Penny auction sites?

[daveparry]

Where is the catch, is it simply a way to push more advertising past you, and can you really win a brand new car for a couple of quid?

[Ki3r]

You have to buy the bids.

Not like eBay were you can bid XYZ from the off.

[daveparry]

Buy bids?

[Matt UK]

Yes, you pay to place a bid. Lowest one wins.

[hornetrider]

daveparry said:

Buy bids?

Presumably you pay to place a bid, every bid. Are we talking about one of those 'lowest unique bid wins' type sites?

[hornetrider]

daveparry said:

Buy bids?

Presumably you pay to place a bid, every bid. Are we talking about one of those 'lowest unique bid wins' type sites?

[daveparry]

I saw an ad for a site called M**bid and a chap got a brand new mini 1 for £6.78 or some other really silly price! I wonder how much it actually cost, if he was paying for bids as well?

[xRIEx]

As said, you pay for the bids, usually in blocks so depending on the package of bids you buy, it might work out at e.g. 75p to £1.50 a bid.

You place a bid which knocks the price up by a penny each bid. Bid once, and it's cost you 75+p plus the final cost of the 'auction'. The hook is that if you're bidding a lot, then you keep bidding in order to win, otherwise you might have spent £20 and got nothing out of it.

Say for argument all bidders pay £1 for every bid, if a car has a final price of £200, then £20K has been placed in bids, plus the final value means £20,200 to the auction site - good for the site, good for the winner, not for the losers.

ETA: just been watching a couple of people fight over an iPhone (RRP £499) on the M**bid site - the countdown timer kept resetting to 9 or 10 seconds each time a bid was placed, so could go on indefinitiely. It was at about £18.75, so the site could have got nearly £2K for a £500 iPhone.

Edited by xRIEx on Sunday 19th August 18:51

[MrBrightSi]

When i found out about these sites i read that every bid by another person cancels a countdown on the item. So in turn other people are stopping your bid winning and youre stopping theres, in turn ramping up the price.