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Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Bid for your own COE


The bidding exercises are conducted from Monday noon to Wednesday 4pm on the first and third Mondays each month. Bids can be submitted through the DBS/POSB ATMs, Citibank Internet Banking facility or via OCBC and Citibank phone banking services. Remember that you need to have $10,000 in your banking account for the deposit and will also incur a banking service charge.

During the bidding exercise, you can check on the status of the bids and revise the reserve price using these banks' services, the LTA Open Bidding website (http://ocoe.lta.gov.sg/), or by calling the LTA Open Bidding Phone System at telephone number: 6362 1465.

The rest of us can watch the bidding on the One.motoring website (http://www.onemotoring.com.sg) or on Teletext (pages 521-523).

Why bid for your own COE? You are in total control over how much to pay and do not get yourself into conflict over COE rebate with the dealer. However, you should visit the showrooms of those makes that you are interested in buying so as to know the selling price, COE rebate, etc. Upon a successful bid, you have up to six months to bargain and negotiate for the best deal with either the Authorized Distributors/Dealers or Parallel Importers on the car of your choice. You should take note of which COE category (A or B) does your preferred make and model belong to bid for the right certificate.

The best recommended option is to use either the Citibank Internet Banking or the Phone Banking since you can revise your reserve bid price from the comfort of your office or home. It is certainly a pain to miss getting the COE by just a small quantum - example is that you are willing to pay $500 and put in your reserve bid price accordingly. At 3:55pm, the quota premium is bidded up to $510 and with little time left, the winning bid will not be much higher. Thus, you can raise your bid to $600 and secure your COE in the current bidding exercise rather to wait till the next exercise.

Good luck and may you win your bid!

Related posts: Cheaper to Bid?, Lucky Bid Price

5 comments:

leoman said...

I bidded for my own COE. Got it at $2693. But the caution is that not all ADs will want to sell to those with COEs. Others will not give you the full discount off the price (lost out by about $500 bucks off the car I selected).

So you would have to take the risk. But like the article said, at least you control the price, and save some money in the process.

Anonymous said...

COE is control by the dealer. There is no logic why LTA allow dealer to bid for buyer. Some PIs told me so that they can earn more in case COE drop lower.

Anonymous said...

Do you mean one might end up paying more for the intended car if using own coe as compare to buying from AD/PI with coe?

skxly said...

It is highly unlikely that you end up paying more using your own COE UNLESS you are buying one and only one make/model which no other dealer carry and the dealer knows that he can get away with a higher asking price. So don't reveal that you are definitely buying to negotiate for a fair price. You can bring along brochures from other makes to compare and thus, signal that you may just walk away if the offer is unattractive.

If you are willing to accept a showroom car, I reckon that you can save even more money.

leoman said...

Yup. If you insist on getting only one make, then the dealer may price it in such a way that his base price plus the COE may actually be higher than the price of the car packaged with the COE.

But then again, the total price that he quotes is based on the projected price of the future COE bidding. So if the next COE is very low, then the base price of the car may actually be higher.

To illustrate, lets say he wants to sell you a car at 50K. If you want to buy say with your own COE (e.g. at 5K), he agrees to sell the same car at 47K (i.e he minus only 3K off instead of your COE value of 5K). Then the total price of car to you is actually 52K (47K plus your own COE of 5K). Looks like you are worse off.

But lets say for the 50K car, the successful COE bid is only 1K. Then the base price of that car (without COE) is 49K (i.e. 50K-1K). In this case, the base price of the car packaged with COE is actually higher than what you paid for your car using your own COE.

Getting a lower base price but higher COE value is important when you want to scrap before 10 years and want to get some of the COE value back. In that sense, you may be better off paying 52K (COE at 5K) rather than 50K (COE at 1K), since the COE rebate may be higher. This again depends on which year you actually scrape your car.

Of course if you use until 10 years is up, then you definitely lose out since the COE rebate is 0 at 10 years old whether the original COE you paid is 1K or 5K.

Hopes the above makes sense.