How exactly do sites like TeleBid work? Or to phrase it a bit more accurately, "get away with it"?

Asked by richardhenry (12692

) May 18th, 2008

There is absolutely no way that you can pick up a Playstation 3 for under £1 unless it fell off the back of a van, and the van happened to be driven by a one-eyed man with a gruff voice and a wooden leg.

If you haven’t heard of it, this is TeleBid.

So, it’s crooked, right? They found some legal loophole? Or am I missing something?

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3 Answers

everytime you bid, they earn, so they make profit out of all those calls… easy as π

iwamoto (5277

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So you’re telling me they covered the remaining £319.43 on the retail price of that item with the eight telephone bids that were made? They would have to charge £88 ($173) a call. Even if they get a wholesale discount, it wouldn’t make up for their sales cost.

richardhenry (12692

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I think this auction says it all:

£500 Cash!~~500-cash~~/73234.html

(somthing screwed with fluther markup. here’s the link: http://www.telebid.com/auction/%2d500-cash-/73234.html )

Ah, screw it. The auction is for £500 cash payable by bank wire transfer. Attention Fluter staff, there’s a serious bug here with fluther markup being applied to a url.

xyzzy (661

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