Terms & Conditions

Zen Car Auction ("ZCA") is a business-to-business platform for licensed vehicle importers and dealers. Accounts are held by companies, not by individuals; every account is registered to a company and operated by one or more named logins belonging to that company.

You are responsible for holding whatever import licences, registrations and permits your destination country requires, and for confirming that a vehicle may lawfully be imported there before you bid on it. ZCA does not verify your import eligibility on your behalf.

You are responsible for everything done under your logins, including bids placed by your colleagues. Where your company enables internal approval, a bid or deposit claim from a login you have restricted is held until another login at your company releases it — the release is your company's decision, not ZCA's.

Keep your credentials confidential. Sign-in is protected by two-factor authentication and by a limit on how many devices may be signed in at once; both exist to protect your balance and neither may be shared or circumvented.

Registering an account does not open the auction stock. Your account becomes a trading account once ZCA receives your first deposit, and the minimum first deposit is ¥100,000.

A deposit is not a fee and is not ZCA's money. It stays your balance: it is what your bid limit is calculated from, it secures the bids you place, it pays the invoices you accept, and any part of it you have not committed can be withdrawn to your registered bank account.

Higher tiers — Silver, Gold and Diamond — are earned by buying cars, not by depositing more. Buying 10, 30 or 100 cars in a calendar month earns Silver, Gold or Diamond respectively, held for the rest of that month and the month after. A car counts once your payment for it is received in full.

If a tier's monthly threshold is not met again, your account returns to the level your deposit supports. Tiers set by ZCA by agreement are not affected by this.

Your bid limit is your balance with ZCA multiplied by your tier's factor: 5× on Dealer Basic and Silver, 6× on Gold, 7× on Diamond. It is a hard cap — a bid above it is refused when you place it, not adjusted downwards.

Because the limit moves with your balance, it falls when you pay an invoice and rises when you deposit. ZCA may also agree an individual limit with your company, which then applies instead of the calculated one, in either direction.

Placing a bid holds a security deposit out of your available balance for as long as the bid is live. The share held is the inverse of your tier's factor — 20% on Silver, 16.67% on Gold, 14.29% on Diamond — subject to a minimum of ¥100,000 per bid. On most lots the minimum is what applies.

The held amount is returned in full if your bid loses, or if the bid is cancelled or refused inside your own company. If your bid wins, the held amount is applied to the invoice for that car rather than returned.

Changes to limits, rates and the minimum apply to bids placed after the change. A bid already placed is not re-priced.

Each bid you submit costs ¥1,000, charged when the bid is placed. This pays for relaying your bid to the auction and is separate from the security deposit above.

The fee is charged whether or not you win — a bid that loses was still relayed. It is refunded only where the bid never reaches the auction because it was refused inside your own company.

Free-bid credits granted with your plan or earned by buying cars are used before your balance is charged. A bid paid for with a credit is not charged again if the bid loses, and a credit spent on a bid your company then refuses is not returned.

A successful bid is binding. Once the auction records your bid as won you are committed to buying that vehicle at the hammer price, and ZCA proceeds to pay the auction house on your behalf.

ZCA then issues an FOB invoice covering the hammer price, auction house fees, export handling, domestic transport to the export yard, ZCA's service fee, consumption tax where it applies, and any documented costs specific to that vehicle. The estimates shown before you bid are estimates: the invoice is the amount payable.

Payment is due 3 days from the date the invoice is issued. Your security deposit for that bid is credited against it; the remainder is payable by bank transfer or from your available balance.

Vehicles are shipped once payment has cleared in full. Title and export documents are released to you against full payment, not against a shipping booking.

If an invoice is not paid by its due date, a delay fee accrues for every further 3 days it remains unpaid. The rate depends on the hammer price of the vehicle concerned and is charged per vehicle, not across your account:

Delay fees are charged against your balance and are collected before export documents are released. They continue to accrue until the invoice is paid or the vehicle is sold off.

If an invoice remains unpaid for 60 days, ZCA may sell the vehicle to another buyer. In that case the security deposit held for the bid is forfeited, and any shortfall between the proceeds and what you owed remains payable. Any surplus is returned to your balance.

Repeatedly failing to pay may also result in your bidding being suspended.

If, after winning, you find that a vehicle cannot be imported to your destination — a regulation you were not aware of, a change at your end, or any other reason — tell ZCA as soon as you know. You are not obliged to keep a car you cannot lawfully receive.

ZCA will confirm the terms of reselling it: the fees already incurred, and the expected profit or loss against what you committed to pay. You then have 3 days to confirm or withdraw the request. Reselling only goes ahead once you have confirmed it — ZCA cannot confirm it for you.

On completion, the invoice for that vehicle is voided, the remaining security deposit is released, and the actual profit or loss on the resale is settled against your balance. A loss is a debt you owe; a profit is credited to you.

This does not remove your obligation to pay while the request is open. Paying the invoice remains available to you at any point, and the delay fees above continue to apply until the branch is settled.

There is no subscription for an active dealer. If your company buys no car for 60 days, a monthly access fee of ¥5,000 per login becomes payable and is charged to your company's balance on the first day of each month.

The first 3 months after your account is activated are free of this fee.

The fee is per login, charged from one company balance — four idle logins is four charges. It stops as soon as you buy a car again. Access-fee credits included with your plan are used before your balance is charged.

Bidding does not count as activity for this purpose. The fee is about buying, not about taking part.

Refundable amounts — vehicle tax already paid, recycling deposits, and any overpayment on an invoice — are credited to your balance once the underlying refund is confirmed. These are processed and entered by ZCA staff rather than calculated automatically, so they appear on your statement when they are confirmed rather than at export.

Cashback of 1%, 2% or 3% of your paid invoice total is credited on the fifth day of the following month for Silver, Gold and Diamond accounts respectively, at the tier your company held during the month being paid for.

You may withdraw any part of your available balance to the bank account registered to your company. Withdrawals require a fresh two-factor code at the time of the request, approval by a second login at your company where one exists, and approval by ZCA. Changing your registered bank details starts a 24-hour hold on withdrawals and notifies your account owner.

Refunds and payouts are made by bank transfer to your company's registered account only. ZCA does not refund to payment cards or to third-party payment services, and does not pay out to an account in another name.

Auction listings, inspection sheets, photographs, price history and market statistics on the platform originate from Japan's wholesale auction network and are provided to help you decide what to bid. They are supplied as they are received. Inspection grades and sheet comments are the opinion of the inspector at the auction house, not a warranty by ZCA, and a vehicle is sold in the condition it is in.

Estimated costs, average selling prices and price bands are calculated from historical data and from the fee rates in force. They are estimates and do not commit ZCA to a price.

Access to this data is for your company's own purchasing decisions. You may not republish it, resell it, provide it to a third party, or extract it in bulk by automated means.

ZCA may change the platform, the fee rates and these terms. Material changes to fees are announced before they take effect and apply to bids placed and invoices issued afterwards.

ZCA is not liable for losses arising from auction house error, transport or shipping delay, customs or regulatory action in your destination country, or events outside its reasonable control. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited.