Naturally, BaT considered the car sold, and as a result, the seller-cum-buyer had to fork over a total of $90,300 for the car he already owned (the $86k bid + $4,300 fee for BaT). Sure, he recouped some of it – the $90,000 of the reserve price – but ended up being out of pocket by $300, all out of his own greed.
Apparently, the seller has put together several sketchy deals like this in the past in his dealings with Tabutt, and Tabutt claims that shill bidding is more common than we’d like to believe. This time around, though, it was the shill who lost out, which is a sweet bit of instant karma in our eyes.
