Ian Usher, 44, was drinking champagne and celebrating on Sunday night after the seven-day auction of his Australian lifestyle started with a bang, hitting 650,000 dollars (619,265 US).<\/p>\n
By the time he awoke on Monday, bidding had reached 1.9 million dollars and then ticked over the two-million-dollar point as he sat watching his computer.<\/p>\n
But after initially laughing at his luck, Usher quickly came down to earth when he realised that a registration system for bidding on the eBay auction site had not been activated.<\/p>\n
The former carpet store assistant, who is selling his near-new three-bedroom home in Perth in Western Australia as part of his "life package", began ringing the people behind the offers to check whether they were genuine.<\/p>\n
Usher, originally from Yorkshire in England, said the highest bidders gave a range of excuses — from blaming another family member for making the bid to claiming their eBay password had been stolen — before they all backed out.<\/p>\n
"They are just idiots, absolute idiots," he told AFP.<\/p>\n
"I think I was speaking to kids most of the time."<\/p>\n
Usher has now deleted most of the bids on the site, even though some may have been genuine, and the top offer for his "life" sits at 300,100 dollars.<\/p>\n
"That’s not even 75 percent of the value of the house," he said.<\/p>\n
Usher has said the unusual auction was triggered by his break-up with his wife more than two years ago, and the desire to rid himself of the personal possessions which reminded him of the happy years they spent together.<\/p>\n
As well as the house and contents, Usher is also offering the winning bidder introductions to his friends and a stint at his former job for at least two weeks, with the possibility of permanent employment if the store owners agree.<\/p>\n
If the sale goes ahead, Usher will keep only his passport, wallet and the clothes on his back.<\/p>\n
He said the value of the assets for sale — which includes everything from an indoor spa to a home entertainment system to his pots and pans — was between 450,000 and 500,000 and he was confident of reaching that point.<\/p>\n
"I’m beyond worried, I’m just along for the ride at the moment," he told AFP.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A middle-aged man who put his life up for auction on the Internet said on Tuesday "idiots" had made fake bids which pushed up the price of his home, job and lifestyle to unrealistic levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}