When I was selling my 6.9 I approached BaT to list it. Long story short, they wouldn't allow me to list it with a set reserve because it needed paint. ....I'm still not sure how that is a determining factor. I was told that It would have to be listed as an auction with no reserve with a starting bid of $100. So basically, if the auction ended and the highest bid was $2,000 I would have essentially given the car away. The thing is when it comes to an auction it's the sellers prerogative as to whether or not a reserve is to be put in place, not the listing agents decision.....that's just the way it's been since the dawn of time with auctions. When I explained that to BaT, they simply said, ver batum, "We're sorry you feel that way. Have a nice life." They're extremely conceited and exude a "better than thou" attitude. Hence, my, and many other peoples, disdain for BaT.
As the others have said, it's somewhat entertaining to read the comments. You get a mix of off the wall comments and legitimate fact filled comments. Plenty of wanna be's and know it all's on there, but that's anywhere you go. It's definitely the place to go if you want to overpay for a car, and definitely the place to go if you feel like trying to falsely increase a cars value. As with any auction house or auction website, it's the worst place to go to buy a car. It's a sellers dream for obvious reasons, but again 95% of the cars end up selling for double to quadruple more than they're worth. So it's a "pick your poison" type of event. Those of us on here love our W116 cars, and are very protective of them remaining affordable to buy and maintain. The last thing we want if for them to price themselves out of existence because of places like ebay or BaT.
Is BaT a legitimate entity? Yes and no. "Yes" because it is a real, albeit unfortunate and tragic, entity, but more "no" due to the bias and price gouging.