I havent gone to the site in a long time, so i only know lowest unique bid. I'm not even a member there, but I can explain what lowest unique bid means. (Cos one of the fillipino vets working at the place where i was attached to was addicted to tatarah..)
Ok..say there is a Phone which costs $400 in stores. They want you to try your luck at bidding for the phone with a bid that is the lowest amongst all the submitted bids; and be the only one to bid that unique amount.
Eg. 3 people bid $0.20, 5 people bid $0.31, 1 person bids $0.32, 4 people bid $0.40, 8 people bid $0.45. In this case, the person who bid $0.32 wins the right to buy the phone at $0.32. Thats because his bid was the lowest amount which had the least people bidding it.
If the scenario was slightly different:
Eg. 3 people bid $0.20, 5 people bid $0.31, 2 people bid $0.32, 4 people bid $0.40, 8 people bid $0.45. The person who was first to bid $0.32 wins the right to buy the phone at $0.32. Even though there was more than 1 person who bid that amount of $0.32, it still remains the most unpolular and lowest amount to bid for, and the tie between the two "lucky" bidders is broken by having the first person who bid that amount win it.
Now you'd be wondering how the company makes money. Well for every bid submitted, a "service charge" is levied. And that charge varies greatly, depending on the market value of the item. Eg. For a $400 phone, the charge for submitting a bid may be $8. While for a car, the charge for submitting a bid may be $40. So the idea is to get people to submit multiple bids in order to increase their chances of hitting the "lowest unique bid", and the company might end up collecting more than $400 for that phone as a result. At the same time, the lowest unique bidder, like in the example cited above will pay $8 for submitting the bid, plus $0.32. So effectively, he paid $8.32 for the phone valued at $400. Thats how people end up with goods at ridiculously low prices.
Sounds like a crazy smart business model doesn't it? Unfortunately, reality can be very different from what theory predicts. I suspect tatarah wasn't receiving enough bids to cover the cost of items and hence switched their business concept to "highest unique bid" in a bid to recover more cost(this time, through the winner). But this concept sounds much less appealing than a "lowest unique bid" to the average person, as theres a chance he might end up paying more than market price for an item if he won. After investing so much in advertising...I think tatarah might have landed itself in hot soup due to this unforseen outcome.
Of course the previous paragraph is just my speculation. I didn't even know that they'd switched to a "highest unique bid" system. Hope you understand it all now.
