Dodgy auctioneer?

C0l1n75

Hi all,
Visited our local family-run auction house for the 1st time recently.
I assumed that commission bids meant he'd be bidding on behalf of the absentee against bids on the floor.
Clearly says on their site "Please note you should give us the maximum Hammer Price you are prepared to pay."
but as I listened, many of the lots were announced as " I have a commission bid of £xxx, any advance?"
most were sold without a bid in the room.
I bought an item there recently with a commission bid & paid the full whack :mad:
Or am I just being a numpty?

forgotmyname

Because i called them and said i want to bid £47.50 only, not a penny more or less.

I dont want to bid in dribs and drabs pushing the price up and the bidders thinks ahh bid an extra £2. Im in with my bid and out if another bid comes in.

Hopefully the high start puts other bidders off, sometimes it works and othertimes it wont. But my max is my max.

mrcol1000

Either there were other commission bids pushing up the price and yours was the highest. Your bid happened to be the minimum the vendor was willing to accept. Or the auctioneer thought that as you bid that, then it may as well sell for that. Do not forget that the higher things sell for, the more money they get in commission from buyers and sellers. It also encourages sellers to bring their items to sell if they go for more.

Auctions are quite often the wild west and not really suitable for your casual buyer.

forgotmyname

Fingers are there to be burnt, i bought some workshop rubber matting. heavy duty stuff, very heavy and a decent quantity.

3 months after using some it started splitting. Probably why it was there for sale. Recalled not fit for purpose? The original retailer stopped selling it.

Good job i didnt sell it on.

C0l1n75

forgotmyname wrote: »

Because i called them and said i want to bid £47.50 only, not a penny more or less.

I dont want to bid in dribs and drabs pushing the price up and the bidders thinks ahh bid an extra £2. Im in with my bid and out if another bid comes in.

Hopefully the high start puts other bidders off, sometimes it works and othertimes it wont. But my max is my max.

That's a positive way to look at it
If you were in the room though, bidding would start low, & you may win it for a LOT less than you're prepared to pay.
I'll not be going back, but it irks me that so many people don't realize that they could be paying MUCH more than they ought to be.
With hundreds of bids each auction we're talking about an awful lot of money.
I'm thinking I should speak to trading standards or citizen's advice.
I could of course be wrong but should be easy to prove.
The sellers don't mind of course, but the real winners are the auctioneers.

StumpyPumpy

2 Non-dodgy reasons why this happens:

• Item has a reserve and commission bid: opening bid is reserve price (commission bid would not be accepted if it were less than reserve)
• Item has 2 or more commission bids: opening bid is second highest maximum commission bid + one bid increment.

SP

C0l1n75

Thanks StumpyPumpy,
Hadn't considered multiple commission bids.
That could explain it.
Still, would standard practice be to automatically go straight to the highest bid, rather than raise it by an increment? The higher bid could be way higher.
Seems the safest way is to be there on the day.

C0l1n75

Thanks all.
Hadn't considered multiple commission bids.
That could explain it.
He still seemed to automatically go straight to whatever the highest bid was, rather than raise it by an increment.
Seems the safest way is to be there on the day.

RFW

C0l1n75 wrote: »

I could of course be wrong but should be easy to prove.

It's actually almost impossible to prove. As someone says above it could be that someone else left a bid just below yours. If there wasn't one it's easy enough for the auctioneer to invent one and quite difficult to prove that the other bidder didn't exist.

I used to run an auction house, and was honest in my endeavours (probably why I'm not still in that business!). It was surprising how often commission bids ended up at the price someone left, no matter what it started at. Unsurprisingly when it did the person who left the bid never believed me.

The majority of auction houses have within their conditions of sale something along the lines of "the auctioneer reserves the right to bid on behalf of the vendor", thus covering a multitude of sins.

I've not really had much to do with auctions for the last couple of years but prior to that I had been around them since I was a kid. Most of them are relatively straight up with a few degrees of dishonesty, one or two are, what I would politely call, scoundrels.

Trading standards would possibly be interested, CAB would probably refer you to them. If you were buying as a business (ie to resell an item) then Trading Standards can't look into it for you, they are only able to act for you as a consumer.

theoretica

What happened when there were bids in the room? If the auctioneer ever starts with a commission bid of £100 and then it goes to £110 in the room and back to the auctioneer at £120 then the price probably didn't start at the top of the only commission bid, either there was more than one bid, or a reserve. With some auctions it can be hard to see if it has been bought by someone whose number the auctineer knows, on commission, or failed to sell.

I don't think there is anything illegal about saying the bid you leave is the bid the auctioneer puts in - but it should be clear in the T&Cs.

RFW

C0l1n75 wrote: »

I may have to covertly record it & see if trading standards would be interested.

I can't see what you would covertly record, you'd need to record every person in the room that the auctioneer could see, any papers/bids in front of him and any computer with internet bids. Trading standards wouldn't prosecute on something tenuous. It's probably harsh to say if there is something illicit going on but there isn't much of a victim here. You asked to pay £x for an item and you did, maybe next time leave a bid 10% lower than you are willing to pay and see what happens.

These days there are less and less attendees of auctions. If I was doing an auction now and there were six people in the room, I had 1000 plus lots to get through and lots of commission and internet bids I'd jump to the top price as quick as possible and get things moving. Chances are the few people in the room are only interested in one or two lots so trying to sell to them is a waste of time.