I just found Bring a Trailer site. Lots of bad reviews. Has anyone used the site? Is it legit or not?
I for one enjoy BAT for the peanut gallery comments and throw my 2c in here and there. For the most part it's fun and informative though you get some toolbags on there of course. Cannot comment on how the actual buying/selling is on there, and I have read some complaints on other forums on how BAT actually runs the back end, but it is enormously popular, so they must be doing something right I guess. They must be making a killing for sure. I take it with a pinch of salt, and enjoy the often rare Benzes they auction off. Recently there have even been some 600's on there, so it is the place to go if you want to see some rare and unusual cars for sure.
I think the cars on there get thourghly vetted. every now and then there is a bargain. lots of experts and idiots making comments, but you can learn something sometimes. you usually get over 100+ pictures, which is way more than probably any other site.
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.
I view BaT as a lower risk alternative to Ebay, from a buyers perspective. They seem to have a certain standard of car that they are pushing for and as far as the car variety it definitely looks very interesting.