I used to have a Humvee, as some of you may recall, but had to sell it. Family medical issues. Anyhow when I saw this one ebay auction I remembered how much fun I'd had working on my truck and decided to buy another. But there were some strange aspects to this auction. First time seller, very high reserve price, two word description ("Excelent condition") great exterior pictures but no inside or engine shots, responses to repeated emails asking for more info that read like a five year old typed them. Anyhow I kept watching this auction but didn't bid. I figured no sane person would. As the end came closer I thought what the hell and sent the seller an email asking if I could bring the entire payment in person (If I bid and won) and not send him the $5000 up front as requested. Also I nicely told him his asking price was ~$10-$15 Thousand Dollars too high but that I was still thinking about it and to please let me know about the $5000 deposit. I sent that email Saturday before Noon. By Saturday evening I'd gotten no response directly, but I now see some other brave soul has bid *exactly* $1000 over asking and therefore made the sellers secret reserve price. On a single bid. The only bid. On an already way overpriced item. I see it's the bidders first time on ebay too. And his user name is gibberish. Well what a lot of coincidents. Think I'll save my money. Yikes!

Have a laugh: Ebay auction number 2448289006
Ends Sunday at Noon.

At least they'll get socked for the E-bay fees.

ROFLMAO

[url]http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2876704148&category=553[/url]

He also is selling a piece of art..  25,000 start..   5000 deposit, balance in 15 days..  no bids..

[img]http://i15.ebayimg.com/02/i/01/0b/33/01_1_s.JPG[/img]


Nice looking hummer by the way...  

I'm getting fairly cynical about the eBay automotive auctions. I'm seeing what seems to be a HELL of a lot of shill bidding and other bullshit, particularly from dealership-marketed cars. For example, there was an '89 Mercedes 420 SEL with a bad engine (supposedly just the heads were bad) being sold by a dealership in New Jersey. The car was clean and straight overall and had an opening bid of $100 and no reserve. I figured if I could get it cheap enough, it would be a good parts source for my '88 420 SEL. The car goes through the auction once, start to finish with ZERO bids. The next time it came up for auction, I placed a bid and all of a sudden it gets bid up by half-a-dozen or so bidders with zero or single feedback. I start looking at this same seller's other auctions and the SAME dickheads are bidding on EVERY single auction!!!!

You should report this crap to ebay.

I thought about it, but it seems like there are so MANY tainted auctions that they'd need to kick out 75% of the sellers. I've noticed where these Mercedes are concerned that there appears to be a large number of sellers getting regularly banned from eBay and occasionally I'll see, or someone will post about it on a Mercedes message board, a banned seller selling the same cars as before under a new identity. These guys are worse than the plague.