EV1 Electric Car on eBay for $100k. Oh Wait! It's Just the Manual...
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 07.22.08
Honey, Guess What I Just Bought on eBay!
There's a classic eBay scam that goes something like this: You sell the box, or the manual of something that is very valuable or in high-demand, and you do it in such a way that it is possible to mistake it for the real thing. A good way to add credibility is to have a very high starting price. We've seen this with Playstation 3 boxes and iPhone boxes being sold for the price of the real thing, and now we have this beautiful 1997 EV1 electric car... manual on sale for $100,000.
The seller is obviously hoping that a very rich person will forget to put on his glasses and make a bid. While it's good to see that there's enough demand for electric cars (see 17 Electric Cars that You Must Know About) for this to happen, we hope that nobody will be fooled. Here's the eBay Auction for the EV1 Manual. Via eBay scam of the day: EV1 owner's manual for $100,000
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the picture of the car looks like an ad from an 80's magazine
The auction has it going for $1,000,000 not $100,000. And the seller is requesting offers, so they obviously are not expecting it to sell for that much. Perhaps setting the crazy high price was just a publicity stunt. If so, it worked.
Maybe the seller is hoping GM will pay the million in order to destroy all evidence of its existence
This is not in any way a scam.
If anyone has a brain and can read they will see that very clearly this is the manual for sale, not the car.
I except better of treehugger than this.
"This is not in any way a scam.
If anyone has a brain and can read they will see that very clearly this is the manual for sale, not the car.
I except better of treehugger than this."
Hey, so you are the seller, right?
Yeah, and the $600 iPhone box wasn't a scam either.
The whole point of writing it "clearly" is to be able to deny that it is a trick, yet the real wish and motivation is for someone to not read it all and think that he/she is buying something else.
Otherwise, why pay the fee to list something a million bux?
This auction was certainly not a scam. When I first saw it on the first listing it was clear to me this auction was for the manual only. Just how clear can the line "Collectible GM 97's Electric Car EV1 Owner's Manual Set" in bold type as a headline really be. Furthermore, the auction states within it that it is for the manual. Then again, I have always had problems in my business with people who have a large, easy to read sign right in front of them, and still will ask the question that the sign answers. Sadly, this is usually something as simple as the price, which is proudly displayed in 4 inch tall letters right in front of their face. (See, I've learned over the years that many people simply don't read or pay attention to signs.)
Frankly, the various high Buy It Now prices hit me as an attention getter, though I really wonder what the seller really expects to get. It looks like they have turned down several offers.