QuiBids

[3bm103]

<p>Saw an advertisement for this which is a bidding site and it makes it sound like the deals are great. But you have to pay $0.60 per bid and buy them in blocks. I signed up, but didn’t go through with it after I found out about the charge. Has anybody else tried it? Do you like it?</p>

[BunsenBurner]

<p>Here is an article that I saw the other day that explains how these “penny auctions” work:</p>

<p>[How</a> Penny Auctions Work - SmartMoney.com](<a href=“Spending & Saving - MarketWatch”>Spending & Saving - MarketWatch)</p>

<p>

It’s a structure that can be incredibly lucrative for the sites, while still enabling them to offer goods at prices that seem low. On QuiBids.com, a Canon digital SLR camera recently sold for $194.16 – at least $1,000 less than retail prices elsewhere on the internet. But that final price represents 19,416 bids. At 60 cents per, that’s as much as $11,650 in fee income for the company. “It’s simple arithmetic: if sites weren’t getting more for an item than it’s worth, there wouldn’t be so many of them out there,” says mathematician Glen Whitney, the executive director of the Museum of Mathematics in New York.</p>

<p>The winner doesn’t come out quite as far ahead. In this case, he shelled out almost $825 on bids, plus the additional $194.16 for the camera – $1,019 in total for the camera, or about an $80 discount off the price of the same model offered elsewhere on the web. Auction losers who applied their bids toward buying the camera from QuiBids paid that site’s price of $1,417.50. It’s not uncommon for prices on penny auction sites to be higher than on other sites: BidHere values a 32GB iPad with 3G and WiFi at $729; Apple ( AAPL: 335.06, -3.02, -0.89% ) stores sell it for $100 less. Pricing is based on what the site pays its suppliers, says BidHere’s Day.

</p>

<p>In some cases, you will be bidding against bidding bots. Guess who the loser is going to be? I’d stay away from these sites as far as I can. Stock market provides all the gambling I need. :)</p>

[xiggi]

<p>I joined and bought extra bids. I did very well in the early stages and got a lot value than what I spent ob bids. For instance, I got a rice cooker with ONE bid and paid only ten dollars for shipping. Similar deals on a blender and others items I needed. I also got a couple of spending cards at a very good price (BBB 25 dollars with 3 bids.) Surprisingly, I had the most success on a Saturday afternoon and poor results late at night. I assume I was competing against all the infomercials addicts! </p>

<p>However, I ended up letting 20 or so bids expire as the auctions seem to have become harder. I believe that people have found ways to accumulate tons of cheap bids and make it all more competitive. Once you have a lot of bids, you can compete for the large packages of bids. I would not be surprised if some people have thousands of them. Just remember that those people do not deal with bids that cost 60 cents. </p>

<p>Despite the very good results, I will not buy more bids and let the rest expire.</p>