is this serious
- Thread starter sam_51
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its made to push you to call them ... then theyll start offering extras which you MUST buy ...
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- Andy!
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StewartR
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- Stewart
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Actually I think it is genuine. And it's an absolutely fascinating business model.
This auction site differs from eBay in three critical ways:
1. You don't necessarily have to pay the price you bid. Some auctions are "fixed price", i.e. you pay say £59.99 however high the bids go. Some are even "100% discount", where all you pay is the P&P, however high the bids go.
2. The auction doesn't end at a fixed time. Every time a bid is received, some more time is added to the countdown timer, to give other people a chance to make a counter-bid. Obviously this means that auctions can go on and on.
3. Bidding isn't free. Each bid costs 50p.
So let's look at that Canon 400D twin-lens kit. The winning bid was £28.42. However it was a "fixed price" auction so the winner actually paid £78.80 incl P&P. I believe that's genuine. Note also that, since bids go up in 7p increments, there must have been 406 bids, which would have cost £203.00. So the auction site actually received £281.80 for the camera kit - still a bit short of what they'd have liked, I'm sure, but not the absolute giveaway it seems like..
Here's another one though. This Canon 450D plus kit lens was in a fixed price auction, so the winner paid £48.80 incl P&P. But the final "bid" was £381.15, so there were 5,445 bids costing a total of £2,722.50. Hence the auction site actually received £2,771.30 for the camera kit!!!!! Nice work if you can get it!
This auction site differs from eBay in three critical ways:
1. You don't necessarily have to pay the price you bid. Some auctions are "fixed price", i.e. you pay say £59.99 however high the bids go. Some are even "100% discount", where all you pay is the P&P, however high the bids go.
2. The auction doesn't end at a fixed time. Every time a bid is received, some more time is added to the countdown timer, to give other people a chance to make a counter-bid. Obviously this means that auctions can go on and on.
3. Bidding isn't free. Each bid costs 50p.
So let's look at that Canon 400D twin-lens kit. The winning bid was £28.42. However it was a "fixed price" auction so the winner actually paid £78.80 incl P&P. I believe that's genuine. Note also that, since bids go up in 7p increments, there must have been 406 bids, which would have cost £203.00. So the auction site actually received £281.80 for the camera kit - still a bit short of what they'd have liked, I'm sure, but not the absolute giveaway it seems like..
Here's another one though. This Canon 450D plus kit lens was in a fixed price auction, so the winner paid £48.80 incl P&P. But the final "bid" was £381.15, so there were 5,445 bids costing a total of £2,722.50. Hence the auction site actually received £2,771.30 for the camera kit!!!!! Nice work if you can get it!
tomh
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This is actually more liek gambling, the only winners are those that win the item (assuming they bid less than full retail) and the auction site, everyone else loses money (as they have to pay 50p a bid). StewartR got it spot on, but should also add that everytime someone bids the time goes up 10 seconds, so people tend to leave it till last few seconds.
