it works like a casino depending on the majority of people losing their money so a few can appear to win big... each "bid" costs 60 cents and each "bid" is counted as 1 cent when used, so when something is sold for $10 the quibid company actually makes $610 plus shipping and handling for the item... those $10 worth of bids actually cost customers $600... in other words, a $200 item appears to be sold for $10, but actually the company racked in over $600... the stories of iPads selling for $40 sound great, but the quibid company sold those 4000 bids (that they equate to $40) for $2400, add the $40 that the "winner" pays and shipping and handling and quibid makes almost $2000 profit on a $500 iPad... the "winner" might have used at least 500 "bids" to win (often a "winner" uses a lot more than 12% of the "bids" to "win" a product) that iPad and the "winner" had to buy those bids at 60 cents each so the very lucky winner actually paid close to $400 for that iPad - and if they used more than 600 bids they paid list price for that iPad...
they there is the bait and switch... two of the items i "won" on the site were "no longer available" and they offered a gift card to walmart or another store for what i spent - so i wasted my time to break even?... and they never sent the gift card so they flat out ripped me off on the "wins"...
additionally, the site also collects valuable information about your purchasing interests and your consumer weaknesses among other personal information... for instance, a tech support rep was not only able to tell me what computer, operating system, and browser i was using, but that my other browser (chrome) would work better with the site...
worse yet, though harder to prove, is that the quibid computers are rigged (which consumer regulatory agency has checked them?)... you don't win unless you invest a lot of time and money in the company... repeatedly i watched very suspicious timers lagging at just the right second to prevent me and others from "winning" while robot bidding was allowed to continue to bid the price of the item up... at least a few times i watched the same bids appear on two or even three different products at the same time, which means someone clicked two or three buttons simultaneous;y at the precise second needed which is impossible unless the quibid computers are making the bids for the alleged customers...
but like the rest of the gambling industry, people become addicted to the pretense of winning and the idea of getting something for nothing... casinos are packed and people know the games heavily favor the house... believing they are actually buying stuff at substantial discount is an even bigger draw for a culture addicted to consumerism and gambling... it took me $30 to learn the scam... hopefully you won't be ripped off for more...
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