I found QuiBids by accident one day while I was searching through my local news web site. I had to check it out because it seemed "too good to be true" with the prices I was seeing. Sure, you can win many items for pennies on the dollar but as others have stated you need to bid $. 60 per bid. I can see if you want something really, really bad you would stick around and bid. But how much will it really cost you? If you read the tips they state to watch the recently sold for prices and that should give you an idea of when to start bidding but by the time it reaches (for example) $12.36 (Price the item sold last) at say an average of 8 seconds per $. 01 bid when in a bidding war it can go on for almost 3 hours or possibly longer. Not to mention that by this time the count has gone down to 1 second a few times and you probably placed a bid here and there (along with 8-15 other people) so the auction wouldn't "end". Now by this time you might have $3, $4 maybe even $5 invested into the item and don't want to "lose" so now that it is around the price of the last one that sold you'll just "have to" bid so you don't lose that money you invested so far. So let's think positive. Maybe you will win.By this time you bid oh about 80 - 100? What!!! 127 times!!! Let's see 127 @ $. 60 = $76.20 and the final price is $14.28 and the "Valued Price" is $100.00. Not bad. A savings of $9.52. Oh, wait. Delivery cost = $7.99. I just saved $1.53... Yay... But wait. How long did I sit here? OVER 3 HOURS!!! To save a buck fifty!!! Of course you can purchase the item with the buy it now option and they state their prices are comparable to other retailers. I decided to do some research on about 15 items and the "comparable" prices on QuiBid are usually $10 - $30 more than most. So, Wait a minute! If they are $10 - $30 more than many other places!!! Crap. I just lost $8.47 cause I could have got it cheaper in the first place and that's not counting the 3 hours of my life I just lost: (
I know I'm just rambling but the point I am trying to make is that maybe they should have the buy it now at a discounted price seeing that most of the auctions I've seen have been bringing in 3-7 times the "Valued Price" of the item. Not to mention that they get these items at retail and for those who don't know, retail is usually about 1/3 - 1/2 the cost of the MSRP
So in conclusion. Sure. You can win big. But it seems to me that this is more gambling instead of an auction and even casinos have their typical freebie perks just to go there and play. I'd like to see possibly some way to make it worthwhile for the non winners to not feel like they've lost (even though they can "buy it now")
Thanks for listening
0 comments