received within the last 5 minutes (7:55AM - 8:00AM EST) of the listing deadline on our site, the offer end time is automatically extended for an additional 5 minutes. This feature has been implemented to allow the customer previously with the highest offer to submit a counter-offer. This counter-offer will extend each time a bid is made until the final closing time (9:00AM) is reached.

We encourage each of our customers to submit his highest offer from the beginning. Doing so will increase the affiliated dealer's chances of acquiring the vehicle for the customer and will help mitigate further last-minute offer increases.

All customers for whom Elite Auto Auctions is able to acquire vehicles for, will receive notification by telephone before 5:30PM (EST) the next business day after the auction has ended. Customers whose offers have been rejected by the Insurance Company will receive notification via e-mail.

Even though a customer may hold the highest eligible offer on our site, the Insurance Company may have received and accepted a higher offer from another authorized party. Our system automatically checks for these types of statuses. As soon as we learn the customer's offer is not the highest at the Insurance Company, we alert the customer via e-mail. The customer has the opportunity to increase his offer by going to 'My Account', then selecting 'My Offers', and submitting a new offer by selecting 'Send Offer'. Once the offer is presented to Insurance Company by one of our affiliated dealers, the offer cannot be changed or withdrawn.

Once you are the highest bidder at the end of an offer period and your account is funded our system will submit your offer as a preliminary bid to the Insurance Auction. You will be notified the following morning via the My Offers section if your offer was rejected.

If it is rejected, one of our associates will contact you via telephone to offer you the chance to submit a higher offer. Your offer will be accepted verbally. However you must email our office a revised offer for the item number for Elite Auto Auctions to submit once again. If one of our associates does not contact you, please call our office or email us via the contact us section of the site. We cannot submit offers after 12 PM (EST), so it is important we discuss your outbid offer before this allotted time.

If you do not tender full payment after your offer has been finalized and your vehicle has been acquired, your 10% deposit will be forfeited and your account will be closed. There is also a $100 processing fee for this transaction. In other words, by winning a vehicle and then defaulting on payment, you will be charged $600 dollars or 10% of your bid, whichever is greater. If you are placing bids on vehicles with the stock number 'i' or 'm' in front of them we are accepting $1000 deposits or 20% whichever is greater. Please do not bid on 'i' or 'm' vehicles if you do not have funds readily available or are unsure. The insurance companies tend to be very strict with these particular vehicles and do not allow us to retract our offers. WE STRONGLY SUGGEST NOT TO FUND YOUR ACCOUNT, PLACE OFFERS, AND THEN DEFAULT ON PAYMENT OF A VEHICLE. Our company does not have the liberty to place offers with the insurance companies and then back out without incurring any penalties. We have 48 hours to pay for a vehicle.

Some international customers are charged a wire transfer fee by an intermediary bank, in addition to the wire transfer fee charged by the originating bank. Please keep this fact in mind when wiring funds.