Today I did my usual browsing on the gossip section of Daily Mail and I noticed somewhere on the front page an article/add about Quibids. I decided to write this article because Daily Mail has high circulations and I am quite sure that lots of people are going to click and see what is all about. And probably some are in desperate need of getting good items at low price and may get scammed. Therefore I did my and their homework.
Naturally I had absolutely no idea what the heck Quibids is, so curious as I am I started looking. First I checked their website, the one that pop up when you click on Daily Mail’s article about the guys. Boy oh boy! It’s full of promises and examples of people who were lucky and scored an iPad for less than $50, or a MacBook Pro for pretty much about the same amount.
Suddenly I got the feeling that something must be wrong; when it’s too good to be true, it’s probably a scam.
Some time ago I checked a more legit auction site here in Vancouver and I have almost considered placing a bid, except that I could not find anything interesting. However, I digress so let’s get back to Quibids. So you click on the link, you land on a page full of promises and you almost feel like ‘joining for free’.
Luckily your neurons started making the necessary synopsis and you think that maybe you should check a little bit more what is all about, before committing to anything, not to mention giving your CC number.
What I found out is that Quibids is one of the pretty safe penny auction sites. It’s completely different than eBay, therefore is you think you are a seasoned bidder on eBay and Quibids it’s going to be a walk in a park, think again.
First of all you have to buy a $60 worth bid package. For every bid you place, you have to spend $0.60… hence the qualification as a penny auction site.
The beauty starts now… and by that I don’t mean your ‘beauty’ but the website’s owner one. You place the bid, the clock resets and the bids increase by 1 penny. Basically it can go on and on until you exhausted all your bid money or you quit or somebody else is more callous than you and somehow manages to outsmart you.
People say that actually you are not losing money as you are given the option to ‘Buy Now’ at a price below the retail one. I guess it all depends on how much you want to pay for a merchandise.
Don’t forget that you still have to pay shipping and handling, which I read was much higher that what amazon (for example) charges.
Some negative comments in case you are still considering having ‘fun’ bidding:
– Manipulated auctions: after (trick) winning in the beginning, you are kicked out of easy auctions and you don’t have other choice than to bid battle on big ticket items.
– Same bidder names appear on and on, even if apparently is a restriction on the number of bids per month for certain types of items
– Defective merchandise and not all warranties are honored
– They say it’s free to join, but ask for CC from the very beginning. People claimed that they were charged $60 at the sign up, before considering placing any bids.
– There is no phone number to contact them; it’s just a ‘live chat’ you could use in case you have a complaint
– If the final bid is over the amount you have on your bid package, you lose everything because you are kicked out of the bidding for insufficient founds
Finally, do a simple math. Let’s say that you want an item worth $500. It ends up by being sold for $100. Considering that every bid increases the price by 1 penny, you have about $10,000 bids x $0.60 = $6000 for a $500 product.
Not bad for Quibids, right?