I was told a while back that such things happen, when the seller doesn't want to sell the unit and does not want to close the ebay offer for any reason. ![Confused :-//](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/confused0024.gif)
No Idea, why this should be a good idea. Perhaps some of the semi-professional sellers here do know some reasons.
I'm not a seller anyway. But once upon a time, I bought some items from a (semi) professional seller by a telephone call after having seen the unit on the bay. After agreeing on the price, he mumbled something like "Now I'll raise the price on the bay so no one will buy it until the regular end of the auction. If I remove too many items prematurely, evil bay will complain."
Ah, that's the first sensible, truly plausible explanation for that phenomenon that I've seen. So, it's just a way of gaming the system, a broken system as its intent can be nullified by gaming it.
That phenomenon, and all the unsatisfactory half arsed guesses at why it exists has been niggling me for a while. It's very satisfying to finally get a good explanation. I feel slightly wiser now, and that's always a good thing.
Well... there's also several illegitimate purposes for crazy auction and Craigslist, Kijiji, etc listings as well. Some are just plain drug deals. Some are insurance fraud.
On Craigslist, etc, some are deliberately lowball to take advantage of recent legislation that allows insurance companies to just pull some rando posting off Craigslist and use THAT as a value basis for your vehicle or other valuable property; I had to sue my insurance company over a total loss on that one. They tried to use a bogus listing on Craigslist that was 4K below Bluebook, and THEN use the mileage & features deduction tables on top of that. Then another such listing... and another.
Where I caught them up was "Did you call the seller? Were you able to confirm that this car was available to buy at that price? Because I did. 10 calls over 3 days."
"We called, but didn't get any answer..." multiple times, multiple different listings.
Turns out this is a huge ongoing scam, perpetrated by crooked auto body shops and mostly skeevy independent insurance agents, but the entire insurance industry knows aboot it and takes advantage.
IMO, if they're going to use these private listings as a value basis, they should have to buy the car for you, and have it delivered. That is what "replacement cost" insurance SHOULD mean, FFS.
![Face Palm :palm:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/facepalm.gif)
mnem
Current mood: tangential.