This is an auction for a digital photo that the seller will email to the buyer. It’s currently priced at U.S. 5 cents. Even if he sells it to both bidders, that adds up to a dime, hardly enough to offset the cost of fees paid to eBay. And the seller can’t even make money on shipping charges. What am I missing?
He’s not, he’s inflating his positive feedback. He will presumably take advantage of that later to rip somebody off.
Well, you could ask the seller.
Just click on the “Ask seller a question” link on the eBay page you linked to.
BTW, I see from the seller’s feedback page that some of the photos he/she sells have sold for as much as 0.26 CAD!
If so, he or she is a very, very patient scam artist, because the seller’s username was registered in 2002.
And they have 200+ feedback already.
Here’s another example. This guy’s selling a CD of 34 images for 99 cents, with free shipping from Israel. And he has “10 available,” so the price isn’t going any higher.
216 of which were in the last month.
I agree wth yoyodyne.
Or they have had their account phished/hacked recently. They have had over 200 buy/sells of less than a dollar in the past ten days!
Take a look at his feedback; all people with very low numbers themselves. One guy bought three of the same digital photo.
Yes, it is a “You pump up my positives and I’ll pump up your positives” deal. I would be a bit leery of buying anything from his customers too, when they start selling.
That’s even more suspicious. If he’s sending people the actual files, why would anyone buy more than one of the same image?
Selling positive feedback has been a cottage industry on eBay for quite awhile now. One of the best ones I saw was a guy selling a “genuine air guitar” complete with a photo of the bozo rockin’ out with it (i.e. with nothing).
Since technically they aren’t breaking any rules there isn’t too much eBay can do to stop them. I found out by seeing an auction that looked to good to be true (it was for a homemade DVD set of MTV’s Daria claiming super high quality and a really low price). I cross referenced the guys feedback and found it was all this phony ‘bought’ kind.
Like they say, caveat emptor…