My Confusing Sales

So, I'm looking around eBay one day and notice that people are selling gmail account invitations. A while back, anyone working on their Blogs got an invite to set up a Google gmail account and after a period of activity, that gmail account received a message to invite 6 more people to try out their system. Pretty cool eh?

I saw that people were selling 5 invites for about $4 and thought 'hmmmm, if nothing else I could build up some feedback ratings by selling something basically immediately. And then I noticed people were selling single invites for about 50 cents.

Well, that's good too, but 50 cents costs the SELLER money. eBay charges 30 cents for the listing and to do it "immediately" means that Paypal payments cost an additional 30 cents. I'd be out 10 cents.

I'm still unemployed, so every cent counts these days...

So, I'd set up a personal gmail account and a second gmail account for eBay sales. Just seemed easier to me. I got the 6 invites through the personal account a few months back and just recently got another 6 through the Ebay account. So, it was time to start selling them off.

I sold my first one for 60 cents, so I lost 2 cents after all the fees. I decided to increase the price a bit and see if I could make a few pennies. And, of course, the feedback is always helpful too.

So, what happens? I sell one for $3.25.... That shouldn't happen. People are still getting $4 for 5 invites, so why should I get $3 for a single account? Well, it turns out that the bidder accidentally bid $99 instead of 99 cents. It can happen. A friend of mine once bid $1001 instead of $10.01... eep.

So, there's the anomaly right? Wrong. The next one sold for $9.75.

$9.75!!! And HE'S PAID ALREADY.

This could be interesting...