In many negotiations, rules are soft in the sense that the seller and/or buyers may break them at some cost. When buyers have private values, the cost of all such `cheating' is borne by the seller in equilibrium. Consequently, the seller is willing to pay an intermediary to credibly commit to a mechanism in which no one has the ability and incentive to cheat. We explore these ideas in two settings, one with costly shill bidding and one with costly delay in which the seller is unable to promise not to bargain further with buyers after receiving their initial offers. In the latter case, multiple rounds of offers occur in perfect Bayesian equilibrium and delay costs can be substantial. An intermediary can credibly commit to sell the object without delay given a sufficiently valuable reputation and/or weak marginal incentives regarding price.