Parents in a hole after 3-year-old buys backhoe online
Three-year-old Pipi Quinlan bought a $20,000 Kobelco digger on Trade Me, prompting immediate damage control by her mum when her purchase was revealed…
Parents Sarah and Reid Quinlan, of Stanmore Bay, were astonished to wake one morning to find Pipi had bought the huge excavating digger in a Trade Me auction.
The technically savvy kid had woken early and, with the rest of her family sound asleep, decided to play with the computer.
With a few clicks of the mouse she entered Internet Explorer and the Trade Me site her mother had already logged on to.
After a few more timely clicks, she had won the most recent auction listed on the site’s homepage.
It was for a Kobelco digger, and she had it for $20,000 – money she didn’t have in her piggy bank.
“The first I knew about it was when I came down and opened up the computer,” says mum Sarah.
“I saw an email from Trade Me saying I had won an auction and another email from the seller saying something like ‘I think you’ll love this digger’…”
“It wasn’t until I went back and re-read the emails that I saw $20,000, and got the shock of my life,” says Sarah.
The auction site reversed the sale after Mrs. Quinlan called and explained what had happened.
And the computer is, uh, now kept out of Pipi’s reach.
