Monday, April 02, 2007

A concerning letter

Dear eBay Morons:

I'm bidding against you a lot lately. I thought I'd share my secret with you, so you too can get very good deals like me. The secret is in the time remaining....

Allow me to explain: If you bid on something, and it has six and a half days left, all you get is the satisfaction of being the highest bidder for a little while. Then some other moron, such as yourself, comes along and continues to run up the price. For example:

Say you're bidding on a clock with 6 days remaining. You can watch the item, so you don't lose it, or you can bid $20. Being the moron that you are, you bid $20. Congratulations, this is now the very cheapest you can have this for, if a miracle happens. Moron #2 comes along, bids $40 later that day. Not to be outdone, you come back the next day with $60. By the last 30 seconds of the auction, you and superdummy have now run the tab up to $250.

Imagine, if you will, what would have happened if you didn't place your first bid until the last minute of the auction. You've had 6 days to look at the clock, and you decide it's worth $100 to you. With 30 seconds left, no one has bid. You enter your max bid of $100. Dummy #2 is entering his bid as well. He figures no one is going to bid, so he tries to steal it for $20 or $30.

Congrats. You are now the proud owner of a clock for $31. By not being a twit, I just saved you $219. Now if you would only read this....

3 comments:

People in the Sun said...

Looking at a clock for 6 days. That's not a way to live.

Attila the Mom said...

Silly boy. They call that sniping. LOL

Philip. said...

Damn, you have found the secret to ebay. Don't tell anyone else - LOL

p.s. someone fraudulently used by ebay account yesterday and bought a tv for £1200 with my paypal account.

Luckily, paypal have already refunded me.

People, beware of the evils of ebay :-)