OT: great ideas for websites I wish I'd thought of first #134

[+mrcakey]

http://www.telebid.com/auction/sony-rdr-hxd1070-hdmi-dvd-recorder-500gb/84066.html

Each "bid" is in 7p increments; they charge 50p for each bid. Most of the
time, if you win, you get to pay the final value for the item as well PLUS
postage.

It's utter utter genius!

For this item, the method is even more ingenius - the price is always going
to be £39 - so the bidders that are paying 50p each time are bidding ad
infinitum knowing that they'll only ever be paying the £39 PLUS the cost of
their bids. So far it's up to £351.75. That's 5025 bids, i.e. £2512.50!!!!
MAN I WISH I'D THOUGHT OF THAT FIRST!

The utter genius of it is that the person who wins probably has got a
bargain - ten bids = £5 plus £39 plus postage for £450 worth of kit. Oh so
clever...

Damn it!!!!

 

[Morten Holt]

Its a waste of time and money - I know because my daughter persuaded me
to sign up so I could get a laptop for her "cheap". Fortunatly I read
how it worked before committing any money. Each time a "bid" is placed
the end time is reset. Each bid is only an increment of 7p over the
previous, so its not a bid in the convential sense. Since each "bid"
costs you 50p, and the final price only goes up by 7p each time, more
often than not the bidding only ends when everyone gives up or has
emptied their bank accounts. It must be a brilliant way of the website
owners raking it in, but not very good for the end customers.

I'd recommnd you stick with eBay.

I think you misunderstood the OP.
It's a great idea for a website, not for the user, but the owner. If OP
had thought of it first, he could've been the once making thousands of £

--
Morten Holt


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[+mrcakey]

Indeed.

That £450 DVD recorder / HDD had £3409 spent on it! AFAICT, the winning
bidder alone spent £1318 on it. How, I don't know. Unless he's affiliated
to the website and wasn't actually spending any money. Oooh, now there's a
slanderous comment...

+mrcakey

 

[Morten Holt]

I stand corrected on the OP's intent. My mistake.

I agree that its great for the website, but not at all for the user. I
feel like its a type of scam, although in a typical scam they aren't
open and up front about how it works.

I don't think it's fair to call it a scam actually, one reason being
their being upfront about it.

BTW, I don't know what newsgroup reader you are posting with but at my
end your post was an attachment and I had to copy and paste it into this
to retain the context.

I am sorry about that, it could have something to do with my PGP
signature perhaps? I have disabled it on this account, which should
solve the issue I hope.

 

[BootNic]

On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:21:53 +0200

Brian Cryer wrote: [snip]

BTW, I don't know what newsgroup reader you are posting with but at my
end your post was an attachment and I had to copy and paste it into this
to retain the context.

I am sorry about that, it could have something to do with my PGP
signature perhaps? I have disabled it on this account, which should
solve the issue I hope.

No need to be sorry mate. Windows Mail has issues with multipart/signed
messages. Any broken news reader may have issues, it's not the message.

Even google groups can read a multipart/signed message :-O.

--

BootNic Wed Jul 23, 2008 11:55 am
A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking.
*Arthur Bloch*

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