Collusion between auctioneers and their favorite buyers

Do you feel like there is collusion between auctioneers and their favorite buyers in your area?

     I don't know if you would call it collusion, and i think most auctioneers are fairly legit. But managers on the other hand can be shmoozed. I for instance am going to an auction 2 hours early today to get a free preview before the auction starts. I also offer to buy units before they go to auction. I often get to use the facilities trash receptacles etc etc.

Yeah, I agree. Getting in good with property managers can have it's benefits. One of my manager buddies let me enter a unit that was going to auction. It had three four wheelers. The two you could see from the door were being worked on and parts were everywhere, but the one you couldn't see was a large Polaris 4X4 perfectly in tact. Unfortunately, the buyer paid up last minute. 

Our local auctioneer tends to wait longer to say sold if there is a regular buyer bidding. He doesn't give the newbies as much time to decide if they are in or not. I really don't think he favors one regular over any others.   

I think one of my auctioneers tries to help me out. I notice sometimes he lets me think about my bid and gives me time bid again, other times he closes the auction out on me fast and lets the other person win. I'm thinking the units he lets me think about he knows are good and the ones he closes on me fast he knows aren't so good.

I'm thinking the units he lets me think about he knows are good and the ones he closes on me fast he knows aren't so good.

This reminded me of a time an auctioneer helped me out. I was 6 months into the storage auction business and I would buy anything I could make a buck on. The biggest unit I've ever seen in my life came up. I think it was a 20X40. It had some money in it, but it also had a lot of trash. Oh, and when I say a lot of trash, I mean 4 dump runs. Auctioneer opened up the bidding. No one bid. You could hear the crickets chirping. So I said $5. More crickets chirping. The auctioneer finally leaned over and said "I'm retracting your bid, I don't want to have to ban you from future auctions because you didn't clean this out." I thought about it for a second, and he was right. I'm still thankful for his intervention to this day.