On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:08:59 -0500, "HeyBub"
wrote:

"Seattle has officially washed its hands of the five self-cleaning toilets.
The toilets cost the city $5 million. They sold on eBay Thursday evening for
$12,549."

They made a mistake by having all the auctions end within about ten
minutes of each other, every 2 minutes or so.

They should have spaced them out every two hours so that people would
bid on one, lose, then bid higher on the next. More people would
have bid on the first one, if they knew that still had time to bid on
the second, and third.

I don't consider this such a big mistake of whatever city employee ran
the auctions. It's not the sort of thing a newbie would think of.
OTOH, if they have a running agreement with Bidadoo, maybe they should
have been given better advice. OTOH, it's in Bidadoo's interest too
to get as much as possible, so I don't know.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...ilets15m0.html