Check those ebay auctions carefully

November 25, 2006 · Comments

from 1Pstart.com:

A young man in Boston waited in line for a PS3 at a local Best Buy for 40 hours to make sure he got his PS3 when it was released. He bought a bunch of games, an extra controller, and a 2 year warranty worth $100. As soon as he got home, he headed straight to eBay to collect his fortune. But, as you can tell from the title of this article, the story takes a very sharp detour into a flaming brick wall. You see, ebayer kusakay was one sandwich short of a picnic and, instead of setting up his auction to start at $0.99, he selected the ‘buy it now’ button. In a matter of seconds, the PS3 was purchased by a very lucky geeqnastie.

Here’s the auction.

The guy may have had the winning “bid,” but I’d be very surprised if he actually received his PS3, even after he forks over the buck.

kusakay has a feedback rating of 26. Hmmm….sacrifice an ebay account by renegging on an auction vs. stand in line for days and spend a whole lot of money and sell it somewhere else to get that profit. Somehow, I think geeqnastie shouldn’t be clearing room in his/her entertainment center.

Personally, I think eBay should ban the pre-sale auctions like this altogether. Make them like theatre or concert tickets and limit the markup, or say that the items can’t be sold until they’ve been out for a least a month. Sad that some poor kid won’t have his PS3 to play with because this guy bought one with no intention of ever using it.

Until then, it’s nice to see a little karma play a hand to dole out a little balance in the world. ;-)

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