Penny Auctions

[deadohsky]

Does anyone here have any experience with them?

A co-worker was talking to me about them tonight and they almost sound too good to be true. It's seems that even taking the price of bids into account with the final price the auction ends at, you are still getting a deal.

Is this correct or is there a scam somewhere that i'm not seeing?

[desirexe]

I don't know what site was recommended to you, but a commercial sparked my interest in beezid. Immediately I googled 'beezid opinions' and mostly negative comments came back. I like to form my own opinions though so went to the site to look around and registered for an account BUT discovered that I had to prepay for bids. Screw that..I'll stick with ebay. But, if someone else has actual experience, by all means, share your story. Sorry, I know this wasn't helpful at all...

[CoderGuy]

Well I know about Quibids. They have a similar approach. The problem is even at penny a pop you could spend 100 or more trying to get an item and if you don't win you lose the money. You figure if an item goes for 60 bucks (for say a Kindle or some such) that is 6000 bids. Each bid costs 20 cents. So even if there were 100 people bidding that is about 60 bids each at 20 cents or 12 bucks. So it adds up. And if there are less than 100 people bidding you could wrack up even more. In addition to that the company gives away a 600 dollar item for 60 bucks but took in 1200 bucks. Sweet deal for them.

If you have some extra cash to play with it's worth the risk for a high priced item.

Edit: looks like it's 60 cents per bid not 20, that raises the cost a little.

[Nvr2Stond]

A friend and I almost started a penny auction site a few years ago... the sites work by buying "bid packs" so you will get say 25 bids for $9.99 each bid you place raises the auction by $0.01 and adds more time to the timer, so an auction has the potential to keep running in the end, the bids cost you alot more than a penny each, and owners can make 3-4x what an item is worth.

You would be better off with ebay, or if you really want to try the penny auctions, buy a bid pack and most sites will let you bid on more bids ( go figure ) but that is the cheapest way to have a real shot at winning an item.