Sellers finally outwitted ebay! Good for them!
By ctrymuziklvr
@ctrymuziklvr (11057)
United States
March 22, 2008 8:14am CST
Two sisters from Virginia sold their Illinois-shaped corn flake on eBay Friday night for $1,350.
The winner of the auction, which lasted more than a week, is the owner of a trivia Web site who wants to add the corn flake to a traveling museum.
They listed the corn flake on eBay last week, but eBay canceled the auction saying it violated the Web site's food policy.
The sisters restarted their Ebay auction, advertising a coupon redeemable for their corn flake, instead of the cereal itself.
Was this smart thinking or what! Do you think they came up with the idea of the coupon or did they get some help?
5 people like this
14 responses
@luvstochat (6907)
• United States
22 Mar 08
That was pretty clever. When I see people list coupons though they always list them as you are bidding on their time to cut the coupons out as I think ebay has a policy against selling coupons too but looks like they worded their auction right good for them.
6 people like this
@ctrymuziklvr (11057)
• United States
22 Mar 08
I've learned from experience on ebay that the wording of a listing makes a big difference. These girls were pretty smart and I'm sure they got some help from a parent or friend with some experience on ebay.
3 people like this
@xXxMikesWifeyxXx (3072)
• United States
22 Mar 08
LMAO. wow people will buy anything these days lol.
But awsome for the susters. now they are 1300 richer then they were before. thats a good shopping spree.
Anyways. thats way cool that they figured it out. so like i dont understand the whole cupon thing though..
@ctrymuziklvr (11057)
• United States
22 Mar 08
I don't really get the coupon thing either and have never seen any on ebay but if it got them some money and the person who wanted it what they wanted that's all that counts right? I read that they are planning on taking a trip with the money....
2 people like this
@Darkwing (21583)
•
22 Mar 08
It's difficult to say whether they came up with the idea themselves, but it was pretty smart thinking, on their part.
I would imagine they would have had to have the idea of a coupon in order to pursue it. Maybe there's something in E-Bay's Guidelines which they noticed?
Brightest Blessings.
1 person likes this
@carolscash (9492)
• United States
22 Mar 08
Ebay does have policies on a lot of their items and coupons are one of them. However, with coupons you just post that they are bidding on the time that you have spent finding the coupon. I have sold lots of coupons on there and I have a friend who that is all he sells.
These sisters were smart about this. I just wonder how people find this stuff and how this dumb stuff brings so much money.
@jezzikabret (245)
• United States
22 Mar 08
Good for those girls! Very creative idea for getting around the EBAY policies.
Did you know ebay takes a percentage of your sale? Its crazy, it used to be a much better website. I don't think its as easy to sell things on their as it used to be.
@jewelenterprises (1996)
• Australia
22 Mar 08
Yeah, it's VERY hard to make a profit on Ebay these days with their fees and all the sellers undercutting one another's prices. I've sold on Ebay and most things you only get $5-$10 profit on them after Ebay and Paypal fees. Consequently, I now sell on sites with NO listing fees... you don't sell as much but at least it doesn't cost a fortune to list.
Actually, Ebay recently made themselves unpopular by decreasing listing fees but increasing final value fees and in many cases the increase outweighed the decrease (ie. if the listing fee dropped by 20 cents the final value fee increased by 30 cents meaning more money in ebay's pocket)
1 person likes this
@jewelenterprises (1996)
• Australia
22 Mar 08
LOL, good for them :)
Does anyone remember the story about the piece of nutrigrain cereal shaped like the head of 'ET' (the little alien)... it sold for over $250,000 and was the biggest auction ever on ebay. It was years ago now but it was all over the news LOL.
@lingli_78 (12822)
• Australia
23 Mar 08
that's very smart and clever for them... i think a bit of change in the way they change their wording and sell their item make a big difference in e-bay... well-done... i learn something new from this post again...
@crazylady (470)
• United States
24 Mar 08
I don't know- but that's awesome! I need something good I can sell on Ebay and makes some good quick money!
@tess1960 (2385)
• United States
23 Mar 08
Ah yes, those two little ladies are going places!! We need more ingeniuos kids like that these days. I love it that they got around yet another of e-bays many rules.
@dfranz2 (49)
• United States
22 Mar 08
That is fantastic news! Finally someone has circumvented the nazi's.
I am sure that eBay will soon have a policy change, and/or the sisters will be suspended for a violation of some sort. They make up the rules as they go, kinda like NASCAR. God Bless those sisters from Virginia!!!
@just2crazygirlz (2479)
• United States
23 Mar 08
Pretty smart thinking. I have sold stuff like gymbucks from gymboree on there before. You can list the actual gymbucks so you list the envelope. I just learned that from looking at other auctions so they probably came up with it on their own from some research.
@tinabme2 (90)
• United States
28 Mar 08
Thats cool Im glad for them, ebay gets on my last nerve. I have a box full of fashion jeweler that I put up for sell on there some time ago, but never got any response and ebay just kept on charging me a fee even after I stopped the sell for lack of response I had to finally call them and email them to cancel the payment from my account. The finally took care of it but now they just bug and bug me to try to sell something else. I dont think so. All I wanted to do was sell the jeweler and be done with it so now im still trying to sell it another way.
P.S. its hard to say where they might have gotten the idea the good thing is that it worked.
@deannatroupe (172)
• United States
27 Mar 08
Good for them. I love it when people outsmart ebay. I get tired of them changing the rules every 5 seconds.
