I've wondered what these are all about and was curious about the stuff that sold for a fraction of its retail price. I tried QuiBids last week. Here's what I learned.

It's not at all like eBay. The only seller is QuiBids, and all the merchandise is "new". Everything starts cheap. You can't bid unless you buy a package of "bids". Bids cost 60c each and a bid can only increase the current offer by 1c. For example if the Apple iPad started at $5 and is now at $55, the bidders on the auction had collectively paid for $50 worth of 1c bids, or 5000 bids. For this, QuiBids collected $3,000, and the iPad hasn't even been sold yet. All this is explained on their web site, but I'm sure most users only consider getting the iPad for $55!

To sign up, you have to buy a package of 100 bids for $60. I figured I would bid on a gift card which I can always use for something. The American Airlines $100 card started at a couple of bucks. I decided to keep bidding until my actual cost (bids plus end value) got to $98. They have a gimmick where if you don't win the auction, you can buy it at full retail ($100 in this case) and use all the bid money you invested in not winning as partial payment. Since the bid can only go up a penny at a time, and the auction timer resets to 10 seconds every time someone bids, it goes slowly. Took about an hour, and I was out of bids with the high bid at about $5. Since the net cost will only about $65, I purchased another bundle of bids, this time they required only $27 for 45 bids. The were still about 8 active bidders and I held on for another 45 minutes, eventually running out of bids again. The net cost of the $100 gift card to me (a loser) would be $100 minus my investment of $87 in bids so I stopped. I watched till the bidders dwindled to 8, then 7, then 6, and finally all but one gave up. The final price was about $14.50, and QuiBids had collected $570 from all the bidders for the right to bid!

You can read the web postings by people who have strategies on how to win auctions. Suggestions include bidding only at slack times when there are few bidders (Tues, Wed, Thurs at lunch time on the east coast is suggested). Also, it is apparently better to let other bidders run the price up a bit so you don't have to pay for the early bids that don't benefit you. However, it seems to me to be best suited to someone with lots of time on their hands, and a desire to gamble on getting something that they are going to buy in a store anyway.

Well, they don't sell casino chips, or much of anything I will be needing. They are big on electronics and ladies purses. I'll be cancelling my membership, but I wish they were a public company, as I'd really like to buy their stock!!