Why Do People Do This?

[Ascending Wordsmith]

This is an auction I just won:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1058&item=934551531&rd=1

This is the email (word for word) the closest bidder sent to me an hour or so before the auction ended:

Hi,

I'm a serious ebay bidder and have through a plethora of circumsnaces, bad timing, et al, have continually missed the Robot Carnival cd , a cd which I have been looking for years. If you want it that badly go ahead and bid, but let me warn that I WANT THAT CD!!! How much are you willing to put down for it?

-Zeta

I never understood the strategy of emailing opposing bidders. The guy says he's a serious bidder. I'm assuming he thought I was placing a bid just for fun. Why do people do this? Needless to say, he lost the auction despite warning me that he wanted the cd. I sent him a nice email telling him that he underbid me by a mere $2.48. I even asked him why he didn't bid higher as his last bid was placed one hour before the auction ended.

Has anyone else been emailed by opposing bidders?

[nesman85]

about a month ago i was bidding on an item and another of the bidders e-mailed me and asked me about how much it would cost to ship to a certain zip code, what condition it was in etc. they must have meant to e-mail the seller, but it was pretty funny.

[Chunky]

about a month ago i was bidding on an item and another of the bidders e-mailed me and asked me about how much it would cost to ship to a certain zip code, what condition it was in etc. they must have meant to e-mail the seller, but it was pretty funny.

so you like tell them 57.65 to ship 3 week express.

[Queen Of The Felines]

When I was on AOL someone e-mailed me about an auction I was currently winning. This person claimed that she wanted to win the auction for her son, and could I please stop bidding against her. I wrote her back and politely explained how ebay's proxy bidding worked, and about five minutes later I get an instant message from her begging me to stop bidding. I again explained that I wasn't doing anything, and the only way she'd win was to bid more than I had. You would think that it would have been enough, but noooo, this person kept IMing me and actually began harrassing and THREATENING me about it, along with continually sending e-mails as well. It finally dawns on me that it was a kid and I eventually told him to knock off the shit or I'd report him to both AOL and ebay, and I was sure his/her parents wouldn't like it.

I won the auction. :)

Kristine

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I had this happen once with a Discs Of Tron marquee, which can be a pretty pricey item if it's in decent shape. Within a few minutes of winning, I got..well, I'll just describe it as a hostile e-mail from the second highest bidder giving me grief and saying stuff along the lines of "You'd damn well better be doing an arcade restoration, because I needed that."

I simply replied that what I planned to do with it was really none of his business. Never heard from him again - even though I e-mailed him with the link for the auction for a nearly-identical DoT marquee, in better condition than the one I had gotten, from the same seller a few weeks later. :roll:

[buttasuperb]

i had one person email me and call me an idiot because i placed my bid with 20 seconds or so left, and he sniped me with a few seconds left.

another person emailed me all pissed off and swearing because i sniped them and got a real good deal on a psx lot.

[scooterb23]

The first time I ever tried out eBay, a few years ago. I got an e-mail, worded almost exactly like that PCK just after I won a complete TG-16 Impossamole for $2.

The loser kept insisting that I had to sell it to him...I kept refusing, I then had to threaten action to eBay and his ISP...the threats stopped, but the credit card spam started rolling in...

@PDF - What you needed to do was send him a picture of you standing naked, covering your private area with the marquee :) That would have steamed him good...[/quote]

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

Nah, a Pac-Man cabaret marquee would've been adequate for that. I don't need anything nearly as big as Discs Of Tron. LOL

And sure I'm gonna do a DoT arcade restoration. I just need the rest of the machine to go around the marquee... :roll: