The online auction website, TeleBid has rebranded as Swoopo.

Swoopo’s new website is a great example of cutting edge online auction design and is easy to use – and quite addictive.

They ask bidders to pay a small amount to bid, claiming they are then able to offer much better and cheaper goods.

Oxfam America is auctioning $100,000 on eBay – PLUS lunch with Hollywood star Minnie Driver, as well as an autographed script and DVD from her new film, The Riches. All proceeds go to Oxfam America.

I’m following this auction to see whether bidding exceeds the cash up for auction – otherwise it’s a money for free – and the charity wins too.

If you’re quick – and I mean quick – you could be having lunch with Colin Firth, be wearing David Beckham’s leather jacket, or owning Kylie’s little black dress!

There are lots of celebrity charity auctions on eBay.co.uk worth bidding on at the moment. People are already bidding in these charity auctions, but bargains can still be had – and the best bit is that all money goes to charity.

Get bidding and own a piece of history.

In an attempt to tackle the high postage and packing (P&P) fees some eBay sellers are demanding buyers to pay, eBay has added a ‘Total Cost’ sort option so buyers can now search for the cost of both the product and the shipping together.

This is a great step forward. I wonder if eBay would go as far as Amazon has gone and set a postage rate based on actual postage costs which the buyers pay and the seller gets a credit?

eBay has launched Guest Buying to encourage new eBay members to buy stuff.

The benefits of Guest Buying is that you don’t have to register – you can just buy. However, you can’t bid, you can only use Buy it Now, then pay with PayPal.

Australian auction and bargain hunters can now search eBay, eBid, Oztion and Gumtree with ease, making sure they get the best prices in the cheapest online auctions.

The auction and classified market is huge in Australia and Auction Alfie is keen to add more of the best Australian auction websites in the near future. Let us know which sites you would like to see included.

Tazbar.com has launched a new brand and website. According to Tazbar the new website is “will have the new logo and colour scheme. New control panel, complete new help system, complete new place advert and advert pages. There are a number of navigational changes that you will soon become familiar with.”

Indeed, the site is slightly easier to use but does break on certain screen resolutions, so you may have to scroll down through lots of blank space to find what you’re looking for.

You can still search Tazbar with Auction Alfie’s auction search to compare the products with other auction websites like eBay, uBid and eBid.

eBay has launched the Bid Assistant tool which allows buyers to create ‘groups’ of similar items in their Watch-lists that they would like to bid on. Buyers set a maximum bid amount then hand over the auction bidding to eBay. eBay will then bid on each item successively in chronological order until it wins one of the items in the group. Then the Bid Assistant stops and you pay for the winning item.

The Bid Assistant tool will certainly benefit buyers who don’t mind which of a group of items they buy – such as when they are watching a number of Ninendo Wii’s for sale and don’t mind which one they buy.