My dad has an obsession with bid-up.tv. We only got digital a week or so ago, and he’s becoem obsessed with telling me all about the bargains available on the site. “Oooh look, this watch is worth £200, but someone just bought it for £15!”
I, being the eternal cynic, thinks it’s all crock. I mean, how can someone sell something that much under the market value and still make a profit out of it? Surely there’s a ctahc somewhere?
On the other hand, they swear it’s all legit, and I’m sure that Trading Standards would have given them a talking to if they wern’t above board.
Does anyone have any experience with these chaps, and if so, does it result in great bargains or dodgy merchandise?
On a similar note, do the other tv shopping channels work in the same way, and do they make big losses on these things?
They say that you can take the watch, or bike, or 20’s style death-ray into a jewellers, and if the jewellers say it isn’t worth £200, the sellers give you back what you paid for it.
I think it’s all crap, but like I said - wouldn’t Trading Standards or the watchdog have called them over by now if there was something iffy going on?
Those prices could be the “manufacturer’s suggested retail price” (or whatever the equivalent is in Europe). This is the price the manufacturer would like to get for the product. A quick look at, say, electronics will show you that these prices are wildly optimistic. If you really are curious, get the make and model number of the item and go to a store (or shop) that sells it and see what they’re asking for it. A lot of the shopping channels can get the manufacturer to make a run of an item with a special item number so that you can’t really compare it to its regular number.
Wal-Mart has been known to do this.
I have my own theory on this and I think the subsidy comes from the telephone calls. If you look at the cost of a phone call its something like £1. So if a few hundred people phone up it pays for it. People sometimes phone twice or make stupidly low bids. Only watched it myself for a few minutes just to check out the new free channel but the stuff seemed to be legit.