Difficulties of transportation: How not to lose money when buying a car in Europe

In the con­di­tions of an unsta­ble sit­u­a­tion in the car mar­ket, it has become more dif­fi­cult to buy a cov­et­ed for­eign car. Auto expert Denis Ere­menko in an exclu­sive inter­view shared with 5‑tv.ruwhat you need to know before buy­ing a car from Euro­pean coun­tries.

Denis Ere­menko
Expert in car selec­tion, on the mar­ket since 2007

How to choose a car from the European Union

The eas­i­est option is to con­tact sell­ers at a car selec­tion com­pa­ny that sells and imports for­eign cars into Rus­sia. Most often they coop­er­ate with inter­me­di­aries who over­take cars.

“These coun­tries are a kind of finan­cial trans­fer. Buy­ers trans­fer mon­ey for a car to the details of inter­me­di­aries, and they trans­fer mon­ey to the sell­er in Europe. Today in these coun­tries there are no restric­tions on the sale of cars, for exam­ple, to Arme­nia, Kaza­khstan, Ger­many”, — explained the auto­ex­pert.

Here is a step-by-step guide on the eas­i­est way to buy a car from a Euro­pean coun­try.

1. Find the car you are inter­est­ed in on the aggre­ga­tor site. In Ger­many, this is Mobile.de, an ana­logue of Avto.ru. You can sort search results by cost and oth­er fil­ters.
2. Con­tact the sell­er and arrange pay­ment via trans­fer from a euro account or through an inter­me­di­ary com­pa­ny.
3. Pay the coun­try’s manda­to­ry VAT.
4. Agree on deliv­ery through an inter­me­di­ary com­pa­ny and check the legal­i­ty of the doc­u­ments being drawn up.

The sell­er needs to reg­is­ter the car for a cit­i­zen of the coun­try in which the inter­me­di­ary oper­ates. For some time, the vehi­cle will be reg­is­tered to the inter­me­di­ate own­er who is engaged in trans­porta­tion. After cus­toms clear­ance in a friend­ly coun­try, the car can be import­ed into Rus­sia.

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What cars come from Europe

The range of sup­plied machines depends pri­mar­i­ly on the specifics of the mar­ket. There­fore, it is nec­es­sary to choose a car based on both your needs and the specifics of the mar­ket.

“We trans­port cars from Ger­many, from Hol­land, from Bel­gium. In prin­ci­ple, you can bring a car from any EU coun­try. But, in my opin­ion, Ger­many has the best cars both in terms of con­di­tion and equip­ment, respec­tive­ly, and in terms of cost.”, — said the auto expert.

• In Europe, you can buy most­ly either diesel carsor “trains”. It’s either “uni­ver­sal“or crossover Ger­man brand.
• Can be brought from Asia kore­an brand cars. A strik­ing exam­ple is Hyundai;
• It is prof­itable to bring brand cars from the UAE Mit­subishi, Toy­ota. These machines are almost impos­si­ble to find in Europe because they are sold in sin­gle copies.

Difficulties in buying a car from Germany and other EU countries

The main dif­fi­cul­ty is pay­ing for the car. If you con­tact the sell­ing com­pa­ny direct­ly, then most like­ly they will refuse to sell the car due to the inabil­i­ty to accept pay­ment. Accord­ing to Ger­man unspo­ken laws, sell­ers today are pro­hib­it­ed from accept­ing pay­ments from Rus­sia — even if you trans­fer mon­ey to them using Ger­man bank details, they are oblig­ed to return the funds to you.

How to bring a car to the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion from Belarus, Arme­nia and Kaza­khstan, and how much does it cost

But you can still buy a car in Europe through inter­me­di­ary firms locat­ed in third coun­tries. It:

• Belarus;
• Lithua­nia;
• Poland;
• Kaza­khstan;
• Arme­nia.

Today you can offi­cial­ly send mon­ey abroad by SWIFT trans­fer from your euro account. There are a num­ber of banks through which you can pay for the car. To do this, you need to open an account in euros and deposit funds there (even rubles can be used). This mon­ey can be con­vert­ed through the inter­nal sys­tems of the bank or through a bro­ker­age set­tle­ment and offi­cial­ly sent abroad.

It should be borne in mind that the cost of trans­port­ing a car will increase. Buy­ing a car abroad, the buy­er faces risks, for exam­ple:

• The com­plex­i­ty of the return of VAT (val­ue added tax — Ed.). Most cars in Europe have VAT — net val­ue and gross val­ue. Even if you agree with a Russ­ian-speak­ing sell­er and trans­fer the gross val­ue to him there, it will be prob­lem­at­ic to return VAT due to the com­plex­i­ty of the trans­la­tion.
• Prob­lems with logis­tics. Long waits, high rates great­ly affect the deliv­ery time: if the dead­line reach­es two months, the buy­er often refus­es to pur­chase.
• Inci­dents dur­ing trans­porta­tion and oth­er risks, such as acci­dents.

Auto­ex­pert warns: before con­clud­ing a deal to buy a car, care­ful­ly check the sell­er and the pro­posed vehi­cle. Oth­er­wise, for the mon­ey you risk get­ting a “pig in a poke.”