Madbid - what a great idea

[russy01]

http://uk.madbid.com/

Wow who ever came up with this will be laughing, give it a couple weeks and the money will be flowing in.

Say for instance on the homepage at the moment is a MacBook for £70, so in 1p increments it's had 7000 bids. It costs 75p - 1.25 to bid, so if you say £1 per bid they've already taken 7k for a £1200 laptop!!!

Works for everyone, the person who wins still gets a bargain!

[Mojooo]

interesting

as a consumer though you could end up spending £10 to bid and not even win!

i woudl also be wary of them company bumping up auctions themselves so no one atcually gets a product!

[elster]

russy01 said:

http://uk.madbid.com/

Wow who ever came up with this will be laughing, give it a couple weeks and the money will be flowing in.

Say for instance on the homepage at the moment is a MacBook for £70, so in 1p increments it's had 7000 bids. It costs 75p - 1.25 to bid, so if you say £1 per bid they've already taken 7k for a £1200 laptop!!!

Works for everyone, the person who wins still gets a bargain!

However there are 6999 people disappointed.

Clever idea, didn't think it would catch on as there surely can't be that many stupid people.

Turns out I am wrong.

[russy01]

Yea lots of unhappy people, but they should use their noggin and realise the chances of winning.

It won't last long this site, but they'll cash in for a couple months for sure!

Not taking a penny from me though!

[Percy Flage]

It's been running for a year or more already. It was investigated by some form of authority but was found to be legitimate. Clever, profitable and there are enough stupid people in the country for it to work.

[otherman]

russy01 said:

http://uk.madbid.com/
It costs 75p - 1.25 to bid, so if you say £1 per bid they've already taken 7k for a £1200 laptop!!!

Works for everyone, the person who wins still gets a bargain!

Works for everyone? Including all the people who spend £s bidding and get nothing. Mind you they deserve it.

Its more like a lottery site than an auction site.

[elster]

russy01 said:

Yea lots of unhappy people, but they should use their noggin and realise the chances of winning.

It won't last long this site, but they'll cash in for a couple months for sure!

Not taking a penny from me though!

This has been going a couple of years that I know of.

[Original Poster]

Very good idea!

[bradders]

Interesting site. Those thinking it won't survive, look at Camelot - their game doesn't seem to put off the losers.

[hyperblue]

Heh that is quite novel, does depend on the site being popular enough to keep the bids coming in (to extend the timer) though. Seems to be working though, currently the Audi A1 has had 1800+ bids on it!

Edited by hyperblue on Saturday 24th July 21:39

[russy01]

bradders said:

Interesting site. Those thinking it won't survive, look at Camelot - their game doesn't seem to put off the losers.

Fair enough, but the lottery is for a life changing sum of money, i'll happily invest a pound on that a week. But im not going to invest a pound a time on some stupid laptop or camera!!

[ShadownINja]

Yep, it's great. There was a thread on here a while ago about it. I wish I'd thought of it first. Something similar is the lowest bid auctions you hear on the radio etc. Text in the lowest unique bid... as many goes as you want. People are picking up Sony Viaos etc for £2.14... shame they've texted 100 times each and for each competition.

[bradders]

russy01 said:

bradders said:

Interesting site. Those thinking it won't survive, look at Camelot - their game doesn't seem to put off the losers.

Fair enough, but the lottery is for a life changing sum of money, i'll happily invest a pound on that a week. But im not going to invest a pound a time on some stupid laptop or camera!!

True it is a life changing prize, but it's a scale thing. The lottery has odds of approx 18million to 1 for your valuable pound - so the reward on winning should be life changing. What are the odds to win a laptop on this site. I would expect a damn sight more achievable. Would need to see a good spread of results to calc it properly.

Also, don't forget that for your 18 million to 1 you also risk the privilege of sharing that life changing chunk with a he'll of a lot of others!!

As it happens, I would not play either - but they are both fantastic money making schemes.

[lestag]

Mojooo said:

interesting

as a consumer though you could end up spending £10 to bid and not even win!

i woudl also be wary of them company bumping up auctions themselves so no one atcually gets a product!

http://www.bidrivals.com/us/ is similar.
You are bidding on a product against the rest of the world

also IIRC there have been a few similar sites that have introduced false bids to get the price/bids up

[russy01]

i had a nosey again on there today and i dont trust it. It would be too easy for the mods to cheat!!

Several times the counter ran out, stayed on zero for several seconds, said checking then went back to 60secs. fair enough you have to consider internet lag etc, but it could be some scally sat in their office clicking reset as they havent made enough money yet!!!

[Sideways Rich]

The founders of Skype have apparently invested £4m in this business - http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/26/atomico-ventures...

[jon-]

Sideways Rich said:

The founders of Skype have apparently invested £4m in this business - http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/26/atomico-ventures...

That's interesting, I've a lot of respect for the people behind skype.

ETA: "Such sites have drawn controversy after economists found that $1,000 checks auctioned on Swoopo drew an average of $2,452 in bids, raising questions of whether the bidding exploited people’s irrational competitive instincts." Cha-ching!

Edited by jon- on Monday 26th July 22:42

[Sagacitas]

russy01 said:

i had a nosey again on there today and i dont trust it. It would be too easy for the mods to cheat!!

Several times the counter ran out, stayed on zero for several seconds, said checking then went back to 60secs. fair enough you have to consider internet lag etc, but it could be some scally sat in their office clicking reset as they havent made enough money yet!!!

I've also seen the timer get to zero, say checking, and then reset to the max time for the item. Doesn't look good.

[boony]

Sagacitas said:

russy01 said:

i had a nosey again on there today and i dont trust it. It would be too easy for the mods to cheat!!

Several times the counter ran out, stayed on zero for several seconds, said checking then went back to 60secs. fair enough you have to consider internet lag etc, but it could be some scally sat in their office clicking reset as they havent made enough money yet!!!

I've also seen the timer get to zero, say checking, and then reset to the max time for the item. Doesn't look good.

You can set it up to automatically place bets for you and then just leave it alone. I'm guessing the "checking" message is displayed whilst it checks for users who've used that functionality. I honestly doubt there's anything more sinister going on - I'm sure they'd be shut down and prosecuted pretty quickly if they were doing anything dodgy, and with the profit they must be making why would they bother?

[Andrew[MG]]

Surely this lottery will come under the same rules that made Best of the Best change the way they operate?