Turners Auctions plans to hold live auctions online as internet sites such as Trade Me continue to make inroads into the car sales market.

Called “Turners Live”, the service will be launched to trade customers within five weeks and rolled out across Turners’ 16 nationwide public auction sites during the next three months.

It won’t replace live auctions, but supplement them with web-based, real-time video and audio. People will be able to place bids from computers in competition with live bidders.

Chief executive Graham Roberts said the country was well covered by physical sites, Turners needed to find an alternative route to expand.

“It will increase attendances, and bums on seats is what we need and that’s what sells [cars],” he said.

Turners started looking at an online bidding option 18 months ago. Roberts denies the move is a reaction to competition from Trade Me.

In two years, the number of vehicles listed on Trade Me has grown from 5000 to more than 35,000.

Trade Me has undercut the price of traditional car auction prices by introducing cut-price, dealer-only actions.

In October, Trade Me announced the site would charge dealers $99 a car to list auctioned cars, undercutting the $350 charged by auction houses.

Trade Me claims to sell over 300 cars a day.

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Posted: 01|19|06 at 9:24 am. Filed under: Auction News.