tales from ebay

Hello, my name is des and I am an Ebay Addict.

Now I will share with you a semi-amusing story.

After my recent decision to become an ipod owner, I’ve been perusing ebay to see if there are any good deals. I don’t actually expect to buy my ipod via auction* but it never hurts to look. Except when it does.

Somehow I stumbled across an ipod auction ending in less than 24 hours. It was $80. There were no bids. I watched it for a bit. Still no bids. The only thing I could figure is that people were wary because the seller had 0 feedback. I took the chance because I would be protected from fraud through paypal AND through ebay. So I bid. My max bid was lower than what I would pay retail, because I’m not one of those fools. Then, in the last hour of action, someone else bid. They didn’t outbid me, so in effect they just upped the price 3 times. I checked out the other bidder, and he also had 0 feedback. That’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it? But they stopped bidding before the price got very high.

I had a sneaking suspicion that it was the seller under a different profile bidding on his own auction to get more money. But I let it slide because the price was still below retail.
Soon another bidder came into the mix (this one had feedback) and succeeded in outbidding me, and therefore paying more than retail. Let him have it. Sucker.

The next morning, I received the following email from ebay:

The listing in which you were a bidding participant:
200077374436 - iPod nano Silver 2GB (500 songs) (new, factory sealed)
has been ended by eBay. Since the listing was ended by eBay, the transaction itself is null and void.
Due to privacy concerns, we cannot disclose the exact reason the listing itself was ended.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you, and we thank you for being a part of the eBay trading community.
Regards,
Customer Support (Trust and Safety Department)

So my suspicions were probably correct. That was the seller bidding on his own item. And now he’s busted AND he gets no money. Awesome.

I will note that I’ve considered the possibility of upping the price this way, but have never tried it. Now I’m glad I haven’t, because I know I would be kicked off and not allowed to fuel my addiction.

* It was recently made known to me that the NYU bookstore sells ipods cheaper than anywhere else, so I’m going there. At some point.