Aussie Fuel Auctions, Not a Bargain
scotty on 22/08/2006 at 10:05 pm, filed under Website
Saw on Whirlpool about this new “auction” website, Aussie Fuel Auctions, where you can bid for Caltex fuel cards. The site design looks a bit dodgy, but $500 worth of fuel cards have been won for $14.40! Now who cares about the petrol crisis?! Everyone can now go back and buy the latest HSV E-Series as fuel will be dirt cheap.
Not quite.
If you read the instruction more closely, it says:
In our auctions, the succesful bidder is not the bidder who enters the ‘highest bid’ but the highest UNIQUE bid.
If you have entered the highest UNIQUE bid in a particular auction, the auctioned card is yours.
That “highest unique” thing sounds familiar. In fact there have been quite a few “auction” sites with similar scheme, which I have covered previously. There is indeed an “admin fee” attached, which varied from $1 to $10. You need to pay this un-refundable admin fee in order to enter into auction, and if you have guessed the right amount, you win. There’s actually a Wikipedia entry on unique bid auction, which says:
This type of auction may be regarded as having some of the elements of a normal auction (placing bids) and of a lottery (paying an entry fee and guessing the bids which may be made by other participants).
In my dictionary, it means that it feels like an auction but is in fact a lottery. Not something a true bargain seeker should attempt, if you really want to save some money.
For example, this $150 Caltex Fuel Card has been won for $6.58. 220 total bids will incur $220 in admin fees. Plus the final price, Aussie Fuel Auctions has made $220 + $6.58 – $150 = $76.58 for just hosting the auction. Moreover, many have made 10+ bids (i.e. spent $10+ on admin fees) but get nothing at the end.
Maybe I just cannot imagine how people will fall for this kind of scheme, hoping to save a few bucks.
If you actually do a WHOIS lookup on this domain, and google some of the result, you’ll find other “get rich quick online” crap. Maybe
- Set up a unique highest bid auction site
- ??
- Profit!!
is one of their formulae in those eBooks they sell.