Sweet little 3-year-old Pipi Quinlan of New Zealand was able to cast the winning $12,300 bid (NZ$20,000) for her mom on an online auction site called TradeMe. The auction was for a full-sized piece of heavy earth moving equipment, as is used by construction workers, and not the toy the little girl thought it was.

Pipi had seen her mother buy other items online, including even toys for young Pipi. When her mother was away from the computer, Pipi just did what she saw her mom do… though in grand fashion.

When her mother, Sarah Quinlan, got the email from TradeMe saying she had won the auction, along with a note which read, “I think you’ll love this digger”, there was much confusion. Then she realized what had happened — her daughter thought she was buying a toy, not a full-sized digger.

Sarah may have been on the hook for $12 grand worth of heavy machinery, thanks to little Pipi. Fortunately, howver, she was able to contact TradeMe, explain the situation, and the auction site understood completely. They reimbursed the seller’s costs and agreed to relist the digger on their auction site. Very nice.

Oops! But seriously, that’s a bright kid! I mean how many three-year-olds can execute searches, move the mouse well enough to click on even thumbnail links, and then remember enough of what mom did to click the actual bid button in the correct sequence to do a full transaction? Not many I’d wager. My five year old can do quite a bit on the computer, but I doubt he could do that at age 3.

And I would like to personally give the TradeMe online auction site my first ever Geek.com Wonderfulness Award for being so understanding. They, unlike eBay, who when due to a similar user error, accidentally allowed a Pennsylvania District Superintended to sell a $10,000 unused school trailer (for an overflow classroom) for only $1, acted correctly.