How Carbid works

Four things, on one account. We run live auctions on used vehicles our team has inspected. We list vehicles for rent from rental businesses we have verified. We take your car to auction if you want to sell it. And we run a mobile workshop in Lahore that comes to wherever your car is.

Almost all of them, and the exceptions are labelled. Vehicles going to auction go through a 135-point physical inspection covering the engine, body, transmission, electricals and the papers, and the full report is on the listing. Sellers we have approved can publish directly without one, and those listings carry a clear 'not inspected by Carbid' notice on the card and on the page.

Open the auction you want and ask for bidding access. You send the amount shown to one of the accounts listed on that page, mobile wallet or bank transfer, and quote the reference you get back. A member of our team checks the payment arrived and approves you. It is a person looking, so it is not instant, and you are told in the app and by email either way.

Yes, and it comes back. The amount is set per auction and is shown on the listing before you ask for access. If you do not win it is refunded in full. If you win it comes off the price. Nobody can place a bid without being approved first, which is what stops an auction being run up by people who were never going to pay.

The clock extends. If a bid lands inside the final seconds of an auction, the closing time moves out again by the amount shown on that listing, and it keeps doing that until nobody bids. It means the highest bidder wins rather than the fastest connection, and it is why a Carbid auction can close a few minutes after its published time.

The lowest price the seller will accept. Bidding can go below it, but the car only sells if the highest bid reaches it. When an auction ends under the reserve we say 'reserve not met' rather than pretending it sold. Some auctions carry a 'no reserve' badge, which means the highest bid wins whatever it is.

Two ways. Many vehicles are listed at a fixed price with no auction at all, and those are at carbid.pk/cars. On a vehicle that is going to auction you can also make an offer on its page and our team decides. An offer has to beat the current bid by a set margin, and that is checked again at the moment we accept rather than when you sent it. Accepting is provisional and bidding stays open until the payment is confirmed. Once it is, the auction closes, the car is yours and everyone else's deposit is returned.

You are notified in the app and by email, and a member of our team contacts you to arrange payment and the transfer. Your deposit is adjusted against the price. Ownership transfer and the balance are settled with our team directly, because the platform does not take card payments yet.

Yes. At a live sale you register at the desk, we give you a paddle number and our staff enter your bids at the rostrum. Room bids and online bids are the same auction and the same price on the same screen, and each bid records who placed it and how, so the history explains itself afterwards.

No. Carbid handles motorcycles, scooties, rickshaws, pickups, trucks, buses and vans, tractors, heavy machinery and trailers as well as cars. The details asked for follow the vehicle: a tractor is asked for engine hours rather than a distance travelled, and a container for its length.

A fixed-price listing has the seller's asking price on it and no clock. Nobody bids against you and nothing expires, so you can take a week to think about it. An auction is timed, the price is set by whoever else turns up, and it ends at a fixed moment. Both kinds are on the same site and many fixed-price vehicles have been through the same Carbid inspection.

On a fixed-price listing, yes, once you are signed in. Sign in and the number is on the page, so you can call and arrange to see the car. Auction listings do not carry one, because on those the auction itself sets the price and a private conversation only works around it.

A phone number on a page open to the whole internet is collected by scrapers within about a week, and the person it belongs to gets the calls forever. An account is the smallest thing we can ask for that makes that not worth doing. It takes a minute and we do not charge for it.

The listing says. Where the seller has marked it negotiable you can offer below it; where they have not, the price is the price. Either way you put your offer in on the vehicle page and our team reviews it, exactly as with an auction offer. We tell you yes or no rather than leaving you waiting.

Until the seller takes it down. There is no expiry date, because a private sale finishes away from the site and nobody tells us the moment it does. If a listing is still up, ask the seller whether the car is still available before you travel to see it.

Yes, on any listing in either mode. Your question goes to Carbid rather than straight to the seller, we get the answer, and it comes back to you in your account and by email. The seller does not see who asked.

Create the listing with photos and the basics, then book the inspection. Our team inspects the vehicle, photographs it and writes the report. Once it passes you agree a reserve with us, we set the bidding rules and schedule the auction, and you are notified at every step through to the result.

It is a paid inspection, and the current price is shown on the booking form before you commit: one price if we come to you, a lower one if you bring the vehicle to one of our inspection points. The report belongs to the listing, so a buyer reads the same 135 points you paid for.

The inspection itself is usually booked for the next available day and the report is turned around in a day or two. After that the auction is scheduled with you rather than at you, because a sale nobody is watching is not much of a sale.

Only if our team has approved your account to do it, which we do for sellers and showrooms we know. Those listings are published with a plain 'not inspected by Carbid' label on the card and on the page, because the label matters more to a buyer than the badge does to a seller.

The make, model, year, colour, number plate and at least three photos. That is enforced by the system rather than by a reminder, because a half-finished listing wastes the buyer's time and gets no bids anyway.

Yes. Register your business, our team verifies it, and you get a public showroom page listing your stock plus a dense table for adding vehicles quickly rather than one photo card at a time. Verifying a business and letting it skip inspections are two separate decisions, so being verified does not by itself mean your cars go up uninspected.

Yes, and it is a different part of the site with its own listings. Pick your dates, choose whether you want a driver, and the price is worked out from the rental company's own published daily, weekly and monthly rates. You need an account, because a rental means a vehicle handed to a person for days at a time.

You book the dates and the vehicle is held. You pay the upfront to the account shown and quote the reference, our team confirms it arrived, and the booking becomes confirmed. Until it is confirmed the hold can lapse. Nothing is charged to a card on this site.

Once the booking is confirmed. Partner contact details are deliberately not on the public listing. It is not secrecy: a phone number on the page means every booking is arranged around the platform, and then nobody is accountable when a vehicle does not turn up.

Whichever the listing offers, and many offer both at different rates. The filter on the rentals page can narrow it to one or the other, along with the city, the number of seats, the vehicle type and your budget.

Lahore, city-wide. The call-out is Rs 3,000 anywhere in the city and labour carries a 30 day guarantee. It is meant for the jobs that do not need a ramp: batteries, brakes, filters, belts, diagnostics and the roadside breakdowns that would otherwise mean a tow.

Tell us whether you need somebody now, later today, or at a time you pick, and we schedule against that. Send the location with the pin on the form rather than typing an address if you are on the road, because the pin is what the technician actually navigates to.

Yes. Every workshop job has a tracking link our team sends you, and it shows the stage the job is at and who is coming, updating on its own. It does not need an account and it is not indexed by search engines.

Not yet, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. Deposits, rental upfronts and offer payments are all paid to us or to the rental company out of band, and a member of staff confirms the payment arrived before anything is marked confirmed. Card payment through the platform is planned but is not built.

One account, two modes. You pick buying or selling when you join and can switch whenever you like from the menu, and the dashboard follows the mode you are in rather than showing you both at once.

The auction terms in force at that moment, which are printed in full at the bottom of every vehicle page. Bids cannot be retracted. We version the terms, so when something material changes you are asked to read and accept again before your next bid rather than being bound by a page you saw last year.

Call or WhatsApp the number in the footer, or email support@carbid.pk. A person answers. Failures on the site are logged for our team as well, so if a page broke while you were signing up or bidding, we can usually see what happened without you having to describe it.