Ananova:

A three-year-old New Zealand girl bought a mechanical digger for £8,000 while her parents were asleep.

Pipi Quinlan, who lives in Auckland, logged onto the family computer and got on to an online auction site her mum had been using earlier.

She then submitted what turned out to be a winning bid of 20,000 New Zealand dollars for a massive Kobelco digger, the Rodney Times reports.

When her mother, Sarah Quinlan, woke up and logged onto the computer, she saw a series of emails from the Trade Me auction site.

"It wasn't until I went back and re-read the emails that I saw $NZ20,000, and got the shock of my life," Ms Quinlan said.

"I called my husband Reid over to make sure I wasn't seeing things. I asked him what a Kobelco was and he said: 'I think it's an earthmoving digger'.

"I asked him if he'd been buying a digger. He said it wasn't him, and the only other person in the house is our 18-month-old son. That's when we realised it must have been Pipi.

"She doesn't even like tractors. She's a real girlie girl - even when she goes fishing she wears frilly dresses.

"I think she was just clicking on the computer to see what happened," Ms Quinlan said.

She called Trade Me and told staff that her daughter had accidentally made the bid. The website agreed to cancel the sale and refund the seller's listing costs.