BidRivals.com is a new penny auction site that has been getting a lot of attention. Penny auctions are a specific niche in the online auction community that have been getting progressively more popular recently.
These websites have risen in popularity because they promise in demand, expensive items at unbelievably low prices. But often what isn’t advertised, is the specific way in which penny auctions work. In a penny auction, you are only allowed to bid a single penny at one time. The prices that these items “sell” for is so unbelievably low because the bids are done in increments of one cent.
However, for each bid you place, you pay 65 cents to BidRivals.com. That means if an item is sold for $20.00 on BidRivals.com, Bid Rivals actually makes $1300 for the sale of that item.
So is Bid Rivals a Scam?
In my opinion, people would be better off to avoid all penny auctions, regardless of their reputation.
BidRivals.com and other penny auction sites require people to pay for the option to bid, but don’t allow them to bid in increments of their choosing. This places Bid Rivals in direct control of the price that the consumer will ultimately be paying them, while they are acting as though they’re a non-interested third party.
On other auction sites, like eBay, the seller and buyer have the auction monitored by the website, which is a trusted third party. On BidRivals.com, there is no trusted third party. Bid Rivals is both the seller and the auctioneer. It benefits them – and only them – to drive the price up in these tiny one cent increments.
Bid Rivals tries to get favor from their customers by offering a “Buy It Now” option, which allows you to take the amount of your failed bids and put them toward the retail price of the item you were bidding on. This way, you are not supposed to feel as though you “lost” your money… well, except for the shipping and handling and potentially processing fee that Bid Rivals will charge you.
But if you’re not willing to part with that extra money (not wanting to pay full retail price for that item was probably what brought you to BidRivals.com in the first place), then you’re simply out your money with nothing to show for it.
In generally, people would be much better off sticking to legitimate auction websites like eBay, instead of spending lots of frustrating time and money on penny auctions like BidRivals.com.
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I am usually able to pick them up there for under $120, I think it's so cheap because the site is newer and there aren't many bidders yet. Anyways, I'd recommend you shop there if your still in need of an iPhone. The site is called Bid-Rival.com. I just checked and it looks like they have one ending soon and the bid is at $55 so far.Hope this helps you!-Chad - [email protected]
P.S. Here is a little secret I'll pass on to you. Right now there is a glitch/hack on the site that will allow you to block other people from bidding on the item. When you place a bid, hold down the enter key until the auction counts down to 0. This should allow you to win any auction instantly. But I'm not sure how long it last, I'm sure the site is working on fixing the glitch/hack."
Since we don't know the actual e-mail address from craigslist, I assumed this as a genuine person trying to help me. When I heard the word bidding I assumed it to be the standard bidding we are all familiar with such as at ebay. First timers will definitely be fooled by the prices on their website very easily and I was one of them and registered with them and realized I need to buy bids package minimum 50bids @ 37.50$. Their meaning of word is even unsuccessful bids that means, all the info in there is so limited that you wont know whats going over there. You will see a clock running for 15 secs.
IN TRUTH THIS WEBSITE IS NOT FOR SAVING MONEY FOR ANY CUSTOMER BUT IT IS A KIND OF LOTTERY. THEIR INTENTION IS NOT TO SELL STUFF BUT TO MAKE YOU BID HUGE NUMBER OF TIMES AND TAKE MONEY. FOR EACH 0.015USD (1.5 PENNY) PRICE RAISE YOU PAY) 0.75$ AS BID COST AND YOU HAVE NO OPTION OF CHOOSING HIGHER BID, WHICH MEANS THEY DON'T WANT YOU OR ANYONE TO SAVE ANYTHING. THEY ARE ACTUALLY MAKING MUCH MORE THAN THE COST OF THE ITEM FROM BIDDERS SIMILAR TO A LOTTERY WHILE THE ACTUAL BIG WINNER WILL BE THE BIDRIVAL.
I SUGGEST YOU BE CAREFUL WITH BID-RIVALS AND THEIR ANONYMOUS SCAM EMAILERS WHO PRETEND AS IF A GOOD NEIGBHOR.