QuiBids.com is the largest penny auction website currently operating in the United States. Penny auctions have been around for awhile, but have only recently gotten lots of attention from people outside of the penny auction community.
Penny auction websites attract people to them by promising expensive, big ticket items at unbelievably low prices – for example, QuiBids shows a new iPad, which retails at $499 for the most basic model, selling for $22.54. But this winning bid of $22.54 is misleading. This isn’t the truth of how much it costs to win that iPad.
The way penny auctions work is that you are only able to bid a single penny at any time during the auction. However, at QuiBids.com, you must purchase each 1 cent bid for 60 cents. So an iPad that retails for $499 but was won for the grand total of 2,254 one cent bids (or $22.54) which actually cost 60 cents each means that the iPad just sold for $1352.40.
Though the person who wins the item usually has paid less than retail for what they have received, citing $22.54 as the winning bid is extremely misleading.
So is QuiBids a Scam?
All penny auctions, regardless of reputation, are a bad idea and should be avoided.
First of all, QuiBids.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 means that QuiBids is forcing the price up and profiting all the while.
On eBay, the seller and buyer have the auction monitored by the website, which is the trusted third party. On QuiBids.com, there is no trusted third party. QuiBids is the seller and the auctioneer. It works in their favor – and their favor only – to drive the price up in these small 1 or 2 cent increments.
QuiBids attempts to redeem themselves by offering you the “By It Now” option, which is when you can take the total amount of your failed bids and apply that toward the retail price of the item you were bidding on. Say you bid $80 total on an iPod Nano that cost $150. For the remaining $70, Quibids will sell you a Nano. Well, $70 plus tax, fees, and shipping and handling.
With the added “fees,” tax, and S&H, that Nano will cost you more than it would at Apple, and usually much more than it would at a discounted retailer like Amazon.com or Target. In addition, QuiBids is not an approved retailer of Apple – or any major brand name – products.
This means that if you get the item from them, the manufacturer warranty is void – if it breaks within the first 60 days, you will not be able to get it repaired or exchanged. If you have a problem within the first 30 days, QuiBids will refund the final auction price you paid, but not a single dime of the bids it took to win the auction.
It’s much better to stick to legitimate auction sites like eBay, instead of spending lots of frustrating time and effort on penny auction websites like QuiBids.com.
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Any fool knows that no business stays in business to sell items for pennies on the dollar. What they don't tell you in the very slick commercials with the hottie looking very skinny and sultry, is that each of their "pennies" equals $.60 of your money. The auction is not controlled by bidders -- it's controlled by robots who will force the price up at whatever increment they determine will make the most money for Quibids. In the end, you pay AT least as much and usually more, than the item actually costs. Oh -- don't forget taxes, shipping and handling.
This site, as all the penny auction sites, are nothing but ripoffs and should be investigated by the Consumer Protection Agency. Anyone who gives this site anything more than 1 star is either a fool or works for the company. STAY AWAY FROM QUIBIDS. Use eBay, where they have an independent 3rd party monitoring bids.
Let's shut them off than ?
Petition , anobody ?
they will have to show in their adds ''won at only 2235 bids''
instead of ''won at 22,35$''
Or
Use the real calculated total
Or
Write a ''**every 0,01¢ bid costs 0,60¢** somewhere
Otherwise its nothing legal to pretend dollars are not dollars .
In a game where you have to pay $0.60 per penny bid, but can always buy the item at full retail price, the optimal strategy is to enter an auction being prepared to last as long as it takes and keep bidding until you either: a) win the item, or b) buy it at retail price. That way you "can't lose" (you were prepared to buy the item anyway) and might win the item at a discount.
The problem is, the optimal strategy for you is also the optimal strategy for someone else- those bidding against you. So the net result is that you will likely end up buying the item at the "buy it now" price, which as we've heard, is higher than the fair market price you could have bought it for somewhere else.
In this way, it's like the "Prisoner's Dilemma", in that each person, by following what's in their own best interest insures that everyone loses. The only way to "win" at this game is through cooperation, i.e. fixing bids, as in, I will let you win this one if you let me win the next one.
The auction companies make sure this can't happen by attracting many bidders, limiting the communications between bidders, and if all else fails, bidding against you themselves (shill bids).
In other words, the game is rigged so that you are likely to lose. That's why people are comparing this to gambling, where the house has an advantage. Just as in a casino, it's "possible" that you could walk away with a great deal. But on average, everyone loses.
To win this kind of game would require that the people bidding against you are dumber than you are. This is known as "the greater fool theory", as in "I may be dumb to try this, but the other guy is dumber than me, so I can win".
This kind of thinking is the basis of many con games. People are greedy enough to think they can win at the expense of someone else who is not as smart as they are, but all the while it's the one setting up the game that is fleecing everyone.
By adding complexity to the game, like being able to purchase bids at discount, Quibids is trying to obfuscate the basic nature of the con, and encourage people to think they can get the edge over other bidders. And they are trying to position this kind of bidding as "entertainment". After all, if you are having fun, you might not notice that you are playing a no-win game.