Trust & Safety on JDMBUYSELL™

JDMBUYSELL is a listings marketplace. We are not:

• A dealer — we don't own inventory.
• A broker — we don't negotiate prices or take a cut of the sale.
• An escrow service — money never passes through us.
• A shipper, importer, or customs agent — we don't move cars or paperwork.
• A warranty provider — we don't stand behind a vehicle's condition.

Every transaction happens directly between the buyer and the seller. We don't see your payment, we don't see your title transfer, and we are not a party to the contract.

What we do: we host the listing, route messages between buyers and sellers, verify dealer accounts where business records support it, and remove listings that breach our terms.

A "Verified dealer" badge means JDMBUYSELL confirmed a working business phone number tied to the account at the time the account was imported from our legacy platform. We are expanding the verification process — in future, the badge may also reflect business-website or business-registration checks, working business email, and platform reply-rate history. Accounts that carry the badge today were verified on the phone-number step alone.

A verification badge does not mean:

• The dealer is licensed in your jurisdiction.
• Every vehicle they list has clean title, accurate mileage, or matching VINs.
• The dealer is bonded, insured, or carries a warranty obligation.
• We have inspected any individual vehicle.
• We have audited the dealer's business registration, business website, or platform reply-rate history.

If you want stronger assurance on a specific vehicle, treat the badge as one input — not a substitute for your own due diligence on the car.

The single largest source of buyer loss on classic-car marketplaces is wire fraud — buyers send money to an account that doesn't belong to the dealer they thought they were paying. A few rules that prevent the most common variants:

• Verify the dealer's identity on a channel you initiated. Find the dealer's phone number from a source other than the email you received (e.g. the listing, the dealer's website, a public business directory) and call it back. A scammer who has compromised an email account cannot pick up the dealer's actual phone.
• Be skeptical of urgency. "Another buyer is waiting," "I need a deposit by end of day," and "the wire instructions changed at the last minute" are textbook social-engineering signals.
• Never wire a deposit to an individual's personal account for a car priced as dealer inventory. Dealers transact through business accounts.
• Use a third-party escrow service for any vehicle over a few thousand dollars. Reputable options for vehicle escrow include Escrow.com and (for some U.S. transactions) KeySavvy. JDMBUYSELL has no commercial relationship with either; use whichever your bank and the seller will accept.
• If you're paying in crypto, you have no recourse. A bank wire can sometimes be recalled. A crypto transfer cannot. Price that risk in.
• Inspection beats trust. Pay for a third-party pre-purchase inspection (PPI) before any deposit clears, even from a dealer you have done business with before.

When you click "Contact seller" on a listing:

1. Your message is sent through JDMBUYSELL and stored in your inbox at /messages/.
2. The seller is emailed a notification with the body of your message.
3. The seller can reply through the platform (their reply lands in your /messages/ inbox and your email) or directly to your email if you've shared it.
4. We retain message history so both parties — and our moderators — have a record if a dispute arises.
5. Your message is visible to the seller and to JDMBUYSELL moderators. It is not visible to other users.

We do not screen messages before they're sent, but we will review reported threads.

Use the report control on the listing itself (you need to be signed in) for the fastest route to moderation. Tell us which of these applies and we'll review within one business day:

• The car isn't actually for sale (the listing is bait or a duplicate).
• The price or specs are materially misleading.
• The seller has demanded payment outside the platform in a way that looks like a scam.
• The vehicle appears stolen or has a salvage status the listing hides.
• The seller is impersonating a real dealer.

For account-level reports (impersonation of a real dealership, suspected fraud across multiple listings), email the team via the Support Center so we can take action across every listing the account has posted.

Treat this list as two groups. Required items protect you from payment loss and fraud — seller resistance to any of these is a walk-away. Ideal items help you assess the car's condition; not all are always available for a JDM import, and where one is missing you should factor it into your risk assessment and your offer rather than treat it as automatic fraud.

Required fraud and payment-loss prevention

• Confirm the seller controls the listing. Send a question through the platform that requires an answer only the real seller would know (e.g. ask about a detail from photo 7).
• Verify the dealer on a second channel. Call a phone number you sourced independently of the seller's email — see Payment Safety above.
• Confirm title status — clean, salvage, rebuilt, or no title — and the title's jurisdiction. A car titled in one state may take weeks of paperwork to title in yours.
• Confirm the car is importable to your country before you commit money. This is your homework, not the seller's — use our Import Cost Calculator for an estimate and the documentation a customs broker will ask for.
• Read the bill of sale before you wire. "As-is" with no warranty is normal; "all sales final, no inspection contingency" is a red flag if you haven't already done a PPI.
• Use a third-party escrow service; never wire to a personal account. JDMBUYSELL doesn't process payments — payment moves directly between you and the seller. For dealer sales, a wire to the business account named on the dealer's invoice is normal; for private-party sales, use an escrow service (Escrow.com, KeySavvy for some U.S. transactions). See Payment Safety above for the longer note.

Ideal vehicle-condition diligence; factor missing items into your risk and price

• Auction sheet (for cars imported from Japan). If the car went through auction, sellers should be able to produce the JAA / USS / TAA / HAA sheet — compare grade, mileage, and noted faults against the listing. If unavailable: plenty of cars are purchased out of auction and no sheet exists; existing sheets can also be dated or imperfect. Absence is not by itself a scam signal — price the unknowns in.
• Export certificate (deregistration document — 抹消登録証明書) where the car was exported from Japan in the last few years. If unavailable: certificates for cars that have been stateside for years are often filed away and not readily accessible. Weigh availability against how recent the import was.
• Underbody, engine bay, and rear-quarter photos. Rust on Japanese cars frequently sits in the rear quarter and rocker channels — areas the seller's hero shots almost never cover. If unavailable: cars in transit or in storage may not be accessible for fresh photos. Review the listing's existing media for these areas and ask for new shots once the car has landed.
• Compression and leak-down test results for any rotary or turbo engine. If unavailable: a compression test is rarely feasible while the car is in Japan or sitting at port. Ideal pre-wire if the car is local; for a car still overseas, treat it as a check to make a condition of release rather than a pre-wire requirement.
• A third-party pre-purchase inspection (PPI). A specialist marque inspector charges $200–$500 and routinely finds issues that change the price. If unavailable: a PPI is not feasible for a car still in Japan. If the car is local and the seller refuses to allow a PPI, that is a stronger signal than not being able to organise one overseas.

Walk away if a seller resists any of the required items. Where ideal items are unavailable, weigh that against the asking price — a car with no auction sheet, no recent compression numbers, and no PPI is not automatically a scam, but it is a car you are buying with less information, and your offer should reflect that.

Because we are not a party to the sale, we cannot reverse a transaction. What we can do:

• Suspend the seller's account.
• Preserve message history as evidence.
• Help you draft the timeline to take to your bank, your local consumer-protection authority, or the FBI's IC3 (for US wire fraud across state lines).

Email the team via the Support Center with the listing URL, the dealer name, and the timeline. We typically reply within one business day.

We can't make the marketplace risk-free. Cars are sold by people, money moves between strangers, and import paperwork crosses borders. What we can do is be transparent about the limits of what verification means, route buyer and seller through tooling that leaves a paper trail, and surface the questions worth asking before you commit. Use this page as a reference; use the Support Center when you need a person.