[matt murphy]

Motown,

I now fully understand Shill Bidding, and thanks for your response. It was wrong for Mike Kratchmer to do what he did, but I believe they did it because of the way Mike was treated last week. Mike appologised last week to everyone here, and told me he was sorry for having fun, when people here didn't understand his humor, and he didn't understand the rules of this site. I did offer Mike $16,500 for his car the other day before he even thought of Ebay. I know Mike Kratchmer would like to have one of our cars, but can't afford the 50K to 100K that some of them are going for. A few people around Atlanta tried to get Mike to sell it to them for around 20K, if Mike and I would write something about the car that wasn't true so they could remarket the car at a much higher price. Mike said that he was going to put the car on Ebay to give everyone an equal opportunity to purchase it first hand. If my offer was his only bid, at $16,500, he probably would have sold it to me, but would have wanted something thrown in to help him out. That is NOT shill bidding as I see it, or you described it.

Let me ask you this . . . If say Charlie Lillard decides to sell his '69 Berger ZL1 and a few of his friends hear that he is interested in selling it . . . and they offer him 300K for it and he says, No way, it is easily worth much more than that . . . and he decides to put it on Ebay to give everyone an equal opportunity to bid on it, and he sets the reserve at 350K . . . and you, as his friend, made him that 300K offer, then saw it on Ebay . . . and with no bids made . . . you made that same 300K offer as the starting bid ?? . . . and if a few other friends of Charlies, of which around here he has many . . . make him an offer at 305K and then 310K . . . under the reserve or not . . . does that imply that you guys are Shill Bidding to help Charlie get closer to the 350K he wants . . . [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/dunno.gif[/img]

I think the mistake people made here is that they jumped to the Shill Bidding conclusion before the Ebay ad ran its course. I agree with yours and Robs and others insinuation of the facts at hand, that it could have looked like Shill Bidding . . . but, some people acted against these guys and me when they saw what they assumed was a scam. I can't blame those for thinking that, from your definition of Shill Bidding, it didn't look too straight. Again, both Kratchmer and I made one bid on Ebay to Mike and his car for sale . . . I can't explain why Ebay shows MLK327GA as having 3 bids. I'm not aware of how one person could make three bids like it shows, maybe someone can help me here. I have bought two or three things off Ebay and bidded on maybe two others. I am not an avid Ebayer like you Matt and others, I got my lesson today.