Penny Auctions are not easy
filed in Entretaiment on Apr.29, 2010
A few weeks ago, I registered in madbid.com, I saw a commercial on TV about penny auctions and thought it would be fun to play a little and get to know penny auctions website.
Let me tell you how they work.
If you want to make a bid you will have to buy them, what do I mean? Well, the website has packages of different prices and usually the cheapest one will give you around 9 to 20 bids. The more bids you buy the fewer you pay for each bid, for example: in madbid.com, if you buy 10 bids they will cost you GB 10.49 however if you buy 25 bid, you will only pay GB 22.99.
Penny Auctions are not like ebay where the bids are free and at the end, you only pay for the price of the product. On penny auctions, you have to buy bids before biding. The products (mobile phone, video cameras, DSLR cameras, computers even cars) are new and auctions start from GB 0.00, each bid increase the price by 1p and if the counter reach zero and nobody else has made a bid you win the product. Sounds easy, however if somebody bids after you, the counter goes back to the beginning (30s, 45s, up to 3 min). Some auctions might take days, for example, the car auctions in madbid.com.
I have not seen a product reaching the market price; they usually go for 80 to 70 % less than the market price. However, I do not know how many bids the winner of the product spent or if at the end, by adding the price of the bids spent and the price of the product (at the end of the auctions), the total amount is still less than the market price. I guess it should be less.
I think there is some luck involved in winning a product for a few pennies. Some players’ strategy is, only biding at the last second. I tried to use that strategy but there was always somebody doing the same, at end the winner was the person with more bids to spend. I guess if you have already the money to buy the product perhaps you can get a good deal buy trying a penny auction.
The competition is high and there were times where the same person was bidding for all the good products (electronics), and winning them! At least madbid.com has auction limits, 3 wins per day 12 wins per 30 days.
I only won 25 bids; I spent three bids to win then and won then for 12p. It was a lot less than the usual price.
I might try the website again, some other time; I do recommend having a limit on the bids you will spend though… or you will end bankrupt.
