tatarah not LUB, instead it became HUB

Hahaha, from the previous LUB (lowest unique bid), tatarah.com.sg has decided to go HUB (highest unique bid). Actually, its kinda like expected.

From previous observation, most ppl will bid very very low.. starting from $0.01, if everyone were to bid sequentially and uniquely, $0.01 to $1 will need at least 100 bidders (but 100 bidders for processing fee of $1, will give you $100 only). And for some of the more expensive items like Gucci handbag etc, some of the bidders actually placed a bid of like $500 but of course, the lowest bid will win, and usually the lowest unique bid are all less than a dollar. And because the website actually have quite a number of items that you can bid for, that would further dilute the number of bidders per item (unless the item is really really hot, like a car or PSP etc).

So, logically, one would go for HUB. Looking at S'porean mentality, perhaps the technique will go something like this:

Item retail price: $260
Processing fee: $1
Maximum bid: $130
Likely bid: 129.99 <-- if this is unique, then it sure is the highest one


So customer is still happy because can get <50% off retail price.

tatarah

I'm sure most of you would have already heard of tatarah by now. It's plastered all over the MRT, also appeared in Today to announce the winner of the first draw where the winner successfully bidded a car for only $0.23 etc. It works based on LUB (lowest unique bid).

Its like TOTO where everyone will have to pay a processing fee and no matter whether they get or dun get the item, this processing fee is non-refundable. For myself, I bidded for a Nintendo DS Lite(processing fee is $1). Unfortunately, didn't manage to get it as mine although is unique, it wasn't the lowest bidding price. I've counted there were about 245 bids. And the retail price for the NDSL is about there.. plus minus some. So, it would seem like everyone is buying the winner a present *lol*

Unfortunately, the server is down for these 2 days as they're upgrading their bandwidth as mentioned in their website notice.

Quite fun to play, so if you're interested.. may yours be the winning lub!