Recently I?ve seen a few adverts on various auction sites that are peppered with lies. Lies that, unless you knew better, or knew how to find out the truth, you might very well believe. So to help you avoid having your pants pulled down by a dodgy seller, I thought I?d share some of the naughty auction tricks I?ve seen a few people pull in the last couple of months.

Zero Miler

Just last week I saw an advert for an absolutely immaculate race bike, advertised as having done zero miles. It was a beautiful thing that I?m sure would genuinely be worth a ton of money. As far as zero miles goes though, I?m not having it. I?m a bit of a saddo when it comes to old race bikes, so I found myself inspecting all of the pictures. And whilst the bike really was tidy, there were tiny weeny signs here and there that the bike (or certainly components thereof) had been used before.
The brake disks, front and rear were, for example, not new; when you zoomed into the images, you could quite clearly see the wear marks on the rotors. Perhaps a previous owner had put some used brakes on the bike for some strange reason. Although I?d find that difficult to believe. And besides, the advert stated the bike was completely standard, with nothing having been changed since it left the factory.

And then there were the forks. Again, this was only something very, very minimal, but there was a slight pitting to the front of the forks, consistent with at least some miles. I accept that on olde...