WOMauktion.com

WOM WreckOnlineMarket GmbH runs a German residual-value exchange (Restwertbörse) from Windeckstraße 15 in Karlsruhe, where insurers, appraiser organisations, fleet operators and dealers offload accident-damaged vehicles. It started in Baden-Baden in 2005, was bought by the American salvage group Copart in 2012, and has carried a German data protection seal since 2015; listings passed 1,000 a day in 2011 and 50,000 a month by 2021, and the rebuilt WOM 2.0 platform went live in September 2020. More than 450,000 cars a year pass through, with up to 2,000 in stock daily. Nothing sits in a WOM yard: the cars stand at owners' premises and in workshops across Germany, and bidding runs in the WOM 2.0 portal at web.womauktion.com.

What you can buy

• Accident-damaged cars: lightly dented daily drivers through to declared total losses, listed from the appraiser's file with photos, a damage type and a repair-cost estimate.
• Premium and near-new vehicles: Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover and Tesla, with cars up to five years old the most sought-after. A Mercedes-AMG GT worth €92,000 undamaged sold for €64,300; a Range Rover V8 Supercharged worth €147,500 went for €40,100.
• Trucks and commercial vehicles: lorries, vans, buses, trailers and motorhomes, plus ex-fleet and leased stock.
• Motorcycles and special vehicles: two-wheelers, machines and even watercraft fall inside WOM's definition of a vehicle.
• Parts donors: heavily deformed, unrepairable cars bought by dismantlers and recyclers for spares rather than rebuild.

How the bidding works

Registration is trade-only — dealers, workshops and recyclers with a registered trade, never private buyers. You upload an ID copy, your business registration and, for EU-registered firms, a VAT ID; the account opens once those are checked and the annual registration fee from the dealer price list is paid, and a free 14-day demo account lets you view stock beforehand without bidding. Each lot has a fixed offer expiration and you can raise or cancel until then, but competing bids stay hidden and your own rank appears only 24 hours after the close; the seller gets a regional or national bid sheet within 24 hours of listing. Every bid is binding for 21 calendar days whatever rank it holds, and the owner uses those three weeks to accept one or sell nothing at all — the highest bid carries no right to the car. A multi-bid function covers several watchlist vehicles at once. Once a bid is accepted you get the purchase contract and invoice and have six working days to pay and collect; that contract runs directly between you and the owner, outside the platform.

What to check before you bid

You never see the car: WOM states outright that inspection on site is not possible, so bids rest on the appraiser's photos and text, and even the photos are not always publishable. WOM does not verify the seller's description and disclaims its accuracy, so price in damage the report understates. There is no logistics service — cars stand anywhere in Germany, listings show only the country and the leading digits of the postcode, and collection is yours to arrange. Miss the six-working-day window and storage charges start; never collect and you owe the relisting fee plus the shortfall at resale. VAT is the real trap: bids are gross figures regardless of whether the tax can be shown separately, each listing flags VAT as reclaimable yes, no or unknown, and vehicles with US registration attract customs duty and import VAT on top. WOM's affiliate WOM Service GmbH may place bids of its own, even after an auction closes; and if your company is registered abroad that affiliate can step in as interim buyer, acquiring the car and reselling it to you — so settle payment, deregistration and the tax consequences before a bid locks you in for 21 days. The platform and the service team run in German, English, Polish, Romanian and Russian.