24th May 2002
$11,000 Spelling Mistake Been away
$11,000 Spelling Mistake
Been away from the blog for a few days in part due to a fun-filled visit from an old college buddy who was my best man at my wedding. Mike, a furniture maker and master woodworker, is pretty much computer illiterate (ironic, since both his brother and father made small fortunes in the computer industries). Nonetheless, he just pulled off such a brilliant move on eBay I have to share it with you. Mike and his brother recently bought a huge farm in Maryland, some 400 acres. So naturally, he was in the market for a tractor. As with computers, Mike similiarly knows little about tractors, but in his quest to buy one, he had determined that John Deere was the best brand and that the model they were looking at was going to run about $40,000, even for a 10-year-old used one, down from about $65,000 new. So he and his brother were surfing eBay and getting discouraged at the prices when Mike suggested, “We’re looking for someone selling a tractor who knows even less about tractors than we do. Let’s try searching with the spelling ‘John Deer.’” Sure enough, some poor schlub has exactly the model they’re looking for listed under that spelling, with zero bids. They dropped him a note and suggested he call them. The guy was behind on his mortgage and desperate to raise money and was at a complete loss to understand why no one on eBay had even made a bid so far. Best of all, he lived only a couple hours away. $29,000 later, Mike owns a tractor but still no computer.
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