$100 canadian tire gift card for $1.50? Future shop $50 for $0.77?

[bargainhunter2010]

Someone sent me to this site, and I can't figure out what the catch is.

The site auctioned off a future shop gift $50 card for $0.77 and a $100 canadian tire card for $1.50. What's the catch here? Also a george foreman for $0.50.

Can someone explain this to me? The web site wsa called www.pennyauctionscanada.com

[Litesandsirens911]

http://pennyauctionscanada.com/conte...w/how_it_works

here it explains how it works...in order to bid, you have to purchase the right to bid, each bid costs you .75 cents which you must prepay to pennyauctions before you can go bid on items...it does state all items are new, in original boxes....I don't know, seems fishy to me, if not fishy, just weird...

[DaveP]

http://pennyauctionscanada.com/conte...w/how_it_works

here it explains how it works...in order to bid, you have to purchase the right to bid, each bid costs you .75 cents which you must prepay to pennyauctions before you can go bid on items...it does state all items are new, in original boxes....I don't know, seems fishy to me, if not fishy, just weird...

Each time you bid it resets the counter, adding additional time to it. And if someone else bids after you, you've lost 75 cents. Sounds like a great way to waste money. I'd be better off with one of those slot machines.

[bargainhunter2010]

Hrm.. So, the george foreman for $0.50, it looks like 50 people each paid 75c, or 2 people each paying 25x0.75, so one guy could have got the product for $1.25 in the first case, or $18.75 in the later case. Is this making sense?

Still seems like a great deal for the last person to bid.

[carlyincanada]

Wow, seems like a strange concept having to pay to bid...but too each his own!

[truckerofbc]

Dave P is right. You may wait for the bid counter to go low and place your bid, but if someone else bids before the counter goes to 0, you are out .75. You have to prepay blocks of 8 bid packages. The list price is what they would sell it for retail so it gives a consumer some idea and makes you think how high some people would go just to be able to say they "won" the bid by being the lowest bidder. It's actually a very clever system considering how many people would pay .75 for an item to place a bid, but the bid price goes up by only a penny...so imagine 1000 people placing a .75 bid on a $300 product (1000X.75=$750 and the product only goes up $10 to make more people bid). You would have to be very lucky to win. Best bet is to go to a live auction!!

[truckerofbc]

A good example is the 75 bid pack that was just auctioned with a list price of $56.75 and it sold for $1.97...thats 197 people bidding .75. So lets do the math 197X.75=147.75 + those who wasted bids will have to repurchase more "bid packs" in able to bid in the auctions!!!

[wishingwell]

Rube Goldberg of auction sites... lol.

[truckerofbc]

You know I was just checking out some of the products they have auctioned off and I was looking at this like a pyramid scheme "there's a sucker born every minute"...if your the first few bidders then you may as well just put wings on your money and mail it to them.

[truckerofbc]

Keep an eye on that laptop and watch the bidding go fast and furious when the clock hits 2:00. Plus there is a $32 Delivery charge for it. Still got 17 hours and 30 minutes to go though.

[iloveluca]

There are a couple of sites like this out there... this is the first Canadian one I've seen, though. It's just a big cash grab... unless you are bidding on a really big ticket item in which case people can get a decent deal if they win. Otherwise... you would be better off sitting on your front lawn throwing money at people passing by.

[firebunny]

Better go to ebay, where the aution is free!

I think most people above answered your question,bargainhunter2010
But here is the "The actual cost of winning an auction" for their own website:
=is the combination of the number of bids placed in order to win a particular item plus the final auction price.
For example, if you placed 30 bids into an auction, each bid costing $0.75, your cost, related to the bidding process is $22.50. If you won the auction for a final auction price of $1.00, the total auction cost is $23.50. All shipping & handling fees and applicable taxes will be applied in addition to the bidding cost.

[truckerofbc]

Toys R US $50 Gift card with 5:30 remaining has 2 bids plus $7 Shipping charge...let's see how quick that goes up..
plus the 125 bid gift pack has 5 bids with 20:00 remaining.

It
s funny how they nly show the last 5 bidders. If they showed the furious bidding before the end of the auction people might be fearful..lol

[truckerofbc]

Okay...Bartender and BillT were fighting unscrupiously over this item..every time they bid the clock went back to 20sec went it hit zero the clock would say going..going..and then a new bet..and then it kept repeating itself..going going gone until it hit .36.

So I watched the following 1st bet was .75
2nd bet was abbotwar .75
then Bartender placed 1, Bill T 1 and so on until BillT won it (Bartender placed 17 bets x.75=$12.75 and BillT placed 17 bets =17X.75=12.75) Plus you factor in the following...bid packs are 25 for 18.50=.74/bet x 17=12.58x2 again for 2 bettors =25.16.
Final result is this.

Bill T pays .36 +$7.00 Shipping for a $50.00 Gift Card

Let us assume for one minute that every bettor was different...so the auction made the following:
59.52 (a net profit of 9.52 for the $50 gift card)

However the actual cost to BillT $32.69 for a $50 Toys R Us Gift Card.

In this case BillT scratched a little out of it, but i some cases people who don't win like Bartender just threw away the $12.58 for the cost of his bidding plus he may have to reorder to bid again depending upon what he has bid upon previously. So one could lose a lot of money in a short time.

BTW on a short side not, I did finish watching the 125 bid pack which retails for 93.75 and Bartender just threw away another 60 Bids and didn't win so at .74/bid...well...you can do the math and see how much that pretty little "Penny Auction" cost him to not win. Final winner was $1.38 to the other guy Slammer77 who spent well over 60 bids on it too.

[DaveP]

Yep. Just another form of gambling. Sometimes you win, way more often you lose. A fool and his money as they say. And I don't think there's too many fools at SC.