Shared Knowledge
"Quibids - User Review"
29 October 2011
Summary: on high retail price items, better have very deep pockets. Like the last 10 seconds of an eBay auction except those 10 seconds can last for hours and cost $100's of dollars. Even with the "bid-o-matic" feature, you absolutely must stay with your computer if you want any chance to win an auction.
Background:
Rainy, cold day.
Ad on TV here in my office for Quibids.com.
Take a quick look at website and understand how it works or so I think.
Sign up for an account and buy $60 worth of bids (each bid costs $.60)
Bidding:
Checking out what up for auction, only thing I find I am interested in is a Canon digital camera outfit worth $2700.
With 40 hours left on auction, stupid me bids a couple of times and hang as "high bidder" for couple of minutes before being bumped by another.
Make a mental note to go back to the auction site when only a few minutes left on the Canon auction.
With less than one minute to go on the Canon camera auction, I begin to do single bids by clicking on the "bid" button.
But after each one of my "single" bids, sometimes right away or sometimes when the auction clock is down to 5 seconds or less to go until the auction ends, I am outbid.
Decide to use the "Bid-o-matic" feature, telling it to start from the current bid price and automatically bid 25 times automatically for me.
Once I start using the "Bid-o-matic" feature the rate my bid credits used goes down from simply clicking the "bid" button.
BUT, even with "Bid-o-matic", it does not take long to burn through my initial bid credits and I go buy more to use.
With new credits available, I continue to switch between clicking the "bid" button and letting the "Bid-o-matic" do the bidding for me.
By now, an hour has gone by and still, the auction for the camera outfit has not ended.
Once again, I buy more bid credits (human nature to not want to loose "investment") so more money is thrown at the camera.
From time-to-time, the clock gets down to 2 seconds or even 1 second before I am outbid again.
And again, and again.
I buy more bid credits.
At this points 4 hours have gone by and I have spent $360 in credits and still the bidding continues on the camera outfit.
Finally, I am simply tired of having to tend the auction and let my final credits be used up.
Advice:
I know the bargain prices for new items is so tempting but if you really want a specific item, just go to eBay and bid on it up to the amount you are willing to spend.
With eBay, you do not have to commit hours and hours sitting at your computer and with eBay, if you loose an auction, you do not loose your bid money like with Quibids.
Finally, if you must Quibids, I suggest you put the items you are interested in on your "watch list" and on the day the auction ends, check in periodically. If the item has sold, then your bad luck, but if not, perhaps then you bid.
Absolutely use "Bid-o-matic". "Bid-o-matic" stretches your costly bids as much as possible.
Decide on how much money you are willing to gamble on a specific item and do not exceed that amount.
Oh, the camera outfit I bid on, well it finally ended after 14 hours. This is 14 hours after the camera got down to 15 seconds-to-go the first time!!! And it finally sold for $181.13, a really great price to the winner but that means there were 18,113 bids on the camera. At $.60 a bid, that means Quibids took in $10,867.80 on a $2,700 item. And the real cost to the winner, I do not know. Do know winner was bidding with me when the camera was only around $60, so he or she must have bid at least 100-200 times or more for a bid cost of $600 - $1200 or more.
How to win an auction:
I do not have a clue, other than very deep money pockets and the desire and stamina to stick with it.
To me, it appears to be a form of the TV "Survivor" show. You have to outlast everyone else in money and time.