SOLD! One million dollars for a PS3

If the seller had half a brain, he would have made this a private auction, meaning that he buyers would have needed to contact him before bidding. Once the seller would have felt that the buyer would not be a dead-beat, he would have added him to an approve list.

His Ebay bill will be a little more than a single PS3…it will be around $15,000…final value fees are not capped in this ebay category. The seller probably put the buy it now price in as joke, but the video games category is chock full of trolls who go about wantonly wrecking auctions with buy it now bids. The seller’s key mistake was not to require immediate payment via paypal to make a buy it now bid. The seller will be able to claim a refund on final fees by filling out some forms in the highly likely case he doesn’t get paid, but Ebay generally bills first and asks questions later.

I believe that the seller will be fine. When a seller reports a non-paying bidder eBay does not charge closing fees and allows the auction to be re-listed for free. Further eBay does not charge fees immediately after auction close. So the seller will have plenty of time to recoup his losses.

The sellers mistake was not demanding buyers with a feedback score of ten or higher. Most eBay auction take little maintenance. However, these types of auctions require the seller to remove buyers with low feedback.