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After observing and participating in Pricebenders auctions for months, I finally made my first win, of 60 TC Gift Cards (includes 600 VP). It retails for $59.40 and the winning price was $8.93, resulting in a discount of 85%. What made it possible?
To start off, timing was important. The first time I visited the auctions page the timer was being reset to about 1 hour. So I waited and went back almost an hour later. Then the timer was being reset to about a minute. I could then start bidding.
Next, I had enough TCredits for bidding. The win required a total of 129 bids, all placed automatically, using Bid Assist, and that meant 129 TCredits. I used Bid Assist to speed things up.
Finally, I guess the competition wasn’t too much, the item wasn’t too valuable to attract lots of the active bidders. Had it been so, people with more bidding power, more TCredits than I had, would probably have beat me to it.
At the end I was watching the screen when I got an alert telling me I’d been “inactive” and if I wanted to continue, something like that. (This shouldn’t have come because I was using Bid Assist.) When I responded I was alarmed to see the timer go back to about 43 minutes! I was still puzzling this when the screen refreshed and then the winning price was shown. Because my Bid Assist was still on with bids still remaining, and “YOU ARE THE HIGH BIDDER!” was still on my screen, I then realized I’d won! I was like, finally!
I checked my email and sure enough, there was the message there congratulating me for winning the auction.
Now I have 30 days to finalize the purchase. I am probably going to pay more than $8.93 for shipping, and I cannot yet know what the shipping will be until I get to the check-out page.
This was a DP (Double Points) or 2X auction, which meant each of the 129 bids got me 10 MRP instead of 5. I also got 130 VP, plus 13 spins for the Bid & Build wheel which should fetch me at least 1 new PSA. If I decide to use the MRP for purchasing single TCredits yielding 102VP each then I am bound to get over 1,000 VP later as well.
Chris Emejuru, May 15, 2016. Originally appeared at the SFI Forum.