QuiBids is a "Fee for Bid" website that allows you to purchase 1 penny bids for 60 cents a piece and then bid on brand new merchandise. It's already sounding a little fishy, paying 60 cents for a penny seems a little silly. QuiBids claims it "isn’t your basic online auction model. It’s a unique, fun, exciting way to take the traditional auction model that’s been around for 100’s of years and spice it up a bit." The spice they've used is a series of rules and restrictions that prevent you from winning too much stuff. Specifically, you can win 8 auctions every 28 days and only one of those can be a high value item (valued over $999). The details and rules take some time to get used to, but when you do you'll realize that you need more than money at QuiBids, you'll need lots of time. I followed one auction for a Canon D5 Mark ii DSLR camera valued at over $3000 that played out over a 27 hour period. It sold for an astonishing 234.00. People were following the auction just like I was and that took a considerable amount of free time with no distractions.
Let's look at the math of QuiBids. $234.00 = 23,400 penny bids and 23,400 penny bids = $14,040 in bid revenues at .60 cents a bid. Even at .40 cents a bid the revenue would be $9,360. Basically they need to sell 5000 bids at 60 cents to make the retail cost of the camera. It seemed as though they were making out pretty well on the big ticket items so, I checked the smaller ticket items (under $900). An Apple iPad 16 gig model valued at $579 retail sold three different times. Once for 11.96, the second time for 28.82 and the third for 25.87. 3 units at $579 = $1737. The total bid revenues were $11,108 at .60 cents a bid. QuiBids Claims on their website to make 5% to 10% profit. In comparison, A hardware store will do 3% if they are run very well and control expenses. If they are being honest about profits they are still doing very well.
What happens to the people who spent .60 cents a bid and lost? Well, they have a few options, they could purchase the item they bid on at just below retail with the cost of bids subtracted or they could just quit the site and get all unused bids refunded or they could just keep putting in money and hope to get the next win. QuiBids states that they don't want people to have a bad time using their site and have made an on-line learning center available for anyone to use. They will also warn bidders when the cost of their bids could exceed the retail price of an item.
I'm still looking at QuiBids like a casino, they can't lose, but most of the bidders do. I must admit though part of the reason I looked into QuiBids is because a friend of mine became rather involved with the site. He spent about a month of constant watching and bidding until he won a "new in the box" Camera priced over $3000 (his total investment was about $600 which is not bad). He did tell me that it worked for him because he had lots of time to invest. When I asked him if he would recommend it to anyone else he said that he wouldn't.
I'll be interested to see if in the future regulations are established for this kind of site. Until then it just doesn't seem like a good way to get a new TV or X-box.
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