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Monday, December 17, 2012

Quibids - Is it Possible to Use Voucher Bids First?

At Quibids, is it possible to use voucher bids first, before using your paid bids? Or the other way - use real bids first and not use voucher bids at all? Quite a few bidders have asked me this, and I wanted to write a post about that.

Some of the reasons you would like to change the default ordering of the bids that get used up are -

  • If you are just bidding for fun to test out your luck because you have quite a few voucher bids in your account, then you need to be careful not to use up your real bids. It is best to use real bids when you want to buy the item at full retail if you don't win. Voucher bids don't count towards your buy-now price. 
  • If you are bidding on a gift card and you are prepared to buy it at full retail and the auction is fairly competitive, then you may not want to use voucher bids at all because those could be wasted. Instead, you want to use only the real bids and if you lose, just buy the item at full retail. This is also the case with other high-end electronics. 
This can actually be a neat addition to your regular Quibids strategy.

Ok, so now coming back to the original question - can you order your bids in Quibids as to which ones should be used ahead of which ones? The simple answer is no. This is unfortunate - I would actually like to see them be more flexible here and give users the option to use whatever kind of bids they want to use. 

Currently, here is how the bids are used - in the order of expiration. The bids that expire soonest are going to be used up first. I would ideally like this to be the default behavior but give the user power to change it easily. From the Quibids Terms of Conditions
"When You place Bids, the first Bids used will be Bids from Bid Packs, starting with the Bids that are going to expire the soonest. After Bids from Bid Packs are exhausted, Free Bids will be used, starting with the Bids that are closest to expiring. After Free Bids are exhausted, Voucher Bids are used, starting with the Bids that are closest to expiring. At QuiBids sole discretion, You may be given an opportunity to select which type of bids to use on an auction."
 So there you have it. Unfortunately for bidders, there is no good way to order which bids you want to use. That being said, read the last line - At Quibids' discretion, this can be changed. If you have been bitten by a situation as this and you didn't realize and ended up wasting a ton of bids, real or voucher, it might help to contact their help team and try to ask them to change this. I am not sure if they will oblige.

Did you ever run into this situation where you wanted to order your bids differently, like using virtual bids first or using real bids first? 

5 comments:

  1. There is no reliable "Strategy" that will work on Quibids unless you are a friend of a Quibids employee or owner.
    I was a user and here is what happened to me.
    I have read bloggers posting how great Quibids is. Quibids actually manipulates their auctions.
    I was a Quibids user until yesterday. I had been noticing that there were fewer and fewer auctions for me to participate in. I went to a different computer and browsed the site unanimously through a proxy. I saw MANY auctions that were open and active. When I tried to participate in them with my account, it said "unavailable". My "wins" had inexplicably dropped to 0% in the past 6 weeks. I sent a note to quibids and asked about my discovery. Their email response is pasted below. I had no idea I was being funneled into auctions of Quibids choosing. I immediately cancelled my account and requested a refund of unused bids. With the terms of service that they outlined in their email to me, it leaves little doubt that they reig their auctions for their own benifit. They can for instance, send bidders with lots of vouchers that are due to expire soon to the same auction. That would get rid of a lot of voucher bids at no cost to them. Or they could just send you to "bidders hell" if they don't like you. It is entirely up to them. So the notion that there can be a "strategy" for someone to follow would depend of what auction and what opponents Quibids decides to send you to. For the last 6 weeks I used Quibids, I'm not certain I was even bidding against real people. One of the opponents had expended more than 1,600 voucher bids in their last 3 wins only to receive $125 in merchandise. Who on earth would accumulate that many voucher bids only to throw them away on two gift cards and limit buster?
    Fir the record, I didn't actually loose money there. I used real bids and used the "buy now" feature. No money lost but I wasted a lot of time bidding in rigged auctions.

    Hi chris,
    Thank you for contacting support. All users on QuiBids are offered the same items to bid on, however auctions for the same items are offered at varying times for each individual bidder. The main reason for this is due to the high quantity of auctions and users that participate daily on QuiBids. By limiting these auctions, our main goal is to increase the chances of users winning items. QuiBids attempts to limit some auctions to participants of comparable skill, as determined by QuiBids, to enhance user experience and maintain a viable business model. In so doing, QuiBids may limit which auctions are available to particular users based on any factors deemed appropriate by QuiBids in its sole discretion, including experience of the user, historical success of the user, demographic factors, prior bidding and spending activity, and other factors. In particular, QuiBids may limit certain auctions to less experienced or successful users in any manner QuiBids deems appropriate to optimize the overall user experience of all QuiBids users. You acknowledge that You may be, and You consent to being, excluded from auctions at QuiBids discretion. Hopefully this helps provide some clarification on this topic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There is no reliable "Strategy" that will work on Quibids unless you are a friend of a Quibids employee or owner.
    I was a user and here is what happened to me.
    I have read bloggers posting how great Quibids is. Quibids actually manipulates their auctions.
    I was a Quibids user until yesterday. I had been noticing that there were fewer and fewer auctions for me to participate in. I went to a different computer and browsed the site unanimously through a proxy. I saw MANY auctions that were open and active. When I tried to participate in them with my account, it said "unavailable". My "wins" had inexplicably dropped to 0% in the past 6 weeks. I sent a note to quibids and asked about my discovery. Their email response is pasted below. I had no idea I was being funneled into auctions of Quibids choosing. I immediately cancelled my account and requested a refund of unused bids. With the terms of service that they outlined in their email to me, it leaves little doubt that they reig their auctions for their own benifit. They can for instance, send bidders with lots of vouchers that are due to expire soon to the same auction. That would get rid of a lot of voucher bids at no cost to them. Or they could just send you to "bidders hell" if they don't like you. It is entirely up to them. So the notion that there can be a "strategy" for someone to follow would depend of what auction and what opponents Quibids decides to send you to. For the last 6 weeks I used Quibids, I'm not certain I was even bidding against real people. One of the opponents had expended more than 1,600 voucher bids in their last 3 wins only to receive $125 in merchandise. Who on earth would accumulate that many voucher bids only to throw them away on two gift cards and limit buster?
    Fir the record, I didn't actually loose money there. I used real bids and used the "buy now" feature. No money lost but I wasted a lot of time bidding in rigged auctions.

    Hi chris,
    Thank you for contacting support. All users on QuiBids are offered the same items to bid on, however auctions for the same items are offered at varying times for each individual bidder. The main reason for this is due to the high quantity of auctions and users that participate daily on QuiBids. By limiting these auctions, our main goal is to increase the chances of users winning items. QuiBids attempts to limit some auctions to participants of comparable skill, as determined by QuiBids, to enhance user experience and maintain a viable business model. In so doing, QuiBids may limit which auctions are available to particular users based on any factors deemed appropriate by QuiBids in its sole discretion, including experience of the user, historical success of the user, demographic factors, prior bidding and spending activity, and other factors. In particular, QuiBids may limit certain auctions to less experienced or successful users in any manner QuiBids deems appropriate to optimize the overall user experience of all QuiBids users. You acknowledge that You may be, and You consent to being, excluded from auctions at QuiBids discretion. Hopefully this helps provide some clarification on this topic.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Chris, thanks for your comments, but this is a known "issue" with Quibids and you are right - you and I will see different auctions. They do this as you start winning more. This was a "secret" at one point of time, but not any more. They have changed their TOS to reflect this as well. I wrote about this when it was first observed by the community over a year ago, that Quibids uses a "trap page". I know a lot of bidders feel cheated when this happens, but that's how it is at Quibids. You and I don't see the same auctions. You can verify using a different browser on your same computer too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This one single comment has destroyed my confidence in trying Quibids. After reading so much about the different strategies I'm amazed to find out that it's all rigged from the start.

    Honestly, Sid, you should post this fact in bold at the top of every single page of your blog. If you're really interested in helping people (and you're not getting some kind of kickbacks from QB) you should make sure that none of your readers can possibly fail to know that QB does this.

    It may be legal but it's certainly unfair.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sid, your information is NOT ENTIRELY CORRECT. On the Quibids Bid Credit History page is a radio button selection of which to use first:

    Bid Type Selection

    Select which bid type you would like to use first.
    Real Bids
    Voucher Bid

    I do not know if that option is always there, but it is certainly there for me right now.

    ReplyDelete