World’s most expensive gift card

 

BY JOHN BARBA

guest writer

 

If you were taking bids on the greatest pop/rock two-sided single of all time (kids, ask your parents), the acid test would have to be the question, “Which one was the A side?”

No obvious answer? You have a winner!

Remember singles? Those little 45 RPM records with the big hole in the middle (needed that little plastic adapter) and two songs for 99 cents? Usually the A side was the hit and the B side was filler. They wouldn’t waste a potential hit on a B side.

But in 1967, before Sgt. Pepper came out, the Beatles released the ultimate single, “Strawberry Fields Forever” on one side, and on the other, this classic, “Penny Lane.”

So which one was the A side?

I had my own little waltz down “Penny Lane” about a week ago, and my tour guide was my good friend Jim Hilpipre. Jim, owner of Hilpipre Heating and Air Conditioning, Faribault, Minn., is one of my favorite people and among the best our industry has to offer. He’s talented, smart, witty and thoughtful. Our industry needs more like him.

But right now, he’s a dead man walking. I want to, as Marsellus Wallace might say, “go all medieval” on him. Give him the Terry Tate, office linebacker treatment.

Because of Jim, I now own a $15 Home Depot gift card that cost me $175 in cash and roughly 19 hours of my life I’ll never get back. It’s all Jim’s fault. Oh, he has a partner in this heinous act of larceny.
Let me explain (It’ll be good practice for when I have to make a formal statement to the authorities later). Jim came to the house to service my boiler and install a humidifier in the forced air portion of my hybrid system. Since my office is in my mechanical room (Where else would it be?), I was on hand to help out, take pictures and share in the good times.

While Jim was working on the boiler, he kept sending me to look for tools, sheet metal screws, tin snips, you name it. It was kinda like the old days when Dad would send me out to the truck to look for tools and other parts that I could never find, stuff that was, ironically, with him all the time.

Amazing how often that would happen. The old man must have been losing it, sending me out to look for stuff that he invariably had with him. All the hours I spent hunting through the back of the truck when I could have been in the house helping ….

Anyway, it was interesting to watch Jim work. As I hovered over his left shoulder, Jim took apart the boiler’s heat exchanger. As I hovered over his right shoulder, he scrubbed down the inside. I have an NTI Matrix, and the heat exchanger, after almost two full years of operation, was remarkably clean.
I had just tripped over a hose for the fourth time, causing Jim to spill another small pail of gook removed from the heat exchanger, when he uttered the following fateful words:

“You ever heard of Quibids.com?” My ears perked up, just like a dog’s when he hears you offer a treat. “It’s a penny-auction website. You can get all kinds of stuff really, really cheap.”

Dude, you had me at “Hello.”

I went to the website and saw this amazing collection of stuff being auctioned, literally, for pennies. There was an iPad at 75 cents, a set of walkie-talkies with a two-mile range at 36 cents, a waffle-maker at 14 cents. I done died and gone to heaven!

“First you gotta register, and then you can bid on anything you want,” Jim said innocently. “Start out with the small stuff to get comfortable with how it works; then you can bid on the bigger stuff.”

So I registered, gave the site my credit card number and, quick as a flash, had 100 “bids” credited to my account.

“Everyone gets 100 bids to start,” Jim said.

“Is that like a free introductory offer? You know, to get new customers?”

“Nope,” he said. They charge you $60 for it. It’s already been billed to your credit card.”

“So you have to pay for each bid?”

“Yep,” said Jim, as he started to get back to work.

“And every time someone bids, it bumps the price of the item up one penny?”

“Yep,” he said. He was holding a tape measure. Didn’t he ask me to go find him one a half hour ago?

“And every time I bid, it costs me 60 cents?”

“Yep,” he said, picking up a pair of snips from his tool bag. Odd, 20 minutes ago he sent me out to his van to look for those very snips.

“So, say I want to bid on this Waterpik Ultra Dental Water Jet, I pay 60 cents every time?”

“Yep,” he said, putting down the snips and picking up a four-way screwdriver. He had sent me out looking for that too.

Here’s how Quibids works: They hold these “auctions,” for just about anything you can think of. The bidding starts at one penny and you keep bidding against the clock and against other bidders. There’s a 15-second countdown (like “going, going, gone” in live auctions). If no one bids again, whoever placed the last bid wins. If someone does bid, the countdown starts over. They showed a slick pair of Oakley sunglasses that sold for 12 cents. There was an iPad that sold for $1.31, and an Xbox 360 that sold for 97 cents.

Oh my goodness, this site’s for me!

So, armed with my 60 bids, I started hunting for things to buy. Jim told me to start small, to look for the “beginner’s auctions.”

“Those will help you learn how it works. If you’re not careful, you’ll run out of bids and have to buy more,” he said cryptically.

Not to worry, James my boy. You’re dealing with one savvy hombre. I’ll pick this up right quick and be banging it out with the big boys within the hour.

Right.

My first auction was for a “voucher” for 15 more bids. The clock was ticking down and no one had bid on it yet.

“Go ahead,” said Jim. “Hit the bid button, see what happens.”

I did and my screen name popped up as the “current winner,” along with a picture of a ragged-looking stuffed bunny.

“What the hell is that?” I said.

“They give you that as an avatar; you can change it if you want.”

Ooh, my own custom-selected avatar!

Jim just smiled, popping a new drill bit into his cordless. Funny, he had sent me out to the truck to look for his set of bits about an hour ago.

So I bid on a voucher for 15 more bids. One penny. Tick, tick, tick. Man, this is so cool! Tick-tick-tick … it hits one second and then kinda stalls, just for an instant, and then… “SOLD!”

For one whole penny I just picked up 15 more bids! Well, it was one penny plus the 60 cents it cost me to buy that bid in the first place. But I’d already spent that money, so it didn’t really count.

Next up, an auction for a $15 Home Depot gift card, plus another 15 free bids. Click. Bid. Tick-tick-tick… another winner! Again, for only one penny — no other bidders. This is way too freaking easy! Savvy hombre like me should clean up...

Then I see the Holy Grail — a brand new Taylormade Burner 2.0 driver — you know, the slick one with the white head. Hit it at a golf show the week before. I kinda liked it, but if I could buy it for a buck or two, I could learn to love it.

Click. Bid. Tick-tick-ti… Someone else snuck in a bid. Oh yeah? Obviously doesn’t know he’s dealing with one savvy hombre. I'll show him. Click. Bid. Tick-ti…another bid. Then another and another and another. What’s going on?

“Looks like you have some competition there, chief,” said Jim as he smiled, picking up a container of wire nuts. He had asked earlier if I had any in the garage. I didn’t, although I did spend about 20 minutes hunting for them.

Bid, bid, bid. After eight bids (or $4.80 worth of contributions from The Barba Foundation to Quibids.com), I told Jim I’d wait it out until some of the other bidders dropped out. Two bids later, the item is sold for $2.75 to some guy in Montana. Apparently this guy really wanted this golf club. He had bid 24 times — $14.40 worth of bids, plus the $2.75 he paid for the item. In all, he bought a $299.00 brand spanking new Taylormade driver for $17.15.

Two bids after I dropped out.

“Damn, just a little more patience and that could have been me!”

“That’s right,” says Jim. “Keep hunting around, see if there’s anything else you want to bid on. You’ve figured it out, just bid away.” He was now taping the seams to seal up the humidifier. When did he get it in the ductwork? I must have missed it.

I don’t actually remember Jim finishing the job, packing up or even leaving. But I do remember bidding on some golf balls, some more bid vouchers and a digital measuring cup. Didn’t win anything, but I did gain an “achievement badge” for frequent bidding. Which was nice.

Later that night, starting around 10:00, I jumped into an auction for a $399.00 Callaway FT-iz driver. I won’t make the same mistake I made earlier. I’ll jump in around the $2.50 mark and be “in-it-to-win-it.”
I ran out of bids around 10:45, even though I had bought another $45 worth. The club wound up selling two hours later for $23.17. How the heck can Quibids.com make money selling stuff that cheaply? Well, it hit me. $23.17 represents 2,317 bids at 60 cents a pop. That nets out to over $1,390.00 worth of income. For a $399.00 item. Everyone who bids gets a little bit poorer, but Quibids winds up a lot richer.

Not me, though. I’m a savvy hombre. I won a $15 Home Depot gift card for only a penny. I’m gonna beat the system!

Three days later I finally hit the mother of all auctions. Within minutes of each other, Quibids was auctioning another FT-iz driver, a Callaway Diablo Octane driver (nice) and another white Taylormade Burner. That oughta split up the golf crowd, and I’ll scoop one up at a bargain. Better reinforce the bid pile, though, so another $45 donation was made to Quibids.

I could hear the gratitude through the Internet.

How did it turn out? Well, ever been to a grocery store and there’s three lanes open? No matter which lane you pick, it winds up screeching to a halt once you’re in it, while the others speed along. I go for the FT-iz, and the bidding goes on. And on. And on.

My hundred bids in reserve were now in single digits. I bought more. It didn’t help. Out of morbid curiosity I decided to check on the other two auctions.

Diablo Octane — SOLD for 14 freakin’ cents.

Taylormade Burner (the white one!) — SOLD for 27 freakin’ cents.

John — out of bids, out of time, out of money. I immediately closed my account. And started plotting Jim’s demise.

So what does this experience tell us? Ellen Ruppel Shell in her book, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, says that the hunt for bargains may deliver low price, but it very rarely delivers satisfaction. Or value. My experience, however, says that the never-ending quest for the ultimate bargain, the amazing deal, the $400 golf club for mere pennies, is always won by someone else.

Me? I have a $15 Home Depot gift card. I paid 175 bucks for it. But if anyone asks, I’ll tell them it only cost me a penny.

As for the other side of that all-time great 45, well, we’ll let Paul take it from here.

John Barba is Contractor Training and Trade Program manager for Taco, Inc, and has been in the trades since he could walk, carrying wrenches for his dad in the family’s plumbing and heating business outside of Boston. John’s practical experience includes everything from ditch digging and drain cleaning to boiler piping and PEX installing, as well as business management and contractor sales. Since 1995, John has trained more than 12,000 contractors in hydronic heating design and installation.