A three-year-old girl bought a full-size excavating digger on an
auction website for 20,000 New Zealand dollars (£7,600), it is
reported today.
Pipi Quinlan woke up early at home in Stanmore Bay, near
Auckland, New Zealand, and decided to play with the family computer
while her parents slept, the
Rodney
Times said.
She came across the auction site
TradeMe, which her mother
had bookmarked, and after a few clicks of the mouse she unwittingly
made the top bid for a Kobelco digger, the most recent item listed
on the homepage.
Her mother Sarah Quinlan knew about it only when she got up and
went to the computer. She talked about it today to BBC News.
"I saw an e-mail from TradeMe saying I had won an auction and
another e-mail from the seller saying something like 'I think
you'll love this digger'."
She assumed she had won a Lego toy set she had been looking for,
and "it wasn't until I went back and re-read the e-mails that I saw
$20,000 and got the shock of my life", she said.
Quinlan explained the error to TradeMe and the seller. The
seller did not see the funny side. But TradeMe has reimbursed the
seller's costs and the digger has now been sold to an adult.
Rodney
Times article