a bit of a cautionary tale from eBay

I just posted this over at mu-43, but thought I'd share over here too .. it made me smile ... in a wry sort of way

Idly surfing around eBay this morning, I came across a used, boxed Summicron 35/2 + all original accessories with a starting bid of £0.01 and located in the UK ... hmmm I thought this looks a bit too good to be true ... then I noticed it was a 24-hour auction ... hmmmm again ...

checked the account history ... all +ve but oddly also all in the USA, all in $ transactions and almost all domestic items (it looked sweet actually, there was a pregnancy testing kit bought in May last year and then increasing purchases of baby stuff since) ...

anyway, I thought I'd have a look at the other items for sale ... almost every single one (nearly a hundred of them) was a high-value electrical or electronic item or a bike or bike accessories, all listed with a £0.01 starting price and all on a 24-hour auction ... yes, funnily enough, all the sorts of things you could break into a house or a car or a garage and take easily ...

so I whacked in a bid on the Summicron of 6p  smile , and sent an email to the vendor asking for serial number and why, if the goods were in Leeds, was the account in the USA?

Astoundingly I did not get a reply, but I did get an email from eBay within about 10 minutes of my bid & question telling me the bid had been cancelled and all the items for sale removed ... I reckon had they set BIN prices they might have got away with this hijack ...

So, the moral, as ever, is: If it's too good to be true ...