In This Economy?

We recently reported on how schools across the country were being fiscally responsible. Now let’s visit the other end of that spectrum.

The East Stroudsburg school district in Pennsylvania recently sold one of their used school trailers (or as my childhood schools called them: portables) for one dollar on eBay. The trailer initially cost around $60,000. To to sum that up, the school district lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $59,999 in one mouse click. If that’s not the opposite of fiscally responsible, I don’t know what is.

The East Stroudsburg school district was trying to get rid of the trailer because they’re building some new facilities on the site where it was. Unfortunately, in this economy, they weren’t having a lot of luck finding buyers. I really don’t understand how they were having a hard time finding buyers for a crappy, used portable trailer but what do I know about trailer sales. Anyway, the dearth of potential buyers led the school district to look towards eBay for answers.

Unfortunately, the person they asked to place the ad was not aware that eBay has features like a reserve, which won’t sell your item unless its bids go over a certain amount. They just dropped it to the eBay wolves and walked away.

It didn’t take long for all the used, portable, school trailer shoppers out there to see it, and before East Stroudsburg knew what hit them it had been sold. For a buck.

I recommend going HERE and watching the news clip about the story. The local tax-payers reactions (and their teeth) from 1:03 – 1:20 make the whole thing worth a view.

So what does the East Stroudsburg school district do now? In regards to the eBay botch, nothing. The sale is final. It’s not all bad news for them though because they still have more used trailers to try and sell.

Maybe they’ll use craigslist this time.

Tags: botch, eBay, idiots, portables, school, trailers

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 12:13 AM and is filed under Bad News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.