26 Jan
2002
26 Jan
'02
6:07 a.m.
On Sat, 26 Jan 2002, John Foust wrote:
At 09:09 PM 1/25/2002 -0600, Tothwolf wrote:
What I am saying, is that I often see idiot wannabe dealers overpay for
*junk* at the local auctions, not even knowing what they are buying, all
the while thinking they can make a fast buck off of "suckers" on ebay.
Had the guy posted a note saying "as-is" or "nonworking", I still
would
have thought it insane for the guy to be trying to sell *nonworking* units
for $50 mininum bid when a brand new *working* unit can be bought for the
same price. I don't think anyone ended up buying any of them at $50, but
this was obviously a case of a bad seller.
I was quite sick when I saw the seller trying to
sell these off to
uneducated buyers on ebay for $50 each. If someone had indeed bought
one at that price, they would have been tempted to try to repair it
when it did not work. People qualified to work on these units would
tend to be educated buyers and not even consider paying $50 for a dead
unit.
What are you suggesting? That a warning label might've saved their
lives, or just saved them from parting from their cash? Or that the
auctioneer's job is to accurately represent the state of each gizmo,
as opposed to saying "all sales as-is and final", which is far easier
and still manages to attract plenty of buyers. The whole point of an auction is that it's a good
way to maximize
profit while making a big pile of junk disappear. Evaluating the goods
(accurately or professionally) and warning the buyers about nitpicks
isn't profitable.
Again, what I am getting at is ebay itself has spawned a whole new
generation of get-rich-quick idiots who buy up stuff at local auctions for
inflated prices and try to sell it at an even higher price on ebay.
Maybe someone buys dead UPSes to recover the lead in
the batteries,
who knows.
I've bought many dead UPS myself. The amount of lead contained in a
typical UPS is next to worthless. I find a hard time just finding a place
locally that will take the stuff for free. The city won't take sealed lead
acid batteries because they don't look like automotive batteries.
-Toth