There are many ways an online car auction can go off the rails — so many, in fact, that I write a regular column about it. So far, we’ve seen instances of a potentially illegal import and a combative seller, and hilariously bad seemingly-AI-generated images. Inaccurate documentation is often much harder to spot, but the possibility of a falsified invoice sent a Bring A Trailer auction for a 1974 Alfa Romeo Spider 2000 Veloce completely off the rails.
At first, everything seemed fine with the listing. Here was a cheerfully yellow Series 2 Alfa Romeo Spider with unique green upholstery, a clean engine bay, period-correct aftermarket wheels, and a mint undercarriage. There was even an invoice for recent work. Then a comment appeared from Bring A Trailer user “Stewart” that threw the auction for a loop.
Hi, this is Stewart from Alfa performance connection the invoice in picture 136 is fake. That was a not produced by my company. Somebody has used an invoice and doctored it up changing work done on it that was not done by Alfa Performance Connection.
Here is the invoice in question, and there looks to be some weirdness going on. It seems that two different writing instruments may have been used, and both the “model” field and the date field appear as if they could’ve been written over.
There’s some real credence to the claim that this invoice doesn’t belong to this Alfa Romeo Spider. Alfa Performance Connection is marked as “Permanently Closed” on Google, and a thread on AlfaBB claims the shop “was in the last throes of moving out” from its Batavia St. location on Feb. 10, just two days after the date of the invoice. As it turns out, it didn’t take long for the seller to respond, and surprisingly, there wasn’t any arguing over the accuracy of the invoice.
“To Bring a Trailer, I want to clarify that the receipt previously attached was an error and does not relate to my Alfa Romeo. I lost the correct receipt, which was on the file of the car. However, I want to assure everyone that all four brake calipers have been fully replaced with a brand-new set and come with a guarantee. Please remove the incorrect receipt from the listing. Thank you.” That should clear it all up!
The response raises even more questions. How does having “lost the correct receipt” result in a completely different work invoice making it to the auction listing? Also, without having proof, were the brake calipers actually overhauled? They look fairly shiny in photos, but a documentation issue like this can cause a real loss of confidence. A mere 27 minutes after the seller’s comment, Bring A Trailer dropped the following comment:
Thank you @seller for clarifying. We have removed the invoice from Alfa Performance Connection from the gallery.
The comment community was unimpressed. A user by the screen name “MCinSD” wrote “@seller, a falsified receipt is an “error”? They say ‘buy the seller, not the car’…”, while commenter “kstukas” tagged Bring A Trailer to raise a complaint about the situation:
Seriously @bringatrailer? Seller doesn’t have a receipt for supposed work, proceeds to falsify one, gets caught, says it was an “error” and we sweep it under the rug like nothing happened? If they’re lying about this, they’re likely lying about other things. Talk about lack of integrity.
This comment inadvertently sparked off another point of controversy because it was responded to twice, first by user “naftana” then two minutes later by the seller, “pacificimport.” The problem here is that both of these response comments were identical:
@ KSTUKAS,
I hope you’re doing well. I want to address your concerns in a clear and transparent manner. First and foremost, I take my reputation on Bring a Trailer very seriously, and I would never intentionally misrepresent anything. The receipt you referenced was mistakenly added from a different part of my records, and I fully admit that it was an error. I lost the correct receipt, but I want to assure you that all work was done as described. This auction is truly an as-is, no reserve sale, and I would never try to hide anything. If you feel uncomfortable, I completely respect your decision not to bid, but I ask that you please refrain from jeopardizing my standing. Thank you very much for your time and understanding.
If we look a little bit deeper at both accounts, we can see that naftana placed two bids on a 1992 Mercedes-Benz 300D that pacificimport auctioned on Bring A Trailer back in July of 2024. That’s a little suspicious considering the circumstances of these recent comments. Hypothetically, if a seller were to bid on their own item using a different account, that’s called shill bidding, a method of market manipulation used with the goal of getting other bidders to pay more for an item. I definitely don’t have enough evidence to make accusations, but commenter “StoningtonImports” raised this exact issue in the comments.
I just noticed that “naftana” posted the same exact message as “pacificimport” and then noticed that pacificimport’s last auction was shill bid by… wait for it… naftana.
It’s worth noting that the seller still didn’t address why this receipt existed or what car it may have been for. I’ve reached out to see if it’s possible to get to the bottom of this, and will update you in the event I learn more. In the last hours of bidding, Bring A Trailer finally pulled the plug on the auction and issued the following comment:
Hello all, After a close review and discussion, we have several unresolved concerns about the seller’s actions in this auction. As a result we are withdrawing it. This is something we take very seriously, and all involved accounts have been restricted at this time. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
What’s interesting here is that Bring A Trailer initially responded to the inaccurate invoice within half an hour, but took an additional eighteen hours or so to pull the listing. Bring A Trailer has previously pulled auctions rather than amending them when there’s a possibility of misrepresentation, so this situation raises some questions about standard operating procedures. I reached out to Bring A Trailer to enquire about what standardized steps are taken when there’s a possibility a car may be misrepresented, and the firm responded with the comment above.
While inaccurate records aren’t unheard-of, it’s reasonable to expect a marketplace with a five percent buyer’s premium to attract cars with more pedigree than say, Facebook Marketplace. While investigating the veracity of every service invoice of every car would be labor-intensive and in some cases impossible, buyers put a lot of trust in documentation. Consider this a reminder to be careful when buying used cars. No matter where they’re listed, some might not be as honest as they present.
Top graphic image: Bring A Trailer
Has BaT been bought out by private equity yet?
I have both bought and sold (the same vehicle) on BaT. I’ll leave it as: I won’t be doing either again.
The RR P38 community caught someone falsifying invoices on BaT too. I’m Malibu955 over there, BTW:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2002-land-rover-range-rover-90/
BaT is now the exclusive home of every low rent classic car dealer in the country. Buyer beware.
That Alfa Romeo is a ’74, with the kamm tail, and not the next generation (’83-’89 or thereabouts) with the rear spoiler sometimes called a duck tail.
Since the article notes some apparent auction shilling, if the Alfa Romeo were the next gen, then one could’ve made a silly joke about “why a duck tail?” that only fans of a late 1920s musical comedy film starring four brothers (one of which was putatively and ostensibly Italian) about the Florida real estate boom, involving some auction shilling, would get and hopefully appreciate.
As an enthusiast of actually owning/driving/modifying a car, rather than it just being a game of collecting and “curating”, I haven’t seen a redeeming thing about BaT since they went from a collection of craigslist ads to their own auction house.
Not just that but they seem to be getting worse
I’m not understanding why this even needed to be an article. Seller did something sketchy, they pulled the record, and eventually the auction after investigating further.
It’s a warning to potential buyers about how scammers scam.
I’m just getting bored of the constant BaT posts here. It’s seriously become like 15% of the Autopian’s entire content.
Has it? I can’t remember the last time I saw a BaT post. Like it was months ago I’m fairly sure at this point.
They had the one about Mr. Ford Farley just this week, but before that it had been awhile. Definitely don’t feel overwhelmed by BaT content.
Well, the main sources for buying collector cars these days are BaT, CaB, and Ebay motors. So, yeah, they’re going to pop up on occasion, in automotive journalism.
The days of going to the corner market and grabbing a Nickle Ads and/or AutoTrader to find a car, are long over.
Don’t click on the posts you don’t want to read?
What??!! But then what would I complain about??
People probably..
I’m bored with people posting about their boredom. Go outside, enjoy a nice walk, grandma.
This is less exciting to you than ‘Car Seat Manufacturers Face New Testing Regulations To Keep Kids Safer’?
Fascinating
If only there was some kind of middle ground between scraping other sites for content and reposting boring press releases. Alas.
Car auctions are relevant and car auctions occur IRL and online. It’s interesting. This isn’t scraping someone else’s content anymore than reporting on a new car release is someone else’s content.
Maybe try Jalopnik?
Seems like shill bidding would be illegal. Should be if it isn’t.
EDIT: turns out it is illegal under federal law. 18 US Code section 1343. Wire fraud. It’s also illegal under NYS law where I live. Probably everywhere else too.
I mean, that’s what the law SAYS….but……
Happens ALL the time. Usually sellers are savvy enough to have a friend bid. This guy…
My read after looking for at the receipt photo at 5am… I don’t think this is ai or photo shop or even an edited real recipient, it’s just a blank receipt the guy had and filled out with work that may or may not have been done at or not at that shop then he printed out the business name with his handy dandy dymo label printer. Yeah the numbers look weird with ghosting but that’s just how carbon paper is, and this is likely old and from near the bottom of the stack. Also the person who initially flagged the recitpt as fake, not altered.
Top tier scum bag material, like bidding on their own auctions. This type of person is shockingly common it seems and they truly don’t think they’re doing anything that’s a big deal – this guy probably changed the brakes himself but knows a photo of a receipt from a known shop will be worth more for the sale so he creates one from scratch to show what it would have cost if the work was done there. He sees nothing wrong with this because the work was done (allegedly). Same with bidding on their own auctions, they see it as just moving the price along, afterall they didn’t WIN their own auction… The buyer was fully willing to pay that price, they just helped get them there because there wasn’t another bidder. They genuinely don’t see it as them doing something wrong.
There are discrepancies in the totals area with many of the numbers. They are written with a “shakey” hand and look like someone was trying to replicate the writing style from the section above. The shape of the bottom loop on the 5s are a giveaway. The 7s are close, but suspicious as well.
“While investigating the veracity of every service invoice of every car would be labor-intensive…”
Then what, exactly, is the premium in both listing service pricing and the market distortion BaT has fueled worth, then?
Just big galleries of hi-res, mostly repetitive, half-useful photos and a lively comments section?
The quality of the cars, the sellers, and the customer experience, including high standards for integrity are all IMPLIED benefits.
And yet, every now and then, we get to see what the emperor is wearing.
BaT’s “value” is the eyeballs on the platform. Descriptions are copy/pasted from one listing to another without even a cursory review because there are 800 auctions up at any given time and nobody has time to check to see if the car up for sale is even real.
Every automatic classic Mini listed on the platform is “equipped with a 4-speed manual transaxle” until a commenter pings @BaT to let them know their description is wrong AGAIN. They allow blatant shill bidders, AI cars, dealers selling as private party, and speculators using their website to artificially inflate their asset classes value. It’s a shitshow.
https://rennlist.com/forums/992-gt3-and-gt2rs-forum/1506502-bat-and-gt3-prices-a-study-in-manipulation-by-chicagomarketing.html
Oh, their “style” is insufferable. “finished in…” :barf:
Even before the sale, and even after having talked with Randy Nonnenberg in a lengthy interview for the Autoblog Podcast back in the day, and finding him friendly and reasonable in that setting, it’s ALWAYS been weird and sorta half-baked with a strange affect.
And it’s distorted the market as much, if not more, than eBay did back in the day.
This. If I read “is said to” one more time…
BaT started as a blog surfacing unloved CL projects. That it’s become a collector car fantasy land is a bummer.
I remember. Like Pepperidge Farm but with better politics and a couple banger cookie recipes.
That Rennlist post is AMAZING. Holy moly.
Agree, that was quite a read.
Agreed, crazy.
A guy on a forum I frequent listed and sold a stupid nice FoMoCo muscle car on BaT. Many shenanigans ensued, and he got attys involved. He’s dropped off until it’s been taken care of so no idea what the details are. But you couldn’t pay me to list something there.
Holy shitballs that is one hell of an analysis. I think he’s probably fairly correct in what is happening with those cars too – it’s all a sham to fleece regular buyers. Honestly makes me question the valuation of any somewhat desirable used vehicle.
My hot take: Bring a Trailer and Cars & Bids are just Facebook Marketplace for rich people.
These sites only give the illusion of proper curation, but as countless auctions have shown, sellers will lie through their teeth and then gaslight you when you call them out. BAT doesn’t even punish people for lying when they’re caught. They only deleted the fake invoice here, ignoring that the whole auction could be tainted.
I recently called out a seller for not disclosing known rust in his auction (every picture was conveniently so far away that you couldn’t see the rust). I knew the car was rusty because I tried to buy it before it went on BAT. BAT did nothing despite the fact that the car wasn’t being correctly represented.
Hard pass, I can get that same experience on Facebook and pay less doing it…
I think this is 100% accurate (other than I will not ever, ever use FB Marketplace or any other meta product).
This makes me think that there *IS* an opportunity here, especially right now in these *gestures widely* conditions. The used car market is already heating up. It’s going to continue to be the refuge for people who cannot afford a $50K price for an “average” new car, with what seems to be a full lifetime supply of recalls and opportunities for bricking and engine failure.
So – a concierge for the normals. The Carletariat. Get you a good used chariot.
That rhymes.
On purpose.
But they pulled the auction, though?
Only after the shill bidding account was revealed. They were fine with the fake invoice.
Amen sister!
Do you see any difference with Cars&Bids? Doug will tell you, loudly, that one of the quirks AND features of C&B is multiple humans in the loop before something is listed. I assume he isn’t lying.
TBH, I have less familiarity with C&B. I would lean toward assuming Doug’s not lying, either, but that doesn’t mean that oversight isn’t lax or people aren’t working the system. I kind of assume they all actually ARE doing that on the niche sites. It’s the same way stores account for shrink – you just know that stuff is going to happen, and you can be on the lookout for it. The businesses would have to fundamentally change for them to eradicate the shilling.
Humans don’t scale, but making money does. So, once you have pressure to increase revenue, the review process is tossed. Anything that humans do is too slow to hit the revenue target demands.
Didn’t Doug sell (all, or a big chunk of) C&B to some VC firm a while back?
..or maybe I’m misremembering..
Too bad as it is a pretty car…..if only it was in red.
Shoot… a few rattle cans and and another invoice from an autobody shop and we’re in business.
PM me @naftana
But maybe I am just noticing them because I am looking, but yellow as a car color does seem to be becoming ever so slightly more popular? Or maybe stands out more against the monochrome grey wash of everything else.
Or a better shade of yellow…there’s too much green in that color for my taste.
The green interior is certainly a, uh, choice.
I didn’t even get to the listing, oof. Plus those wheels. Let’s hope this is a one-of-one, it’s quite possibly the ugliest Alfa Spider in existence.
Yeah, those wheels are terrible. And this car probably came with the nice turbine-design wheels.
That awful green interior though…
So the clearly falsified invoice was actually just added “in error” from their “other records” yeah?
It doesn’t change the fact that this scumbag is falsifying invoices!
Maybe his hobby is making imitation receipts and invoices, and he never intended to use them, just keep them as a personal collection?
Clearly this receipt is only for educational purposes, carry on!
I just wanna know how many 1974 Alfa Romeo Spiders this guy has getting new brakes, that his claim would be even close to a reasonable suggestion.
My client did rob the bank, Your Honor, but what if I told he only collects bags of cash and never buys anything with them?
Actually, he just collects the *bags*, the cash was just accidentally brought along.
Worth noting that eBay opened up all auctions to shilling, so specialty items can easily be monopolized by one person.
Also if you ever bid on a Dutch auction, I can explain it to you better than they can.
Their boiler plate is wrong about how theirs work.
It’s bizarre.
Had to google to learn that a Dutch auction is not an auction held in the Netherlands, but an auction where the price drops until someone bids. Learned something today, hooray! Can confirm that this is common in the Netherlands with flower auctions.
I’ve seen videos about those flower auctions and their history, so interesting!
eBay is weirder than that here.
It involves multiple identical items in one sale, that can be to multiple people.
I wanted all items, so instead of highest actual bid, I ended up charged a higher bid against myself.
Seller refused to settle, so the auction was cancelled and redone.
I bid on all but one item and final price was lower than I offered previously.
Details eBay sent me disagreed with their actual practice.
Still makes no sense to me.
I loved the Nederlands. Hope to go back.
One of my favorite bead suppliers will occasionally have what they advertise as a Dutch auction-style sale; each day, the price of select items is reduced a little more, but all of the items are very low inventory, so you risk missing out on your chance to buy if you hold out for a lower price.
Hard pass… I only bid on Dutch ovens.
I feel like the receipt is like one of the earlier AI photos where the more you look at it the worse it gets with fingers, arms etc.
The sticker over the original business name, the amount of times other text is easily visible underneath the fresher looking writing (the invoice date in particular), “break” used multiple times.
My thing is, *somebody* had to go out of their way to create this. And *somebody* (the seller) used it, regardless of accuracy. It’s a nice car from what I can see, but once you lose trust, you wonder what else is inaccurate.
Have the cobblestone floormats been properly cleaned and grouted?
The seller should forfeit the listing fee and also be required to pay a final value fee based on the highest bid it got. And of course, they should be banned from ever using BaT again.
Nope. BaT and C&B only hold the buyers fee from buyers that back out (and they get banned). Sellers that act poorly, just get banned. It’s unequal punishments.
Yeah, there’s zero way I’d ever dip my toe in a BAT sale. Just not worth it.
Bring A Trailer is a failing business since the sale. I got screwed over by them as a seller and will never do business on their site again.
You keep saying that. I’d genuinely love to hear what hapened.
The basically miscatagorized my listing. They have an issue with their site where my car didn’t show up in the search results. Also notifications didn’t go out to anyone who had a saved search. So almost nobody saw the auction. Of course it ended for well below market value. BaT acknowledged the problem with their website, but still expected me to honor the sale. I didn’t and they banned me. They even went as far as removing my comments explaining their website problem from the auction. I think that a reputable business should have either voided the result or relisted it correctly. In the end BaT cost me a lot of money when I finally sold it myself because several classic car dealers and private buyers flat out said that the value is forever tainted by that auction result and even thought they knew it was worth more, they couldn’t pay more.
Yup. Both BaT and C&B are very quick to hide their mistakes, quick to throw the buyer/seller under the bus if there is an issue, and refuse to try and correct mistakes on their part. Even on auctions that don’t have technical issues before the hammer drops, they are quick to hide or try and cover up if either the seller or buyer backs out regardless if the reason is valid or not.
I do think the majority of their sales probably are run fairly well insomuch as what the sites can control is executed well; but when it doesn’t you’d think they could have some sort of actual way to make it right. It’s not even like the solution you were looking for was expensive, unreasonable, or something they flat out couldn’t do. Relisting an auction that had technical errors would be easy, low cost, and reasonable to most anyone if they were transparent about it all.
They are the Ticketmaster of the auto auction world. They don’t care, since they always get their cut.
I find it very annoying that so many people on those websites choose to be the free labor of quality assurance and hype squad marketing for these auction houses.
And the auction house would have come out ahead as the sale price would have been higher. Truly a win-win situation (well, not for the buyer) so it makes even less sense for the house to be obstinate about fixing a glaring mistake on their part.
Yikes. I agree with you. I would be really upset in your shoes.
The invoice date is the real smoking gun (it looks like 8/8/21 originally) and maybe carbon paper and then someone used a pen to change and add some things. Very amateur hour especially in this day in age. They probably thought since the shop closed it was a free for all. Standard polyester suit shenanigans.
The original model listed on the RO appears to be a GTV, and ‘Spider’ is written over it.
Did not know Weasels were able to use BAT.
Let alone be capable of typing.
We live in a wonderful world.
But a weasel is still a weasel in my book. Funk dat…
I’d also like to know where the car was between 1974 and about 1985, based on the CA License Plate, assuming there is a “1” in front of the letters.
Opening the link to the auction answers both questions…
Deceit, thy undoing is palimpsest.
Is it suspicious that the service writer on the alleged invoice spells “brakes” as “breaks”?
Or that the invoice appears to have a sticker with the shop name placed on a generic, possibly much older form. How many places these days don’t use custom-printed forms?
not necessarily, that seems pretty common these days, if Marketplace and Craigslist are anything to go by. At least they wrote Alfa instead of Alpha – or
“Honda S2000 – PLEASE READ I couldn’t figure out how to select Alfa Romeo in the drop down menu, but this is an Alfa Romeo Spider, not a Honda” – those sorts of listings seem weirdly common
Crappy designed software is the rule, not the exception.
More money and technology the company has, the less comprehensible their site is
Ugh that second paragraph makes me soul hurt. Because truth hurts…
I just wish Craigslist actually had a modicum of listings any more. Marketplace killed it, and Marketplace sucks ass. Craigslist was (is?) so much better.
I commonly find something on Marketplace, then if you go to find it later, you’ll never find it even if you search the exact title. It’s garbage. GARBAGE! Or for some reason, the results will all be in your area, but suddenly, the one you are interested in, is three states over. What!?!? Then you search that area three states over, and you miraculously find a result from your original area, that didn’t appear in your original search!
And SearchTempest (or AutoTempest) doesn’t quite work correctly on Marketplace, but it works fantastically on Craigslist.
And finally, the entire design of Craigslist is just better. No profile necessary. Layout way better. Visual design is super basic and utilitarian.
Marketplace’s search feature is horrible and seems to be getting worse. I’ve heard that Craigslist is better in some parts of the country, but, around me, its virtual tumbleweeds. And the same ad offering to buy motorcycles posted dozens of times with a text wall of keywords to guarantee they all show up in any search you do, no matter how unrelated
The “WANTED old Motorcycles CALL…” Yeah, that’s like 20% of all postings on Craigslist in my area.
I just want people to realize Craigslist is better and to leave Marketplace and go back to Craigslist.
And leave Facebook groups and go back to forums.
I still use Craigslist because I don’t have (and won’t have) a Facebook account. That’s my biggest issue with marketplace, it’s impossible to use if you don’t have an account which excludes a lot of people like me. There is still traffic on Craigslist around me but I’m sure it’s minimal comparatively.
Going off on a rant here but I absolutely want to scream at everyone using Facebook and their gate-kept services, especially businesses. If a business doesn’t have a real page somewhere that’s not Facebook, I’m not buying from them. And for fucks sake, even my electricity provider only really provides power outage updates on Facebook! You have my phone number! Use it! I wish I could somehow get everyone en masse to understand how detrimental using Facebook for all this shit is to our society. Every single thing you put on there (and a bunch of shit you don’t) is hoovered up by them and used to fuck you over in some other way you probably blaming the wrong entity for. Just, like, Jesus fuck it all pisses me off so much sometimes.
Taps the sign.
The web USED to be more than three giant sites that want to control your life and send assholes to Mars instead of pay taxes.
It should be, but knowing the service writers I know, getting at least a homonym right is solid work.
Sure, many service writers don’t know much more about cars other than they have 4 wheels (usually) and an engine (usually) but I would expect a service writer at a specialty shop that deals with vintage Alfa Romeos to be a bit more knowledgeable than the people at your local Chevy dealership.
Some of the best craftspeople I know have dyslexia. Sometimes late in the day putting in the effort to think about the correct spelling for the context doesn’t happen. Not saying that’s what happened here but it wouldn’t surprise me to find a great indy mechanic who couldn’t pick the correct homophone.