Watch out a new internet auction scam!

[Hakan G]

Hi to all!
I just wanted to let everybody know of a new website that claims to be an e-bay competitor.
Because many of us are shopping via internet allready, and love to get the lowest price possible in online auctions, I think this topic deserves a separate thread, and what is most important attention from you.

If you go to <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.telebid.com">http://www.telebid.com</a><!-- w --> you'll see that many, if not all the products are sold at a bargain price.
The website's rules are simple, but are meant to lure you, (this is why it has not been closed yet).
So you can increase a bid only by 7 points for a product. This adds some 15 second to the time the auction should actually close. But the very interesting thing is that, in order to make a onetime bid of 7 points, you pay Telebid 50 cents...
This is how many of people end up paying 50$ for a brand new cell phone and some another 500$ for auction expenses (to Telebid).

Please be careful!
You may also read a rip off report here: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1923649">http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1923649</a><!-- m -->

[Terry]

Hakan! You're saying stupid things! Telebid is not a scam! I know persons who did win items on telebid, and they are very happy about that!

[Hakan G]

Well I hope you're not part of the gang...
It could be a reason to post positive, isn't it?

[Faw_Peter]

Telebid is a worldwide known organization. They are not cheating. It's a fair lottery, I would say more than lottery since you should build a strategy in order to win. Yes, they make good money, but if you make your own statistics you can overcome the system and win many expensive items at dump prices.

[M.Helen]

guys, I bought a set of 100 bids at telebid.com
Guess what? I won nothing! Although I spent all of them! I know nobody who won. So, for me it's a scam!

[Karl.in.eu]

I bought my girlfriend a mobile phone and saving 20 % from the lowest price you could ever find. How's that to you?

[Nicholas]

True! I don't know how they manage those prices, but they are a comfortable way to get a good discount all year around. I think they are profiting from the big number of users that are accessing their website, and are going to publish smbd's adverts sooner or later. Another theory would be that they buy the products in bulk and resell them in retail, plus the small profit they are gaining from the paid bids...

BTW Hakan, did you ever use this online action personally?

[Faw_Peter]

Now let me tell you guys how they're making profit:
Imagine an item that values on the market about 300$
For reaching at least 150 dollars, there should be 2142.85 bids (150/0.07)
Now, telebid charges 0.5 dollars from one bid. This means it sold the item for 150 dollars, but, won 1071$! And 921 comes the net profit.

[willyoumind]

I had heard many rumors and complaints about this telebid site...

Some said it is totally a scam, while a small portion claimed that they're really won some bids on it!

Whether this telebid a real Scam or not, it's absolutely hard to tell...

[Benn]

Read an interesting article about telebid
The Cash Cow called Telebid

I will now try to explain to you the cash cow that is Telebid, a new company backed by Wellington Partners. For now, I do believe, that they are all very happy indeed, even though user churn is likely high, and there is a risk of being put into the gambling pot. But let me explain.

Telebid is a new kind of auction in that you can say “Bid”, meaning you pay 0.50 EURs and the bid on the product increases 0,10 EURs. So yes, each bid costs. The auctions are all timed, and when somebody bids, the remaining time increases a bit, meaning that an auction can run for a very long time. Then there are some special things like a “Fixed Price Auction”, meaning that the last bidder remaining, with nobody bidding again, will win, and get the product for a fixed price.

All this sounds very weird indeed but if you do the math on a few products you will be utterly amazed. All the products in the system are made available by Telebid. So let’s do a little calculation.

A nice item is an LCD TV and Telebid might be giving that one away for a fixed price of 99 EURs, even though it would normally cost 1200 EURs. Guess what, that sounds like a very attractive deal and so lots of people start bidding on the TV. In the end, the final bid is 280 EURs. Still looks very attractive. But let’s do the math.

The final bidder now paid 99 EURs, plus his bids. As each bid increases the price by 10 cents and prices start at 0 EURs, 280 EURs final bid means 2800 bids. As each bid costs 0,50 EURs, that’s a total of 1400 EURs of bids. Of course not all of those come from the winner, so she might have gotten a deal, but in total, Telebid made 1499 EURs on a TV that costs 1200 EUR (and probably less) in a standard store.

The most amazing auction I have seen a short while ago was a fixed price auction for a nokia n95 black 8gb. The winner got it for 1 EUR. The phone costs 799 EURs. The final bid price was 1161.50 EURs, meaning 11615 bids, or 5807,50 EURs… for Telebid.

But based on the new law on lotteries, they probably need a license. The “Staatsvertrags zum Glücksspiel in Deutschland will give more detail in german.

Here is a quote: “Ein Glücksspiel liegt vor, wenn im Rahmen eines Spiels für den Erwerb einer Ge-
winnchance ein Entgelt verlangt wird und die Entscheidung über den Gewinn ganz o-
der überwiegend vom Zufall abhängt. Die Entscheidung über den Gewinn hängt in je-
dem Fall vom Zufall ab, wenn dafür der ungewisse Eintritt oder Ausgang zukünftiger
Ereignisse maßgeblich ist. Auch Wetten gegen Entgelt auf den Eintritt oder Ausgang
eines zukünftigen Ereignisses sind Glücksspiele.”

Translation: Gambling is when the chance to win requires paying a fee and winning is largely dependent on chance. Chance is given when events in the future that are uncertain decide if you win. That sounds very much like what Telebid does.

As they say, when something sounds too good to by true, it probably is.


source <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://blog.thylmann.net/2008/02/02/the-cash-cow-called-telebid/">http://blog.thylmann.net/2008/02/02/the ... d-telebid/</a><!-- m -->

[Hakan G]

Well, then it seems that Telebid is much likely the same as real auctions, no?

[Benn]

telebid was the first to implement this system. Now, he is followed by hundreds of similar websites allover the world. The system seems to working quite efficiently.