Terms of business

Please read these terms before you bid. They explain what we do for you, what you pay and when, and your rights. When you place a bid you confirm that you have read them and agree to them. Nothing in them affects your legal rights as a consumer.

1. Who we are

Autoselecta is a trading name of Boxbox Life Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 12247285). Our registered office and trading address is 3 Beale Road, Barrow, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, IP29 5ES; cars are handed over at our premises in Cheltenham. In these terms “we”, “us” and “our” mean Boxbox Life Ltd, and “you” means the person bidding with us.

You can contact us by email at hello@autoselecta.com, on WhatsApp at +44 7908 911 247, or through our enquiry form.

2. What we do for you

We act as your agent. We find cars at auctions in Japan, bid for you through our licensed agent there, pay the auction house, export the car, ship it, clear it through customs and, in the UK, register it for you.

We are not the auction house and we do not own the cars listed on our site. Each auction is run by an independent Japanese auction house under its own rules, which apply to every bid we place. The car is bought at auction on your behalf, and we deal with it as your agent until it is delivered to you.

The descriptions, photos, auction grades and auction sheets on our site come from the auction houses and are translated by us. We take care to show them accurately, but we cannot guarantee that information supplied by an auction house is complete or correct. See section 9.

These terms are written for people buying for themselves. If you buy for a business, we may agree separate trade terms with you, and the parts of these terms that only apply to consumers (including section 11) do not apply to you.

3. Your account and approval to bid

• You must be 18 or over and give us accurate details, and keep them up to date.
• Before you can bid, we approve your account. We may ask you to confirm who you are, for example with photo ID and proof of address, and we may refuse or withdraw approval, for instance if we cannot verify you or you have not paid for an earlier car.
• You are responsible for keeping your sign-in details private and for bids made from your account.

4. Bidding

• Your maximum bid is the most you are willing to pay for the car at auction (the hammer price), in pounds. It does not include our fees, shipping, tax or the other costs in section 6. Each car shows the lowest maximum bid we will place for it.
• The yen figure. Auctions in Japan are in yen. When you confirm your bid, we convert your maximum into yen at that day’s exchange rate and show you the result. That yen figure is fixed and is the most we will bid for you. Our agent aims to win at the lowest price the auction allows, up to that figure.
• Deadline. Bids close at 9pm UK time on the evening before the auction day in Japan. Each car shows its deadline. After it, we cannot take a new bid or change one.
• Cancelling. You can cancel a bid from your account at any time before the deadline: the hold on your card is released, or a bank transfer deposit is sent back to you. After the deadline your bid may already be with our agent in Japan; contact us straight away and we will try to withdraw it, but we cannot promise to.
• More than one bid on a car. We place only one bid on each car. If more than one customer bids on the same car, we decide which bid to place and tell the others, and their deposits are released or sent back.
• We cannot promise you will win. Other bidders may bid more, the seller may not accept the highest bid, or the auction house may withdraw the car. If we cannot place your bid, or it does not win, we tell you and release the hold on your card, or send a bank transfer deposit back to you.
• A winning bid is binding. If your bid wins, the car has been bought for you and you must complete the purchase and pay what you owe under section 7. It cannot be returned to the auction.

5. Your deposit

• To bid, you pay a deposit: £2,000 for a maximum bid up to £30,000, or 10% of your maximum bid above that. The deposit is shown before you confirm.
• Up to £30,000: the deposit is held on your card, not taken. We accept Visa and Mastercard credit and debit cards; we do not accept prepaid cards, American Express or Diners Club. The hold is released if you cancel before the deadline, if we cannot place your bid, or if your bid does not win. Card holds last a limited time: if a hold is released before the auction, we will ask you to authorise it again, and if you do not, we cannot place your bid.
• Over £30,000: the deposit is paid by bank transfer, using the bank details and reference we give you when you bid, and must reach us by noon UK time on the day before the auction. We place your bid only once it has arrived. If you cancel before the deadline, if we cannot place your bid, or if your bid does not win, we send it back to the account it came from, usually within two working days. Please pay from an account in your own name. Our bank details never change: if you are sent different ones, do not pay, and contact us.
• If your bid wins, the deposit is taken (or kept, for a bank transfer) and counts towards what you owe.
• Deposits are in pounds. If your card or account is in another currency, your bank converts it at its own rate, and any charges your bank makes for a transfer are yours.

6. What you pay if you win

For a car delivered to the UK, you pay:

• The hammer price: the winning bid, converted to pounds at the exchange rate fixed when you placed your bid (so a change in the rate after that is our risk, not yours).
• Our fee: £1,500 for a hammer price under £10,000, £2,000 for a hammer price of £10,000 or more, and £3,000 for a hammer price of £100,000 or more. It is only payable if you win, and covers bidding for you, export, arranging shipping, the MOT test and UK registration.
• The auction fee: 5.5% of the hammer price, for the auction house’s and our agent’s charges in Japan.
• Shipping to a UK port, including marine insurance, worked out for your car in our import cost calculator. The rate is fixed until 3 February 2027. Unusually large vehicles are quoted separately before you bid.
• Import duty and VAT, which are set by HM Revenue & Customs, not by us. Duty is normally 10% of the car, auction fee and shipping. Import VAT is normally 20%. A car over 30 years old and unmodified may qualify as a historic vehicle, with no duty and 5% VAT. You pay the amounts HMRC actually charges, with nothing added by us.
• Delivery from our premises to your address, if you want it, at a price we agree with you. You can collect the car instead.

The costs shown on our site before you bid are estimates, worked out from these figures. Your invoice shows what you actually owe. Not included: road tax, insurance once the car is yours, and any other work you ask us to arrange.

The MOT test is part of our fee. You can choose not to have it when you bid, and the price is the same either way. Our fee covers the test itself: any work the car needs to pass it (for example lights, a rear fog light or a speedometer in miles) is not included, and is for you to arrange.

Outside the UK, we quote the cost of shipping to your country on request. Your country’s import rules, taxes, testing and registration are your responsibility. What our site says about whether a car can be imported to your country is a guide, not advice, and you should check with your local authorities before you bid.

7. Paying for your car

• When you win, we send you an invoice. The balance (everything you owe, less your deposit) is due within 5 days of the invoice, in the way the invoice sets out.
• We start exporting the car once you have paid in full.
• Import duty and VAT are payable when the car arrives. If HMRC charges a different amount from our invoice, we will invoice or refund you the difference.
• Until you have paid everything you owe, we keep the car and its documents, and it will not be released to you.

8. If you do not pay

If you have not paid the balance on time, we will remind you. If it is still unpaid 7 days after we remind you, we may end the contract, keep your deposit and sell the car.

The deposit covers the costs a failed purchase causes us. If those costs are more than the deposit, you must pay the difference: for example penalties charged by the auction house, storage, transport and any loss when we resell the car, less anything we recover. We will only claim losses we have actually suffered, and we will show you how they are worked out. We may also close your account.

9. The condition of the car

• Cars at Japanese auctions are used cars, sold as they are. Most will have some wear and marks for their age and mileage.
• The auction grade and auction sheet are the opinion of the auction house’s inspector, and the mileage is the reading the auction house records. We translate and explain them as carefully as we can, but we did not inspect the car ourselves and cannot guarantee them. Please look at every photo and the full auction sheet before you bid, and ask us if anything is unclear.
• Cars do not come with a warranty unless we say so in writing for a particular car.
• We carry out our services with reasonable care and skill. If we do not, you have legal rights against us, which these terms do not limit. Your rights about the car itself depend on its sale at auction, where we act as your agent.

10. Shipping, delivery and risk

• As a guide: export takes 7 to 14 days after payment, shipping to the UK 10 to 14 weeks, and UK registration around 4 weeks after the car clears customs. These are estimates. We will keep you updated, but we are not responsible for delays caused by things outside our control, such as shipping lines, ports, customs, the DVLA, the weather or strikes.
• The car is insured while it is shipped. If it is lost or damaged between the auction and delivery, we will claim on that insurance for you and pass you what it pays. The car is at your risk once you collect it or it is delivered to you.
• When the car is ready, you can collect it from our premises in Cheltenham or we can deliver it. Please collect it within 14 days of us telling you it is ready. After that we may charge reasonable storage, at a daily rate we will tell you in advance.

11. Your right to cancel

• You can cancel a bid for free at any time before the 9pm UK deadline, from your account or by contacting us. The hold on your card is released, or a bank transfer deposit is sent back to you.
• When you place a bid, you ask us to start our service straight away, before the usual 14-day cancellation period for contracts made online has ended. You agree that you lose the right to cancel once our bidding service is complete, which is when your bid has been placed at the auction. If it wins, the car has been bought for you and cannot be returned.
• This does not affect your rights if something goes wrong with our service (sections 9 and 12).

12. Our responsibility to you

• If we break these terms or do not use reasonable care and skill, we are responsible for loss you suffer that was foreseeable when you placed your bid. We are not responsible for loss that was not foreseeable.
• We only supply cars for private use. If you use the car for a business, we are not responsible for lost profit, lost business or business interruption.
• We are not responsible for things outside our control, including mistakes by auction houses, cars being withdrawn from an auction, failures of auction systems, delays in shipping or customs, or changes in the law or in government charges.
• Apart from the cases below, our total responsibility to you for any car is limited to the total you have paid us for it.
• Nothing in these terms limits our responsibility for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit.

13. Using our site

• The site and its content, including our text, photos we take, design, software and data, belong to us or to the people who license them to us. You may use the site to look for and bid on cars. You may not copy or republish its content, or collect data from it with automated tools, without our written permission.
• We try to keep the site available and accurate, but we do not promise that it will always be available or free of errors. We may change or suspend it.
• Auction sheet translations. Buyers approved to bid, or who have enquired about a car, can have its auction sheet translated into English on the site: the first one free, then £1 for 2 cars, paid by card. Translations are made automatically and may contain mistakes; the sheet itself is the original, and we will check anything that matters to you before you bid. The charge is not refundable once the translation has been made.
• We are not responsible for the content of other websites we link to.
• You must not misuse the site: for example by placing bids you do not intend to honour, trying to get round our checks, or interfering with how it works. We may suspend or close your account if you do.

14. Complaints

If you are unhappy with anything we have done, please tell us by email at hello@autoselecta.com or on WhatsApp. We will reply within 5 working days and try to put things right.

15. Other important terms

• We use your personal information as our privacy policy explains.
• We may update these terms. The terms that apply to a bid are the ones in force when you placed it, and we keep a record of which version you agreed to.
• If a court decides that part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales can decide disputes about them. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland, you can also bring proceedings in your local courts.