AI Bid Extraction
Automatic Bid Extraction: AI Reads the Offer for You
Wholesalers rarely reply with a clean number in a labeled field. A typical reply reads “18 looks good if it’s clean.” Vehicle Fair Trade reads the offer amount out of that reply and records it on the evaluation as a bid.
AI bid extraction reads incoming wholesaler texts, identifies the offer amount, and adds it to the evaluation as a bid. A human-review step confirms each amount before it is recorded, so you no longer re-key numbers from a large volume of daily messages.
What automatic bid extraction does
When a wholesaler replies to an evaluation, the text rarely resembles a form. Common replies include “18 flat”, “can do 18,5 if there’s no story”, or “pass on this one”. Vehicle Fair Trade reads each reply, finds the offer amount, and attaches it to the correct evaluation as a bid. A human-review step confirms the amount before it is recorded.
There’s a human-review gate, on purpose
The AI proposes the amount, and a person confirms it before it is recorded as a bid. This step is deliberate. A misread on a wholesale number is not a typo; it is a wrong price on a real vehicle. The system handles the tedious task of finding “18,5” in a long message, and a person makes the judgment call to confirm the offer. The reading is performed by Anthropic’s Claude. The practical result is that you do not copy numbers from message threads into fields by hand.
Why this matters once the texts pile up
This connects to the wholesale send: when you send every unit to your full list, the replies add up quickly. Across four years of use, that is approximately 11,600 offers across 29,000 texts. Re-keying each one by hand is error-prone work that quietly costs you, through mistyped numbers, offers attributed to the wrong unit, or offers missed entirely. Extracting the amount automatically keeps the live bid accurate and attached to the right vehicle.
A clean bid is also an honest record
There is a second benefit. When offers are pulled into the evaluation instead of living in someone’s phone, every bid has a history: what came in, when, and any change over time. Bids that exist only in a phone have no oversight. Extracted bids recorded on the evaluation, with an audit trail behind them, are far harder to manipulate. They also supply your statistics dashboard with reliable numbers.
When this isn’t for you
If you take only a bid or two a week, entering them by hand is fine. The automation earns its keep when the replies accumulate. The human-review step means the feature never runs fully unattended. It does not set prices for you, and that is by design.
FAQ
Does the AI record bids on its own?
No. It reads the offer amount and proposes it. A person confirms the amount before it is recorded. The human-review step is built in.
What if the wholesaler’s text is vague or weird?
It is flagged for a person rather than guessed at. The review step exists for the messages that do not parse cleanly.
What does it actually read?
The incoming SMS replies to your evaluations. It looks for the offer amount in standard dealer shorthand (“18,5”, “18 flat”, “I’m in at 18”) and pulls that number.
Where does my conversation data go?
The reply text is processed to extract the number, and the reading is performed by Anthropic’s Claude. The offers and messages themselves stay in Vehicle Fair Trade, attached to the evaluation.
Can I still enter or fix a bid by hand?
Yes. Extraction saves you the typing. You can add, correct, or remove a bid yourself at any time.