www.telebid.com

spark911

Just to start: Not affiliated with the site, but a friend told me about it a week ago and I clicked an ad just and got taken to it and checked it out!

Not sure why people are getting so defensive over a business. As far as the creators of the site are concerned, they have made a profitable business, so fair enough to them.

While you'd be lucky to get the high value products such as TVs and PS3s as a lot of people are bidding on them, someone has to win eventually and with such a high retail value that person will benefit.

Sure, people who dont win wont benefit, but then that's the risk you're taking. I don't see how it's any different than a lottery ticket. Only the winner, national lottery and charities benefit at the cost of all the players who played but didnt win.

Or, to put it on a more comparable example (as I'm sure at least one person will defensively reply that the national lottery is ok as it gives to charities) this site is no different to those "lowest unique price" auctions where you have to txt in a price, at a premium (anywhere from 25p - £1) but at least this site is being transparent and showing you how many people have entered the competition.

Think of it as less of an auction and more of a gamble and competition. If you know you're the sort of person to waste a lot of money on it, don't sign up.

grayme-m

sharp910sh wrote: »

What a con I hope these people burn! I though ah it must be a trick, but now i know!

Why is it a con?

They give all the facts to you before you bid, it takes seconds to see what's happening on loading the main page, it doesn't seem like much of a con to me.

sharp910sh

Its not a con per ser, but the chance of you winning an item is soo low. I wouldn't be suprised if telebids were bidding themselves, to rank in more profit so they can cruise in their yacht. I would rather play poker.

chum_2000_uk

I totally agree with sharp910sh in that the chance of winning is so low. This does not, in my opinion make it an attractive gamble. And that is all this site is - a glorified gambling site.

In response to eifzzz's post, saying he had successfully "purchased" eight items, including four PS3's does this mean that you have won all the items that you have bid on as there is no mention of this? If so, how!? You seem to be prepared to invest a large amount of bids into items, what about when you do this and still dont win!?

Personally, I really cant see why people would be prepared to throw away not inconsiderable amounts of money in "bidding" for an item (I use the term loosely as in my opinion this isn't bidding, its really just gambling to win a prize) when they have no real concept of what their odds of winning actually are. As sharp910sh said - I would rather play poker. At least if you are good at poker you know what your odds of winning are (most of the time) - I'd certainly personally rather stick £100 into my online poker account and know I have a decent chance of turning that into a few hundred more than gamble at telebid for the chance to win electrical items which in turn i'd have to sell on eBay and get doubly screwed over with eBay and PayPal fees - but then i'll probably end up wasting half my life in front of my monitor playing online poker as I do now

chum_2000_uk

One other concern is who actually regulates this site? It would be interesting to know if this site has to be officially audited like other online gambling sites, e.g. poker sites have to have their software stringently examined by independent auditing companies to make sure the algorithms used are fair for its users. Is it the same for sites like telebid? I could be wrong, but I'm guessing probably not. I certainly think it is something that should be looked into, and any findings reported here - at least then users of sites like this will be more informed about what they are letting themselves in for. It could very well be that regulations are in place that prevent sites like this creatung "false bids" but as it stands at the moment from the general consensus here on this forum, we just dont know!

sharp910sh

ahem, waste of money. But if you got money to waste be my guest.

chou_123

eifzzz wrote: »

Hi all,
I would just like to share my expeirience of using this website. I've been registered for just over a month, I popped into this message board before i registered with telebid in order to see what other people think of the website and I've had a positive expeirience so far. It does take time to get used to the way the website works so that you get to know the do's and dont's on when to bid, and what to bid on in order to be succesful.

So far I have succesfully purchased 8 items

This is England (DVD) Price: £1.10 Bids Placed (3): £1.50 Delivery: £2.80
Total Cost: £5.40
(I initially bought this to see wether or not the website worked, it arrived, so that gave me the green light to carry on)

Sony Playstation 3 Console (4 of them!)
1) Price: £105.84 Bids Placed (30): £15.00 Delivery: £9.80
Total Cost: £135.64
2) Price: £100.94 Bids Placed (130): £65.00 Delivery: £9.80
Total Cost: £175.74
3) Price: £49.49 Bids Placed (118): £59.00 Delivery: £9.80
Total Cost: £117.29
4) Price: £81.83 Bids Placed (35): £17.50 Delivery: £9.80
Total Cost: £109.13

Panasonic cordless phone
Price: £2.03 Bids Placed (6): £3.00 Delivery: £9.80
Total Cost: £14.83

Davidoff Cool Water (20ml)
Price: £2.60 Bids Placed (8): £4.00 Delivery: £2.80
Total Cost: £9.40

Logitech AudioHub 2.1 Notebook Speaker System
Price: £8.26 Bids Placed (32): £16 Delivery: £9.80
Total Cost: £34.06

I've sold 3 PS3's and made myself a tidy profit that basically covers what i paid for all the other items I've bought, so i'm chuffed. The only thing you need to be careful of is the amount of bids you place because you keep looking at the item's price without noticing that the cost of bidding builds up. As you can see with a few of the PS3's I won, I placed a lot of bids that costs me money, I was lucky that the final price was cheap so it cancelled out the cost of some of my bids. The best chance you have of winning an auction is to be the person that's using the 'bid butler' system, which places automatic bids for you. I never go for laptops, TV's or mobiles because there are too many people bidding for them.

I hope this helps anyone who has doubts.

Hmm. This is a very confident first post from eifzzz, and wow, they managed to purchase every item they bid for. My first post, not so long ago, was very nervous and short - it is quite hard to believe that eifzzz is not in anyway affiliated with Telebid.

On another note, I think I will look at this Telebid website, just to see after all these comments, although I won't buy anything, as I'm not even brave enough to use eBay yet!

chou_123

Well, it is actually quite fascinating to watch, as each gets down to 1 second, then another bid is made. It appears that each bid adds 15 seconds to the clock.

Ladeda_2

Not really sure how this works, lets say I win an auction at £10 using 1 bid and there were 100 other bids.
So would I have to pay the £10 for the winning price, £0.50 for the bid, and 100 x 0.5 (£50) for the other bids?

chum_2000_uk

Nope, thats not how it works... you would only pay for your bids and the final auction price. However you would be extremely lucky to win with one bid!