Online Auctions...What A Great Business Plan

2/18/2011 | econjack

[jjw]

I agree it's bad, and I agree it's a scam, but there is one little thing that keeps it from being "gambling."

There is a "Buy It Now" option that lets you apply all of your losing bids towards the retail purchase price of the item. You then pay the balance of the "retail price" and you can buy the item. So in theory you didn't "lose" your earlier bid money.

You just get to pay full manufacturer's suggested retail plus shipping.

very clever, didn't know that

[Yo-Yo]

It’s still gambling in that the only way I can use the Buy It Now option is if someone else doesn’t do it first.

Really? The Quibids 101 page said you have 2 hours after the auction closes to exercise the Buy It Now option, and doesn't say only one person gets to use it.

The problem I see is having to check every two hours for maybe days on end just to exercise the option. If you miss it in the middle of the night, you're

[SJSAMPLE]

The commercial with the Hemi Charger that “sold” for only $597 told me all I needed to know...

[suthener]

Actually, it was a Challenger, one of which I have for sale now. It’s going to cost someone a lot more than $587, though. (Shameless advertisement-listed on www.autotrader.com.)

[lacrew]

Online penny auction + young person with credit card surely equals a maxed out credit card.

A guy at work was bidding (he happens to be an elitist liberal as well). I had to explain to him how easily he was being scammed...seems like every time he put in a bid, somebody else almost instantly bid against him...and there were dozens of ‘auctions’ going on at once, on this obscure website. Maybe, just maybe, he was the only human involved in the bidding...you think?

[240B]

I have heard of online gambling sites that will put two or more ‘autobot’ players at a table. They play in unison to fleece the real players.

Doing anything online, there is never anyway to know what’s real and what is a setup.

[momtothree]

“... bottom line is a scam”.

From the info that I read, it was compared to gambling. You dump money into a machine, lottery ticket, whatever with the hopes of a big return but the house always wins type deal. I have also read that if you are the type of person with a gambling type personality, they WANT you.

[suthener]

Obviously not for me, then.

[sockmonkey]

I see that there are even ways to set up automatic bids on an item.

A friend of mine and her son do quibids. Her son told me that if two people are doing the "automatic bidding" option, that nobody wins. The bidding will exhaust your entire supply of pre purchased "bid bundles".

They've picked up some stuff really cheap about 3 and 4am. Vacations, gift cards, not electronics.