I don't mean to hurt feelings here, but I am getting ready to I am quite sure. I am really passionate about this.
I am a small (relatively speaking) Independent car dealer. We sell between 300 and 400 units per year. We have employees which we pay well. We have a nice facility which we pay a lot of money to occupy. We have payroll taxes, offer some benefits, have expensive insurance premiums, and do all of the things that an employer and community supporter should do. In my small market, there are 3 franchise dealerships and 4 Independent dealers that are operating as actual car dealerships. In my small market, there are 25 licensed dealers. That means that there are 18 dealers that sell a couple a month, don't have employees, don't have expenses, don't have benefits, don't own or lease nice facilities, don't support the community, and basically just take 4 or 5 monthly deals from the 7 of us that are trying to make the industry better and do things right.
I would be willing to bet that if these auction houses you are talking about would throw their transactional headaches (pain in the ass transactions) into a pile, the majority of the headaches come from dealers that are buying less than 12 units per year. I don't blame them one bit for wanting to charge a premium to people that don't buy much from them. I also don't blame them one bit for wanting to offer a lower cost to people that do more business with them.
I am so fucking fed up with the micro sized dealers sneaking customers into the auctions and driving prices up for the rest of us. In my state, the barrier for entry into the retail automobile business is too low. We just had the cost of our dealer license double a couple years ago, and I wish it had quadrupled to drive some of these guys out of the business.
I am all for free enterprise and I understand that we all have to start somewhere. However, I don't expect the same buying power that a dealer selling 1,000 units a year has and I don't believe a dealer selling 1/10th of what I sell should have the same buying power as me. The easiest solution to the IAA/Copart issue is to buy more than 12 units per year.