The latest auction pitfall, disruptive bidders

No, I'm not talking about shills. A shill works for the house. These people seem to do it either deliberately to disrupt online gun buying, or for perverse enjoyment. Here is what they do.

An auction company puts on a sale with lots of firearms and also has the sale active on Proxibid, Hibid, or some similar facilitator. The bad actor signs up with the facilitator and proceeds to place large pre-bids on lots of guns. Come the live day of the auction, their pre-bids often win. At this point the facilitator passes the buyer info to the auction house who finds in a few days that they have a non-paying bidder who doesn't answer a phone or email. This is reported to the facilitator who probably deletes the account with that username and forgets all about it. Come another auction, and this joker is back. New username, but sometimes all the other details are the same. It seems that the facilitator sites are not checking against a banned list.

What is the auction house to do? One place is now selling to the second highest bidder once they see that the "winning" bidder is a repeat non-payer. Anybody see the potential catch? There is one, because it got me this week.

I had an electronic pre-bid in for a gun and on Monday I found I was outbid. There were multiple examples of the same gun in the auction as it seems the sale is likely clearing a closed down business. I tried more pre-bids on other similar guns and was told "Outbid" immediately by the system. I did note that on most I had been outbid by the same user*. OK, maybe another dealer with deep pockets looking to get stock. Therefore, I saw no point in spending half the day watching the auction, so i got on with some work about the house. For grins, I checked the auction results in the evening...to discover I had "bought" three guns. WTH??? Yep, the auction house had voided the bids from the dodgy bidders and made me the "winner" based on my pre-bids. BUT, I had only made those pre-bids on the basis of being outbid on the first example and having tried to buy others.

The auction house and me are still trying to sort out this mess, and I would guess that I wasn't the only one who "won" more than expected. Girl told me today they know of other businesses hit with similar fake bidding. Russian bots or bored people causing mischief, you decide. For sure, I see no financial benefit to the perps.

Maybe this kind of stuff is why BrokeGunner now threatens to ban you for connecting via a VPN.

* The facilitator websites have been anonymizing usernames for some years. Your scrambled username seen by others varies from auction to auction.

Really appreciate this information.
Once again the modern way of commerce fails!

Let us know the final outcome OK?

Best!
BrianD

Oy Vey, there’s always gotta be something to muck things up.
Hope that it works out in your favor.

I came in second on a GB auction once a long time ago and got a email about 5 days later that due to a non paying bidder I won.

The seller expected me to pay the highest bid I made even though the non paying bidder bid me up almost $4-500 dollars.

I was not willing to do that.Especially since after that auction ended with a loss I turned my attention to bidding a different gun.

I was willing to pay my highest bid before the non paying bidder stepped in.

It was my opinion the seller may have been involved in a bidding scam.
He was really mad I would not pay the potential scam price.

I did look weeks later and saw he did not leave any feedback on the non paying bidder.

I understand your annoyance, but would you have paid if you were "bid up" but were the winning bidder?
I guess upon reflection, you wouldn't have known if you were "bid up" if you did win.

paplinker said:

I came in second on a GB auction once a long time ago and got a email about 5 days later that due to a non paying bidder I won.

The seller expected me to pay the highest bid I made even though the non paying bidder bid me up almost $4-500 dollars.

I was not willing to do that.Especially since after that auction ended with a loss I turned my attention to bidding a different gun.

I was willing to pay my highest bid before the non paying bidder stepped in.

It was my opinion the seller may have been involved in a bidding scam.
He was really mad I would not pay the potential scam price.

I did look weeks later and saw he did not leave any feedback on the non paying bidder.

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I wasn't "bid up" to any more than I was prepared to pay for one gun, but suddenly appearing to be on the hook for three? Color me shocked. I think from the initial chat with the auction house we will get things sorted pretty well.

Jeff423 said:

I understand your annoyance, but would you have paid if you were "bid up" but were the winning bidder?
I guess upon reflection, you wouldn't have known if you were "bid up" if you did win.

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Yes I would have paid my bid. That would be my obligation and I would have laid off the second gun. I was fine he offered it to me but he had no thought that once a auction is over well it's over.

If you’re outbid you shouldn’t be obligated to purchase the item if the top bid is non-payment. If the auction house wanted to get the top dollar for certain items, they could create a bot account, and then bid up that item, outbid everyone else and win the item. Then they don’t pay and are telling the 2nd highest bidder they now need to pay up.

collectordude said:

If you’re outbid you shouldn’t be obligated to purchase the item if the top bid is non-payment. If the auction house wanted to get the top dollar for certain items, they could create a bot account, and then bid up that item, outbid everyone else and win the item. Then they don’t pay and are telling the 2nd highest bidder they now need to pay up.

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I could go for that if it wasn't for the low prices on the stuff I was looking at.

I realize this probably isn’t feasible for the auction company. But it would be nice, and would work sometimes, if after an auction was over and some of the highest bidders are non paying, the company could contact the second place bidder and ask if they were interested in buying the item at their bid. I guess some would sell and some wouldn’t, but the extra work is probably a no-go for the auction house.

I remember bidding on a really nice expensive SD Myres holster on eBay about 10 years ago. I lost the auction by a nickel, obviously less than the increment, so our final bids were that close. The buyer didn’t pay. If I had been contacted, I would’ve bought it in a skinny minute for my last bid! Obviously, they don’t do that, and it was re-listed. The second time around, it sold for almost twice the price of the original auction!
Larry
Larry

As a seller on eBay twice I've had the highest bidder back out of a purchase. Both times eBay suggested that I contact the next highest bidder and offer it to them at their last bid. If I remember correctly only one took me up on that offer.

I can’t remember the last time buying anything at auction.I’m just about done with the shenanigans.

They need to charge $1 by credit card to start bidding. The information on the card has to match your user profile on the site. Then refund the $1.

Maybe it’s anti gun groups just trying to muck up the system??????

boykinlp said:

I realize this probably isn’t feasible for the auction company. But it would be nice, and would work sometimes, if after an auction was over and some of the highest bidders are non paying, the company could contact the second place bidder and ask if they were interested in buying the item at their bid. I guess some would sell and some wouldn’t, but the extra work is probably a no-go for the auction house.

I remember bidding on a really nice expensive SD Myres holster on eBay about 10 years ago. I lost the auction by a nickel, obviously less than the increment, so our final bids were that close. The buyer didn’t pay. If I had been contacted, I would’ve bought it in a skinny minute for my last bid! Obviously, they don’t do that, and it was re-listed. The second time around, it sold for almost twice the price of the original auction!
Larry
Larry

Click to expand...

Indeed, it would be nice to be asked if I want to be the winner, but in an auction with several hundred lots that could get tedious.

As for losing auctions and seeing stuff relisted, or more of the same item at auction, try this.

Just after COVID hit a dealer in the South started selling brand new Arsenal Strike One pistols on BrokeGunner. They had a bunch of the original model that were part of batch that got held up in import impound for a year or three. The gun store wasn't daft, they were releasing the guns one or two at a time, and bidding was brisk. I got bidding on one along with several other people. One of them was the winner. Inside a week another one appeared. I got it for $150 LESS than the last one sold for. Dunno what happened to all the other losing bidders, but luckily for me, most didn't show up for 'my' gun.

ladder13 said:

I can’t remember the last time buying anything at auction.I’m just about done with the shenanigans.

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I hear ya! I have been on many online auctions and even live ones where there are one or two people there with seemingly bottomless funds. Given that experience, I am used to seeing the same username with bids in on multiple guns. This is a new wrinkle I had not seen before.

Buyer beware.

That is aggravating....

But I bid what I would pay and if people want to play games I'm out of it. There are plenty enough legit sellers/auctions to keep me happy.

rwsmith said:

But I bid what I would pay and if people want to play games I'm out of it. There are plenty enough legit sellers/auctions to keep me happy.

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Me too, but in this case there was either some foul up with the online bidding system or, as related by somebody at the auction house, they had eliminated the 'winning' bids from flaky customers and then made me, and likely others, winners without realizing what was going on.

I have not been burned on GB..........YET, but I am done with them. Most of my stuff comes from the forum, either in the For Sale or WTB sections. I did return 1 gun to the GB seller, it needed undisclosed work. My experience is, that if you need something from GB you are out of luck. I have never had them answer a message yet