re-online auctions....

[Twisterdog]

I bought my son a car on ebay. The car ended up to be not all we thought it was, and we traded it in a year later. However, that's my partly my fault. I went to pick the car up, and it looked a lot more "used" than it did in the pictures. I think they took the pictures when they first got done with the car (it was a heavily modified little tuner), and then put a lot of miles on it. When I mentioned this to the owner, he said, "I'm sorry. I don't want you to be disappointed. If you don't want to buy it, that's fine, we will just forget it ... no negative feedback, no hard feelings." He was very nice and fair about it, and I should have walked away. But I had driven 200 miles to get it, gotten people to work for me, had my sister come with me to drive my car home, my son was SOOOO excited, etc. so I took it anyway. Live and learn.

As far as people bidding on their own auctions ... I know that is not allowed on eBay. I don't know about other sites. Can you check the bidder's and the lister's profiles, and look for similarities in email addresses, etc?

If it's a good car and a fair price, you still get a good deal. I would not by any means, pay more than the car is worth. Don't get caught up in the heat of the bidding and wanting the car, like I did.

[carole]

Actually buying off the auction on trade me is a good way, as we can go check out the car first, hubby is a mechanical engineer and knows a lot about cars, if we find one that is really worth looking at we get our mechanic to check it over for 35 dollars, well spent, obviously we don't do that too often, only if it really seems a good one.

No i won't get caught up in the bidding, it is easily done though, but i set a limit and that is it,once it hits that we are done.