An evil bidding war

A few readers pointed me to an amusing and devious bidding war featured on the site Gizmodo.

You can see the full-sized picture by clicking on the thumbnail image I’ve posted:

The postings suggest an interesting story. Someone has lost her iPod touch and is offering $50 as a reward. And someone else sees a bidding opportunity and unscrupulously offers a higher reward.

What do you make of all of this?

There are many angles and here are some of my instant reactions.

Making a serious offer

The bid topper seems to think an extra dollar will matter to the finder. But this is a curious assessment. If the finder were after money, then it would probably make more sense to steal the iPod touch–worth several hundred dollars–and resell it or gift it.

If the finder were after money, a serious bid like $100 might be more sensible.

Faking it right

The choice of $51 is a give-away that the bid is fraudulent. Imagine if the fake bidder also chose $50. Or perhaps even underbid at $40? This might give the finder second thoughts about which bid is real.

Taking a joke too far

The joke bid actually does more harm than it perhaps intends to. Such a bid may raise the suspicion that the entire thing is a scam. This is the same type of suspicion that you might feel when you get multiple emails to lose weight or make money. With spam and security, the bad tends to crowd out the good.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on the picture. What are yours?



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  • http://www.ladadadada.net Dave

    As a slightly more suspicious and maybe even paranoid person, this shows me that all messages of this sort could be a scam.

    I could put a note up like that anywhere at any time. It costs me nothing and eventually, someone will come and give me an iPod for $50.

    That’s not to say you shouldn’t bother calling up someone if you do find an iPod. Just ask them to name a few of the songs on it before you go handing it over.

  • icd

    very simple. call both of them and interrogate them. identifying the real owner wouldn’t be a problem at all. there may be some pics of the owner on the ipod-touch. any honest finder will not be easily deceived.

  • http://www.mawsoft.com/blog RohoMech

    It seems like adding a phrase to the note “I can identify several marks on the phone / specific details about it etc…” would help the more serious bidder, perhaps adding with a post-it & raising the reward to $52 would help :-)

  • roundsquare

    @Dave – You might still be able to get away with this. Pick a very popular song. It might be harder to get away with, but again, at no cost, might be worth it.

  • Sauron

    (Super late response!)

    Asking for identifying details seems game-able, as well. If I put up the fake sign, I could call the number on the real one, ask for the same sort of information, determine that “the iPod I found” was not hers, and then be prepared for another caller.





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