San Francisco - Need a girlfriend but want none of the hassle of actually spending time together? You'd better act fast if you want to find her on eBay.

A crop of crafty eBay entrepreneurs are offering "imaginary girlfriend" services to the highest bidder, staying just ahead of the Web auctioneer's efforts to ban such listings, which it now deems inappropriate.

The latest bid, with nearly six days to go, is $11,50 (about R80).

EBay started pulling the "imaginary girlfriend" listings, which have run the gamut from the very naughty to the mostly nice, late last month.

The company had initially allowed the imaginary girlfriend listings - which had numbered in the low hundreds - then decided that they had crossed the line "into something that was clearly inappropriate," said eBay spokesperson Hani Durzy.