My Brother and I have recently been looking for used car on Ebay. He wanted a Mark 2 Mondeo.
We found that for all the cars we looked at they only attracted very low bids. Only one met it's reserve price and was sold. It seems that bidders will only bid very low money because they aren't prepared/bothered to do a proper inspection on the car they are about to bid on. Mind you, frankly, who can blame them! You might have to travel a fair distance to inspect and test a car that, in the end, you might not end up as the winning bidder for! That's why people only offer low money.
I think it could just work out if you were lucky enough to find a car on Ebay within, say, 10 miles. You could easily go round, test and inspect the car and then, provided everything was OK, make a bid higher than all those who hadn't inspected the car, and win. That's the only situation when I can see buying a car on Ebay working.
Oh, and by the way, my Brother has now bought a car, bought last Friday out of the local paper. It's a very nice one, too!
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But when you buy a car out of the autotrader you dont get details on the vendors past deals. So on ebay cars then should cost the same as the trader, or more. And that mondeo price is just plain silly.
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Ben,
Yes, I agree, the price bid for that Mondeo is just silly, and I suspect soemone hasn't done their research properly!
Mind you, when you see the name of the currently winning bidder I guess you could possibly say that says it all!
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I've looked at spares for the Landrover and they seem to go for silly money.
If you could be bothered you could buy an item new then put it on E-Bay and sell for a huge profit!
There is a chap who sell waterproofing kits for Landrover distributers. They consist of a rubber glove with the finger tips cut off and 5 tie-wraps!
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A study by Harvard which related seller's ratings with the prices achieved against other sellers for similar products revealed that a flawless rating produced an avge. 7.5% price premium for the seller.
This was across all items not just cars of course
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Very suspicious that the Mondeo's high bidder has been a customer of the seller in 5 of his 6 last transactions on Ebay. In all previous cases, he bought model cars. They are either one and the same person, or related or now friends through their Ebay transactions and have artificially hyped the Mondeo price but overcooked it somewhat!
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Very suspicious that the Mondeo's high bidder has been a customer of the seller in 5 of his 6 last transactions on Ebay. In all previous cases, he bought model cars. They are either one and the same person, or related or now friends through their Ebay transactions and have artificially hyped the Mondeo price but overcooked it somewhat!
An alternative to going down the launderette perhaps? :-)
Chad.
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Can anyone tell me what the overpriced Mondeo is? (Age/mileage/history/condition/spec if possible). Just about everything is work friendly except eBay.
Oh and as for Chad's suggestion - why do it on one ID when you can do it on several, meaning less risk if one party is ever caught?
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Can anyone tell me what the overpriced Mondeo is?
David,
Description: Ford Mondeo 2.0 LX 5 Door Hatch, 2000 'X' Reg,
Metallic State Blue, Genuine miles of 53633.
Mot until September 2004, Tax until end of May 2004.
Standard Features: Power Steering, CD Player, Air Conditioning, Traction Control, Three Rear Headrests, Electric Front Windows & Mirrors, Front Driving/Fog Lamps, Heated Windscreen, Remote Central Locking.
Used by my family for back and fore school, No pets, No smoking in car. Had two new tyres on front for last MOT. HAS A SCRATCH ALONG THE CORNER OF THE FRONT BUMPER (drivers side).
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Its not helped by the fact that many sellers just regard ebay as an advertising medium, and encourage bidders to come and see the car/strike a deal. Any bids for the car will then be cancelled and the auction terminated.
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Indeed i think the auction may have been run up by friend of the seller. It was just one example, i should of chosen my examples better, but i do think there are a significant number of cars on there making top money. Looks like a good place to try if you have no luck with Autotrader.
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Having bid on various items on ebay, not cars though, I have suspected sellers of using friends to submit bids which up the price.
If you are determined to win an item, it seems to be essential to be online when the auction is closing, and be ready to bid in the last few seconds, otherwise you are almost certain to be outbid.
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Auction sniping is the way forward - submit your bid at a pre-arranged time, up to a pre-arranged limit without actually having your computer switched on.
Matthew Kelly
No, not that one.
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The Ebay auction of the Mondeo has now closed.
The "bidding" went as follows:
Starting: £4,000
Bid 1: £4,100
Bid 2: £4,200
Bid 3: £5,250
Bid 4: £5,350
Bids 1,2, and 4 were all submitted by the same person. I've never seen anything like it! A put-up job, no doubt!
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So vendor will now report eventual purchaser for non-payment. He'll email underbidder and say that 'purchaser' has defaulted, is underbidder interested in the car. Poor old underbidder will say yes, and will go to buy car for grossly overinflated price.
Fascinating story - it may have not been what you originally wanted to illustrate, but it's been a real eye-opener.
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Just apply the same rules as bidding at a car auction, set a limit and stick to it.
IIRC when I first discovered e-bay two years ago there were around 500 cars for sale at any one time, now it is ten times that number at least.
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I went to see a Lexus that had been advertised on Ebay. For around the price of a tiny ad in Autotrader, he'd been able to advertise it with about twenty high quality photos and an A4 sheet of description - He received many more calls from the eBay ad than from Autotrader.
For an advertiser, it's fantastic value. For a buyer, a good ad with plenty of good photos gives you more hope that the journey won't be wasted.
See it as another place for car ads, use the same method of buying as you would otherwise (i.e. see the car before you buy), and you'll not go wrong.
V
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WOW. I thought I had a suspicous mind, but the conspiracy theory is of JFK proportions.
This guy has a 100% satisfied customer record. It seems this is made up of selling toys and like many ebay sellers he has individual buyers who keep coming back for more.
I do something similar with a seller I trust. I have his items in my favourites and keep taking a look.
My guess is that the buyer in this case saw the car when he was looking for toys and thought why not buy from someone he trusts.
Consecutive bids in the history are nothing to worry about.
If I bid 1000 when current highest is 500, my bid of 510 is top, if someone comes along and bids 700, a new auto bid of 710 from me is top. If someone comes along and bids 1100 they go top and I get an email warning me I've been outbid allowing me to increase my bid.
Scepticism is healthy but I try and avoid being cynical.
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I use sniping software on ebay.. and if someone wqants a car and the current bid is say £500 and they bid £5,000 then their bid will automatically be raised so it is in advance of the opposing bid (by whatever the bid increment is) - until they either win or someone tops their £5,000 bid.
Hence what appears to be multiple bids...by the same person.
Sniping enables you to do that within 10 seconds of the auction closing time - great if you don't want to satrt a bidding war.
As a buyer I never bid until the last 10 seconds.. I do not want to raise the price.
As a seller I want everyone to start bidding furiously as soon as possible:-)
madf
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got any links for this software?
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For anything worth more than about £20, I almost always use a sniping programme on Ebay as I'm sure plenty of people do. My choice is www.bidnapper.com but a quick Google will reveal a few more.
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