Be Careful Out There

I am casually looking for a used 911 and ocassionally visit BAT and C&B. I merely follow these platforms for the comments because there is always something to learn. One thing I have leraned is that at this point in time, these platforms also attract a lot of scamsters and thesse sites are doing little to protect the buyers.

One of the things I have been noticing lately is shill bidders. A group of folks who enter into not an arms-length transaction to bid up the price of the car. Sometimes it is the same person but it could be people colluding together. The fix is simple like the one implemented by SOMA - require a drivers license to be scanned before you are allowed to bid. This will minimize, not eliminate, the unetihical behavior on these platforms.

Today I noticed this 911 for sale - comments are worth a read.

https://carsandbids.com/auctions/3OlYoA5v/2018-porsche-911-carrera-s-coupe?c=all

It is possible that the seller, Manny, was not even employed by the dealer he claimed to have worked for. He many not even have had possession of the car he was selling. The same car was also listed on the dealer's website - I thought that these platforms prohibited this behavior (but no one from C&B even checked this to be true - something a simple search would have surfaced). Perhaps, Manny would sell this car on C&B, use a shill bidder to bid it up and then buy the car from the actual dealer to flip. I guess, this all came falling down this afternoon. C&B has done nothing or stated nothing as of this point, but Manny the seller is gone. His account does not exist.

Scamsters are everywhere and you have to do you DD. Don't rely on the folks working for these auction sites to watch out for you.

Also, recently there was a shill bid busted by the community at BAT, for a Corvette. These platforms need to vet every single buyer otherwise it just becomes a free for all. Oh, at least EBAY does have some protetions in place.

Be careful out there