Good news of sorts

[ffutures]

Am I a bad person to be pleased by this?

Neverwhere ended up at £26 plus £2 postage, and the buyer has already paid. Which surprised me considerably because it cost me £14.65 plus £2 postage. Can't believe that people don't check Amazon and other prices before they bid on eBay, but it's far from the first time I've seen something like this happen.

I'm tempted to buy another and see if it happens again, but with my luck it'd end up selling for £4.99 or something...

Comments

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

If it is on eBay it must be cheaper than on Amazon, right?

Also, just because they paid doesn't mean your adventure is over. For all you know, a three year old bought it.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yup.

I wanted a radio controlled wall clock yesterday, looked at ebay and saw several at £11 plus postage. Then checked Argos (don't know if you've come across them - they're basically a mail order catalogue company with shops where you can buy most of the stuff in the catalogue) and found that they had the same clock at £8.99 and another (actually nicer in my opinion) at £7.99 - bought that one on my way home and it's working fine.

The parents of any three year old who is allowed access to a computer for the several hours between the last bid and the end of the auction and payment deserve everything they get.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lincolnshire/5379930.stm

News item on 3-year old buying a car on eBay (dunno if you've seen it already).

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes, I saw it - needless to say I am VERY careful about logging off, even though I don't have any kids.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Just remembered another silly one - I have a favourite search for accessories for my elderly microscope, and got a notification yesterday. It turned out to be a CD containing PDFs of the instruction manuals at £4.99 plus £3.00 postage. They're almost impossible to find as books... but if you look carefully at the CD picture on ebay you can see the name of the company that sells it - and when I checked their price was £4 plus £2 postage!

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the buyer has read the Paradox of Choice, and hasn't the time to spend the time comparing prices.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Maybe. But it took me two minutes to check the price at Amazon, they had several hours between bidding and the end of the auction.

[raygungothic.livejournal.com]

I don't see that being pleased by that would make you bad. If people want to behave foolishly in auctions, that's their problem.

Then again, this was a US-import DVD, wasn't it? They may not have a method to pay US online retailers, which would leave over-paying for a UK one the most practical option. I fall into this category occasionally as I've no credit card, only Switch.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I bought it through Amazon UK, as far as I know I could have used Switch instead. When you buy region 1 from them Amazon act as broker - you choose a supplier but Amazon take the money in pounds, take their cut, then pay the supplier in dollars - the advantage is that postage is usually much cheaper than buying direct from the supplier, but it gets VERY complicated if there's a problem.

[raygungothic.livejournal.com]

Ah, I didn't know there was such a system on Amazon, thanks for the pointer. I can see how that might complicate.

[i_kender]

That's great, I'm pleased for you! You virtual highwayman, you ;)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

I stopped watching it when it hit 15 quid. ;o)

[parakkum.livejournal.com]

I'm most surprised by people who bid items on eBay past the Buy It Now price for that exact same item on eBay. I've noticed this in the context of the only things I really buy on eBay -- miniatures for Star Wars Miniatures and Mechwarrior.

Sure, I get that one might not think to countercheck against Amazon, but surely they would have noticed when you were looking for the item in the first place on eBay?

Random note -- someone bombed (small bomb) the PayPal section of the eBay headquarters on Halloween. I don't know if that made it past the local news here, what with elections and other more international concerns.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Nobody else was selling it on eBay, and I didn't post a Buy It Now price. So presumably they thought it was very rare.

[draconin.livejournal.com]

About 2 years ago they were having a sale of Buffy DVDs (2 sets=1 season) at my local store. The normal price at that time was AUD$80 to $100 depending on where you went and the sale price was AUD$35. I had a bit of spare cash at the time so I bought about $2500 of them, nearly 4 complete sets of Buffy and Angel, and then sold them on eBay. I made about $700 on the deal, even selling some to people in the same city as me who could have bought them cheaper by looking in the paper to see the sale!