Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

I am about to buy and import from Japan, some questions I would like to throw out there before I commit to anything. Is it necessary to use a custom broker on the Canadian end of the transaction( time is not an issue )? Second question, has anyone had dealings with tradecarview.com? Any comments would be welcome.

mitsubill wrote:I am about to buy and import from Japan, some questions I would like to throw out there before I commit to anything. Is it necessary to use a custom broker on the Canadian end of the transaction( time is not an issue )? Second question, has anyone had dealings with tradecarview.com? Any comments would be welcome.

The short answer is no, you do not need a broker. I did it myself. You will have to go downtown to do the paperwork though.

tradecarview is a scam

It is illegal here for vehicle dealers/resellers to 'bait & switch', however this law does not apply in Japan. Tradecarview is notorious for doing this.

You pay a deposit for a vehicle. Send more money. End up receiving a different vehicle. No recourse and you may end up with the wrong paperwork that results is you having no vehicle.

use a registered and well known exporter. there are a few on this forum but your best bet is to go to here : ivoac.ca

90% of Trade car View works like this:

Buy car at auction for.
Store for 30 for free at the Port.
Hope to sell it to Someone in Canada during that 30 day free storage..
if it doesnt sell send back to auction.
Repeat..

I wouldnt say its a full scam, cause you can and will get the car you see (In my experience) I like to use it cause you can offer low ball offers, and sometimes you will get your car for cheap cause they would rather sell it then take the risk of loosing big at the car auctions..

However best to go with a good exporter..

check out www.jdmvip.com for reviews/etc about exporters and lots of JDM info.

also we have lots of walk through for doing customs yourself.

Thanks for the replies, having been following the auctions for the past weeks it would appear that there is a lot of units placed on auction, not sold then placed on auction again. I am also finding that the export agents are not that forth coming with much info(inland shipping costs for example),want the deposit up front before they say too much, maybe been burned by flakes too often

I've bought two vehicles through tradecarview. First one a 4wd diesel Toyota estima Lucida for $800. Loved that car, but it met an untimely end. it had a lot of rust in undercarriage (no pics sent of that). 116k mileage on it and a little underpowered.

The second was a delica l400 exceed which I got for $1700. Still driving it now. I've spent maybe 3-4k on it since. The paint on the roof is bad (acid rain and no pics?) and it had 170k on it. I use it for work on the island where I live.

So my advice, ask lots of questions and get lots of pics. You are going to deal with the auto dealers, not tradecarview, they don't or won't answer emails or their mailbox is usually full. Bottom line, it's a crapshoot. I looked at it this way, I can walk away from $3k (price & shipping)if it was a disaster.

What I am finding is that at least with the dealers on Tradecarview they will give a definite price and not try to baffle with BS, with added costs. No matter where you buy a used car it looks like it is as you say "a crapshoot"

I have my own guy in Japan, what are you looking for?