Topic: [CANCELLED & REFUNDED] Brand New Radeon HD 5830 1GB - page 3. (Read 4682 times)

hope no one's dumb enough to bid on this. He can easily make 25 btc selling 1 card.

As soon as it appears in Block Explorer I'll update the bids and end time.

sent .25

eh what the hell why not

Yep, that's what it is.

this sounds like beezid type of auction.

0.02, you have to send 0.25 to 1KkxqpJ4TNp1hgQAgjAFfqi2ooA5rzZCQn to bid. ^^

Ill take the next bid. What are we at 0.03?

Ubid is legit, not one of those pay to bid auction sites. This is a classic Dollar Auction scam.

He even named it Penny Auction. :p

I think he's trying to be like uBid and similar sites, where one signs up, funds their account, and proceed to bid on auctions at 1-penny (usd) intervals.  The catch, is that it costs 60 cents to make a bid, non refundable.  If you get out bid, you must spend another 60 cents to place a higher bid, adding a penny to the price.

When you see on these sites that an Iphone sold for "$3.35" the site actually made $200 off that sale.

I'm still trying to understand this process. I must be missing something, as I don't understand why anybody would rationally want to participate.

+1

Maybe people aren't as dumb as you think?

I could do, but my worry is that with the forum being quite slow, someone will snipe during a weak time zone and it'll end without another person having a chance to counter-bid.

Every one is waiting to get closer to the 24hr waiting period. These types of auctions are awkward, why would you bid before the end time... And if the auction will take 43 bids to break even, any single person bidding will want to recoup the investment, thus making up to 43 bids... Some will drop early, but if 2 members end up fighting over this, it's going to be one slow, long, boring fight... 1 bid per day, 3 months to go

Anyhow, I would change that to bids within 23:45 from the last bid don't change the bid end, thus giving at least some reason to bid inside that window.

Still only one bid? I'm somewhat surprised that no one wants to buy a 5830 for 0.02 BTC. :S

Got one bid... who's next? :3

Someone must want to buy this for 0.02 BTC?

Due to the sheer amount of controversy this has caused, I've decided to shut it down.

I don't think that penny auctions are a scam, but I do accept that there are far too many ways for me to have deceived people in the way this one was operated.

I thought long and hard about refunds and how best to do them, the doubling each refund above was appealing, but it didn't allow me to give out the 11 BTC which was what the winner had been promised.

I'm going to refund every bidder except the most recent with 0.25 BTC, and send the winnings of 11 BTC to the most recent bidder (1AQDgdT6Jmu642wVCF8ayPfdKfNghnfLzA). This means that the most recent winner will be paid 11 BTC, the rest will get their bids back and my losses are capped at 11 BTC.

BlockExplorer links for refunds:
Bidder 1 - Link
Bidder 2 - Link
Bidder 3 - Link
Bidder 4 - Link
Bidder 5 - Link
Bidder 6 - Link
Winner - Link

This has been a learning experience and although I'm down 11 BTC, I think I've gained some knowledge about the reaction of the forum to penny auctions, some of the weaknesses in it which are very hard to do securely, and how to better trade in future. For this, I think it's a fair price to pay.

Hopefully it will also show that I'm not a cheap profiteer and I'm not going to abuse the Bitcoin community which I enjoy being a part of. I was just trying a new commercial model and the resounding reply was that it doesn't work

If the winner wants the Radeon 5830, they can send me 12 BTC back (as originally said) to cover shipping anywhere in the world, and I'll send it to them.