I have been bidding on a 2000 W (E46) BMW 323 ci Metallic blue in colour with cloth not leather. It has done 54900 miles. I didnt win the auction but now have a second chance offer meaning that I can purchase the vehicle for £8800 is this a good price? The vehicle has full BMW service history and is HPI clear. What should I look for if I decide to view the car. Are there any particular problems with this model.
Finally my current vehicle is a 1999 V Audi A3 1.8 T Sport which has covered 103,000 miles what would I be likley to achieve in a private sale?
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questions, why didnt the auction winner buy ? is the 8800 the last bid that was not influenced by the winning bidder, or is it just your top bid ?
What checking have you done on the bm ? Spoken to dealer and verified history ? (I almost bought a 5 series, but when I spoke to the dealers who serviced it they found that the milage went backwards twice in its history, and there had been a body repair that the seller had denied)
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Hi
The 8800 is the top bid. The last bid that was not influenced by the winning bidder was £8000. I will contact the seller for details of the servicing dealer to verify history
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Were there other bids apart from the abortive winner above £8k? Arguably that is your ceiling.
Go with the dealer history and then make your decision from there.
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No other bids above 8k except mine i have requested details of service history nad will go from there. Thanks for your help. Assuming the history checks out and I can get him down to say 8300 would this represet a good deal?
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How long did the second chance offer come after the auction finished? Not wishing to be overly suspicious, but could the seller be shill bidding to push the price up..but overcooked it slightly ended up winning their own auction?
This is all suposition, but you could check to see if there is any pattern in the "winning" bidders activity.
Call me paranoid, but I would want to know why the deal didn't go through originally.
MM
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If £8.8k was the winning bid, then surely you should be offered it at whatever your highest bid was.
Also, if everything turns out ok, I'd offer £8.5k as it sounds as though they are keen to sell.
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Vehicle summary
BMW 3 Series 323Ci
2.5 Petrol 2-door Coupe
5 Speed Manual Rear Wheel Drive
Year: 2000 W
Mileage: 54,000
Estimated value of your car
Part-exchange Price:
Excellent condition:
£9700
Average condition:
£8650
Below average condition:
£7560
from glasses via www.vauxhall.co.uk. Trade in value. Dont know if leather will increase this or lack of will decrease.
I would certainly go in at 8k on the basis that bidding beyond that was against a time waster. (why didnt they follow through? have you actually seen the car?) But it comes down to how much you want the car, and how good it is.
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It could be that someone put in a bid at the last minute and were a scam bidder, I had one win a car I was selling and it turned out it was someone trying the Nigerian scam thing, so I had to go to the 2nd placed bidder, there may not be anything suspect just because you were offered it in a 2nd chance auctiion.
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The seller has only actually sold 5 items, and 2 of them have got dodgy feedback. He also sold a 5 yr old C-Class last month so there might be a bit of trading going on there.
Is there a plausible excuse for the other buyer dropping out - it doesn't *look* like shill bidding, it was made pretty late in the day with not much time (on a pricy item) for other bidders to respond. However he did push the price up from £8000 to £8800, so I would have hoped to get the car for £8000.
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Use Ebay myself quite often for small items but must admit one thing I certainly wouldn't use it for is buying a car - no way am I prepared to commit any value to a vehicle before actually seeing it & meeting the owner etc.
-- personally I would give it a miss & look for one in the autotrader / local newspapers
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If you feel everything checks out offer him your highest bid price, not what the auction ended for....although if he agrees to this without any quibble that would start the alarm bells ringing for me.....
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I note the seller has another car currently for sale - so could be a trader but does selling via Ebay excuse them of their obligations as a trader?
I wouldn't touch it, why would you trust to luck on Ebay, if the car is as good/genuine as the seller says it would fly in Autotrader surely?
MM
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I am getting a bit concerned as the person who won the 323ci is also bidding on the merc the seller currently has for sale. This looks to be shill bidding. I also havent yet had a response to my request for details of service history and vin number in order to perform a HPI check (which of course I would confirm with the actual vehicle if I went to View)
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now there is a coincidence...ummm, walk away!
Mark
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Why on earth would anyone sell an 8 grand BMW on ebay?
Why on earth would anyone consider buying an 8 grand BMW on ebay?
I say, don't even think about it.
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sounds like gut instinct says dont buy it.
also sounds fishy to me. its not a rare car so worth hanging on for one that doesnt make you sweat. Also 5 sales and 2 negatives - not good!
Whatever the bargain it is it could turn out to be the most expensive mistake you ever make.
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I am getting a bit concerned as the person who won the 323ci is also bidding on the merc the seller currently has for sale. This looks to be shill bidding.
Well spotted - that wants reporting.
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..and he also bid on the Merc that was sold in June.
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If you only bid £8000 then there must have been 2 parties bidding to take the price to £8800. If one is a schill bid then the other must have dropped out. Personally I would report the seller to ebay as being in a possible schill auction ring. They will then check all of their records and if so they will eventually take action and close both accounts. In the meantime they will monitor both the seller and suspect bidder.
If someone is going to this much trouble to sell vehicles then there must be something wrong with the vehicle. My advice would be to walk away.
To reassure yourself you can always go and view the car, make an offer even lower than your £8000 due to faults (either existant or non-existant). You can do this with impunity as ebay will take no action against you as you were not the highest bidder or the second highest bidder.
Many years ago I heard a story of someone who wanted a fairly new large BMW and saw one advertised in a London paper. After phoning up about it, they brought the car to him to see it at work. It was immaculate, they agreed a keen price but it had to be paid in cash. To cut a long story short, it was a cut and shunt job. The people disappeared with £15000, the car was unroadworthy and had to be scrapped. The buy lost all his money, besides all his work mates thought he was a prat to pay that amount in cash.
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eBay must have tightened up in the last few years. I had a problem with goods not supplied (c £150 worth) and they didn't even reply to emails.
Due to persistence, there was a happy ending though.
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The seller has listed two relatively expensive cars for sale, both with no reserve and a £100 starting price.
He's either very brave or.......
I'd stick to Autotrader myself. Whilst the majority of traders on Ebay are probably honourable, these stakes are a bit too high for me.
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This is VERY DODGY.
The "winning" bidder in your auction has bid on several other cars from the same guy. Including yours I've counted at least 4. Looks very much like it's another account that the same guy (or a friend) is using to hike up eBay's automated bidding - ie... this user will bid just to get other users' automated bids to go up. Looks like this time it backfired - hence the second chance offer to you.
I'd guess you bid 8800 as an absolute max and he second-guessed you'd gone up to 9000 so he tried to get you higher, and failed. I'd walk away from this one.
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Don't walk away, run away. It's traders like this that give the motor business a bad name.
Also report him to ebay in case someone else falls for it.
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I have reported to ebay. I have now had an email from him following my request for more information. It now seems that the "full" services history only goes up to March 2002!! Glad I was suspicious as usual if something seems too good to be true it probably is. Perhaps the lesson is to not to try to buy a car you cant really afford. Thanks for all responses you have helped save me from a potential nightmare.
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Would the police be interested in this character's activities?
If I behaved in a similar manner to that alleged in this thread, would I be committing a criminal offence?
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I doubt Ebay are that bothered, it is full of dodgy scrotes like this. He hasn't done anything illegal though so the Police won't and I wouldn't expect them to do anything (rightly in my opinion).
Mark
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I'm not entirely sure where the legalities of this lie.
Lets consider an example auction where the Widget I'm going to buy is currently at £10. I put in an automated bid of £100 which means I'm prepared to pay a maximum of £100 for my Widget.
eBay's automatic bidder puts in a bid of £11 for me.
Joe Public puts in a maximum of £20.
eBay's automatic bigger puts in a bid of £20 for me. I am still winning the auction.
Joe Public puts in a maximum bid of £50.
eBay's automatic bigger puts in a bid of £50 for me. I win the auction. My widget costs me £50.
The only question here is, who is Joe Public? If he's a legitimate buyer then my £50 cost is fair enough. But in this circumstance, we suspect that our Joe Public is somehow affiliated with the seller himself - just bidding to get me to pay more. Thing is I've already said I'm willing to pay £100 so I'm legally bound to buy the item I should have had for £11.
Messy.
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Had I won the initial auction I would have purchased the vehicle (subject to it being as described when inspected) and thereby fulfilled my "contractual obligations" as a result of placing a bid on ebay. The circumstances in which I received the second chance offer prompted me to think something was a bit iffy and that is why I have been looking for other opinions.
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That has to be fraud, deception or whatever (maybe even conspiracy - a very serious offence). I guess the problem is proving it in a court of law (even if you could get the Police interested in the first place).
It's probably especially complicated by the fact that eBay's legal status is very unclear. Some people quote eBay rules and regs as if they are the law, but of course they're not. It is NOT an auction, so age old auction laws do not apply.
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My neighbour told me of a fellow vintage Rover enthusiast who went down to London to pick up a car that he had 'won' on ebay. He found himself in a desolate area [with £4,000 cash on him] in the presence of a very poor quality car and 2 even dodgier blokes. Would you be brave enough to tell them that you thought their motor wasn't quite 'up to scratch'?
The story has the ring of an urban myth, but it's enough to prevent me bidding for a car on ebay.
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"Contact the Seller: if you still have questions about the item, email the seller BEFORE placing a bid. Remember, placing a bid is a bidding agreement - meaning that once you are declared the winning bidder, you cannot later decide that you do not want the item."
Direct quote from ebay site. This would suggest that once you are out-bid/not the winning bidder, there is no contract.
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Correct, martnewts is under no obligation whatsovever to buy the car, having not won the auction.
When I sold my 525i on eBay my highest bidder dropped out due to a family crisis. I made a 2nd chance offer to the 3rd highest bidder (he'd been bidding right through so it only seemed fair - the 2nd guy just bidded right at the end) and he agreed to buy it. Came and collected, good feedback all round.
Incidentally - my 525i was a non-runner (due to my inability to remove the immobiliser) and was advertised as such. The buyer spent half an hour stripping out the immobiliser and drove it away. Very impressive.
You can't be too careful on eBay. A user's feedback is a useful tool, but it's easy to build up a good feedback portfolio by buying and selling tiny little worthless items. If anything at all seems dodgy, it probably is.
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"Contact the Seller: if you still have questions about the item, email the seller BEFORE placing a bid. Remember, placing a bid is a bidding agreement - meaning that once you are declared the winning bidder, you cannot later decide that you do not want the item." Direct quote from ebay site. This would suggest that once you are out-bid/not the winning bidder, there is no contract.
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See what I mean about people quoting eBay rules as if they are the law?
I?m not saying it?s wrong to do this ? just that it?s very unclear if anything on eBay is a legally binding contract. I don?t believe it?s been challenged yet.
Even if you?re the winning bidder, you can still (according to eBay rules) walk away if the item is ?significantly misrepresented?. OK ? who?s going to define ?significantly? as it applies to the description of a car?
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>>See what I mean about people quoting eBay rules as if they are the law?
Hence the word "suggest" ....... Hardly quoting as if the law!
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