Buyer Beware of TeleBid

There is a new auction site in town called TeleBid. The idea is that all the products on the site are new and that each time a bid is placed just 7p is added to the total cost of the item and a few seconds are added to the auction end timer. When the clock on the auction reaches zero whoever is the winning bidder gets the item.

On the surface it seems too good to be true. Yet the auction system is clearly designed to make you place many small bids instead of allowing you to place an initial maximum like on eBay. TeleBid will even give you £20 when you register to use on auctions.

The thing that makes the site profitable and which isn't stated dearly enough is that although winning an item requires you to be the last person to have pressed the Bid button when the auction timer runs out, you are charged 50p everytime you press the Bid button. I hesitate to call the site a scam because the 50p charge is very clear on the help section, but it a scam and people are getting very burned by it.