I'm not sure I completely understand why you guys think capitalizing on people's laziness is some kind of new or crazy idea. You do realize our entire economy is built upon this concept right?
You'll all act as if the sellers or buyers are so beneath you, but I'm willing to bet every single one of you has been to a restaurant and paid for a meal, you could have easily made yourself at home for much cheaper. It's money paid, to avoid personal effort.
These Ebay auctions are no different. Someone turning a profit, off of another persons laziness. They aren't being taken advantage of, the buyer knows that and so does the seller. The buyer knows damn well they could get "it" themselves if they spent the time and effort the seller did, but they made a personal decision that they'd rather pay someone else to do the work for them. The same way you paid a maid to clean your house for you. Because your time is more valuable than that. It's not hard to do the math. If your time is worth X/hr and the selling price is less than what you make in that hour, it's cost effective to spend the money.
If you make $20 an hour, and on average the X1 Challenges combine to 30(?) minutes, logically as long as the Ebay price is less than $10, its value can be justified to that person.
The Used Car Dealership? I've heard horror stories of people looking for "that car" for weeks, spamming the UCD, cycling day after day and yet to get the car they want. If some guy on ebay is selling that car for 1 Euro, I dunno what that is in Dollars, but I assume it's less than $2? Is is really so pathetic to spend $2 to spare yourself that mind numbing experience?
$2 for the car you want, right now, so that you can enjoy using it, actually playing the game for a week
or
Spend a week spamming your UCD, not entering a single race, to finally get the car you want.
To me, I find the later more pathetic than the first. And I'm sure some of you will be eager to jump on the possibility that "Searching and finding the car is part of the fun." And to you it might be. But to someone else, they'll have more fun racing the car they want, rather than searching for it. You can't define 'fun' for anyone but yourself, so stop acting as if you can.
How many of you pay to have your oil changed, simply because the $15 difference isn't worth the inconvenience of buying the oil/filter, crawling under your car, getting dirty and greasy, and then being stuck with the oil to dispose of yourself?
Time and effort are relevant regardless of whether the outcome is virtual or real.
As for the legality, I don't know Ebay's policy, but I know paypal doesn't insure 'Virtual Goods' so it's easy to get screwed even if the auction successfully ends. (but I think it's the seller who gets screwed, because the buyer gets their money back without having to give the virtual item back) There use to be an easy way around that, but I assume Ebay/paypal have gotten smart, but technically it would be hard to prevent. All you had to do was sell a Penny, or paper clip, something of minimal value, and 'with' that item, you got <insert whatever here> for free. So people end up paying $10 for a penny, but the penny comes with whatever virtual good that was actually being sold. I've never seen it done for virtual crap, but this is how they use to avoid items they couldn't legally sell, because they weren't "Authorized Dealers". Like Oakley Sunglasses back in the day, ebayers couldn't sell them, because they weren't Dealers, so they used that penny trick to get around it.
