Quibid and Swoopo.com are two relatively new “auction” sites. They claim to offer new items such as iPods, Macbooks, PS3, and other high-ticket popular purchases at bargain-basement prices through an auction-like process.
Here’s how it works – Every time you bid on an item, the price goes up (usually by 5 cents) and the auction is extended by anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds. This, in itself, isn’t too bad. At some point, someone doesn’t react quickly enough, so the last bidder wins, right?
Here’s the catch – it costs 60 or 70 cents to bid – every time you bid. So a $1000 laptop that finally sells for $200 has cost 4000 bids ($200 / 5 cents) times 60 cents per bid = $2400. Now, the winner doesn’t pay the whole 2400. He just pays for his bids. He’s probably clicked through, at a guess, 500 bids, so he’s paying $200 winning price, plus $300 for the bids (500 at 60 cents each). He got a good deal, but here’s the rub – everyone else bidding on the item has also paid 60 cents per bid – probably hundreds of bids each on average – and they got nothing for their bid money – zilch.
So unlike eBay and similar auction sites, where there are winners, but no actual losers (aside from the occasional scam or shoddy merchandise), Swoopo.com, Quibid.com and the like depend on many losers to make up for the one winner.
Beware.
I’m currently watching this auction on Quibid -
http://www.quibids.com/auction.php?id=15854
We’ll do the math later. It’s currently at about $35 – about $420 in bid fees.
2009/ 12/02 13:51 – Now at $105. So it’s still going strong, and they’ve already collected $1260 in bid fees. Most of the bidders at $35 appear to have dropped out.
2009/ 12/02 15:03 – Now 159 – they’ve collected 1900+ in bid fees, over and above what they’ll charge the ‘winner’. Not bad for a $1699 laptop.
2009/ 12/02 16:18 – Auction ended. The MacBook Pro went for $216.50. Quibid took in $2598 in bid fees, plus the $216.50 price, for a total of $2816, for a laptop that retails for $1699. Great deal for the winner, as long as he didn’t bit more than 1480 times. Not so great deal for everyone else who bid on the laptop, and thus spent $2382 for the privilege of clicking “bid now” many times.
Now, see this, ladies and gentlemen:
Currently, an iPad (worths $499 at Apple) is being bidded. If you had spent 100 bids ($60) on it, you’re not likely to win. Suppose you lose, you get to exercise “Buy it Now” option. You know what? Quibid charges $940 minus $60 (your bids), which is equal to $880. If you go to Apple and buy it, you’ll save $381. I quary Quibid about why they charge $940 for an item that costs $499. Here is the reply:
“Due to supply and demand we have had to place a markup on the Ipad. Since these have just been released, they have been in extremely high demand, and have been very hard to obtain. In fact, for private customers Apple has placed a one per customer limit on these items.”
What do you guys think? Is this a scam?
Here’s my story, you decide.
Last night (after days of researching) I decided to jump in and give it a try.
I bought the 45/bids package and started at “the beginners auction”…won 25 bids, with my first bid…(ok I’m happy) so, I started watching a couple big ticket items (macbook pro and iPad)…I started watching 2-4 hours it took, for it to get up to over 100 bucks…next thing I know, someone won the $1800.00 mackbook pro for just over $100.00 plus bids…ended up costing user roughly $500.00 after shipping etc. I was like wow…saw tons of these examples.
So, I decided to bid on the iPad (recently sold for 100, 200ish) so I thought surely it wouldn’t go for much more than the Macbook Pro, which, at retail, is 3x the price of iPad…so at around $120, I jumped in.
There were waves of people bidding furiously within the 8 HOURS or so of bidding, some came and went, 3-4 guys where there for most of the time (they were bidding like crazy…they had to be over a thousand dollars and they were not letting up…
I, on the other hand, bid really good for a long time, only bidding when it got down to 1 sec. and was only into it for around $100 by 2a.m. then I noticed my bids seemed to be going faster than what I was actually using…i’d bid, look at my “bids remaining”, and then look again, to see like 5 missing…(even though I didn’t bid)…double checked with my girlfriend…because I couldn’t look away from the counter long, and couldn’t see any pattern or way to prove it…she saw it happen a couple times…
ok, so, whatever, nothing I could do but keep going…It took seven hours to get to get the price to about $200 and now I was in for $200 worth of bids as well…I was now starting to believe I was going to end up paying more than retail, which really is $535ish (after tax) from Apple…and just knowing I wasn’t going to stop until it was mine.
At around 4:30 a.m. things were slowing down. It was me and like 2 other guys (that had a lot invested…I swear the one guy, THURSTY1 had to be in for 2k, buy the way he was bidding for 9 hours…like: I’d bid once for every ten of his…
I went to buy more credits and my card was declined, (not quibids fault), my bank (come to find out today) put a hold on my card for fraud suspect…even though I was nowhere near my spending limit or # of transactions allowed. So, guess what happened next…
NOT EVEN TEN MINUTES LATER… (Time it took for me to get my girlfriends card, for more bids) someone with only 30 bids came in and won the item….the THURSTY1 guy only bid once or twice more in that time and let the “new guy” win. WHY, when he was bidding strong up to that point would he just give up?
I’m not saying for sure that Quibids is a scam or that it’s their fault my bank declined me (which luckily, after a heated phone call to my bank, I am getting my $290.20 back) but things ere VERY FISHY…VERY FISHY, from the way bids were going down, to my bids going faster than I was using them, to a near 10 hour auction suddenly ends, right when I run out of credits, even though there were still 8-10 bidders fighting (2-3 hardcore…and the rest “newcomers”).
I may not have clearly recounted the whole story correctly, but I am positive there is SOMETHING going on…not a sore loser (and I am getting my money back) but there is DEFINITELY SOMETHING SHADY GOING ON OVER THERE IN OKLAHOMA.
They tell you to start small, most likely to butter you up for the big score…then they have some sort of bots or friends doing the bidding from there (I AM POSITIVE, but can’t PROVE IT).
I will def. NOT RECOMMEND this to ANYONE> RUN AWAY!!!!!!
Also, a lot of their products are marked up by 10, 20, 30% as is the case with the iPad…my fault for not realizing they were charging $720.00 for an iPad that can be had for $535.00 from Apple…there is NO WAY IN HELL that this company is losing money, even if 90% of the people use the BUY IT NOW option… even if the iPad was $535.00+shipping on quibids.
They say it’s because of supply/demand, but that is B.S. because there are still some available where I live…and other marked up items are not in low supply.
Again, not their fault for trying to make a buck (or several million) or that my bank shut me down, but there is something going on.
This is quite the racket, and wish I’d thought of it, but Bidders beware.
Quibid only sells one iPad at a time so of course there are supplies and demands since it takes more than 1 day to sell an iPad. If they have multiple iPads on auction at the same time, I am sure they can move better with the bidding process.
Folks,
Quibid is nothing more than a slightly disguised form of gambling.You’re betting 60 cents a pop on “winning” a huge discount from retail, as opposed to a cash payout.
Simple as that. The more you have to bet, the higher the cost for your return, which, as with traditional gambling, can be zero.
One hell of a clever idea. Wish I’d thought of it.
I just got a screenshot from watching an auction and saw three consecutive bids all placed by the same person ON AUTOBID. They are using your bids against you to keep the auction alive with the autobid feature. This is probably why you noticed big dips in your bid count, because you bid after yourself (if you were using autobid of course, if not I have no logical explanation). That is some seriously shady shit, I am definitely not going to EVER give these con artists my money.
Thanks Robert for your comments. I have been hooked on qui bids for only 3 hours and I’m down $60 bucks on trying to win more BIDS!! how absurd! I think the first 25 bids I so called “won” was the hook and its gambling from then on. I will steer clear but will look to see if I can buy stock in the company. HA
OK, I am beginning to get really upset with you people. There’s somethings you kids need to understand about Quibids.
#1: It IS gambling. You run the risk of losing $.60 every single time you click “Bid” but if your smart the return is worth the gamble.
#2: You’re bidding on an IPAD **WHICH IS THE MOST POPULAR ELECTRONIC ITEM ON THE MARKET IN THE LAST 10 YEARS!** You really expect to just walk into an auction and win it? NO. Start small, work your way up.
#3: In 2 days using Quibids, I have invested $54 and already saved over $200 on the 5 items I have won. BE smart with your bids and study patterns before you go blowing your money.
#4: There’s no scam, everything is totally legit. You only feel scammed because you were stupid enough to waste $200 bucks on the most popular item offered on the site. My friends, girlfriend, and I have all had great successes on Quibids, just learn to it works and THEN spend money.
Good luck figuring stuff out rookies, I promise you it’s not hard. However, if you don’t like it that’s fine, but leave it alone.
A better name for quibids business model is more traditionally known as a raffle.
I played for many hours then observed for many hours. Very suspicious activity. I watched one guy named mjkahlon bid over $60+ dollars on an item that he could have bought on a buy it now for half that. I saw this several times. Almost anyone with a spreadsheet and some math background can notice the pattern. Several names show up repeatedly on random auctions. So does this person just have all this money to blow or is he a bidding plant. Uh its just a matter of time before some smart math person catches them in this scam and then we will all be in a class action lawsuit. Oh PS…. I emailed them a letter that I had proof of their scam and not 5 min later I magically one a $40 item for $2 !!!!! I laughed at the obvious timing. Just do a Google search on Quibids scam and you will see the proof!
I was biding on a Nintendo Wii. I was following the so called advice that quibids mentions in the help section that states the people that win the most bids are the ones willing to pay full price for the product. I used the auto bid feature, but realized that it used up 25 bids in less than a minute. Ridiculous! It claims that the auto bid feature is designed to bid between 20-0 seconds. But it bids automatically even if there are 10 people bidding continuously and the timer never gets below 5.
When I bid manually, I only placed bids at 1 second. All my bids were going through. After about an hour of bidding there were at least 5 heavy bidders going at it back to back including me. and at $140 into it, all of a sudden some new guy comes in, and with only two biomatic bids wins it. WTH! I placed my bid at one second just like every other time, but it never registered. and the 4 other strong bidders just froze too? Weird I tell you.
Here is the biggest catch of ALL! Quibids gives you a buy it now option, so since I spent $140 in bids, that would get deducted from the wii retail price of $214 which by the way I could have bought it for $199 WITH NO SHIPPING at my local Best Buy. but the catch is this. I figured since I had purchased about $300 WORTH OF BIDS, I could use my remaining bids or purchases left to buy it and pay for the rest of it. But NO! In order for me not to loose that $140 I had to cough up another $109 from my Credit Card. That really pissed me OFF. They do that so that your bids remain in your account to make you use them for some other auction. Its an abuse and a messed up one, and causes so many poor people looking for a good deal to loose so much money.
I have never seen or been to an Auction where the loser has to pay for what he bid. The highest bidder wins, That’s how an auction works. This is simply a Gambling site.
Its also false advertisement. Cause when bids are complete, they are post it as SOLD for a certain Dollar amount. Like Sold for $20. But it doesn’t matter who wins, you always pay more than that. And the real amount Sold is actually $1200, cause that is what they collected. To actually Bid $5 for a product, it will cost you 500 bids or $300 .
Im am 100% positive they have Bots playing that wait till they collect a 200-300% mark up on some items, then win the game with just a few bids. This will motivate newcomers cause they will think that Someone won a Wii or a big ticket item with just 3 or 4 bids.
NEVER AGAIN!
I am so glad I found this. I almost got caught up in the quibid thing. Thanks for sharing.
Quibids is just a form of online gambling. And online gambling is illegal in most states. Sooner or later, there will be a law enforcement sting, and people will be going to jail. Don’t be that sorry douchebag, stay far away.
Does anyone figure out a way to bring this scam site to justice, report to police or so something?
my husband wants an hd tv so when i found out about qbids i thought wow cool i’ll try and win him one for father’s day. i set up my account and bought the $45 worth of bid credits and then won an extra 25 credits for $3. i had to pay for them using my saved cc. ok fine. it wasn’t until i was nearly out of bids that i realized i am never going to win this tv. i am up against 5 bid-o-matics and tons of other suckers. may as well picked up dog turds with a $50 dollar bill. unless you want a bunch of usless junk don’t wate your time or money.
QUIBIDS, is gamblind and not auction. I fell for it and now I am out $45.00 of my hard earn money. In a real auction you bid and you pay only if you get the item. Here you pay for bidding. That is gambling. You are paying for thin air, nothing. Do not fall into this trap. My lesson cost me $45.00, hope you learn by others experience.
I’m not against being skeptical about this site, and certainly there could be some underhanded things going on. But I see a similarity between most of you complaining: You “just thought you’d give it a try and see what happens.” My fiance, who never tried Quibids before, watched a camera for two weeks, noting what times it sold and for how much. By doing just a little research, she managed to win the camera on her FIRST time bidding on an item. She won it in 4 bids, and after $10 shipping got her $300 camera for $13. Penny auctions are not new at all, just new for online use. They are basically a raffle, only instead of a dumb luck draw-of-the-hat, you actually have the opportunity to apply some skill and strategy to win your auctions. But if you think you are going to start out trying for a $2000 computer without knowing anything about the strategy involved in penny auctions, you are sadly very ignorant. Some great tips for better success: like any gamble set a limit for yourself and understand the numbers. Only bid when there is 1 second left, and don’t start bidding until your auction hits an average of what it has previously sold for. Understand that the time of day can have a huge effect on the price and amount of bidders. Start on less expensive items. Quibids loses money on these items all the time, and they come at great value. Once you feel confident in your strategies, go for those bigger items. End of the day, this is a gamble so stop whining when you lose big. It was only your fault for not doing your research, not understanding the risk and thinking you can just hop in and win a $2000 computer for $15. And if Quibids is scamming people they will be out of business in no time. So send your complaints into the BBB, never go on there again, and let the market take care of itself.
I just found out about Quibids 2 days ago. I spent $45 for 75 bids. I won 25 more bids in the beginner’s section for 2 bids $1.20. Then I used 5 of those bids to win 100 more bids for $2.40. So if you’re still with me, I spent like $48.00 and now had 193 bids to my name. Now this is where you all are failing to use Quibids to your advantage. Instead of bidding on an Ipad, use your bids for little things like movies, which never sell for more than like $3.00. I bid 3 times on the 6 movie Blu Ray collection of all the Rocky movies and won it for 18 cents. That’s $1.98 plus $4.99 shipping so my total spent was now $54.57. For those of you that don’t know, a collection of six Blu Ray movies will run you at least $70 retail. So at that point, the value of my prize had already exceeded my cost and I still had 190 bids to use. I then just wasted some bids on trying to win more bids, but I wasn’t really trying, just bidding on one here, one there. After that I was down to about 140 bids. Then I decided I wanted to win something else. So, I bid on the Lord of the Rings Trilogy on Blu Ray disk 12 times and won it for 2.40 cent. 12 bids times $.60 = 7.20, plus $4.99 shipping brings me to a total of $66.76 spent. So I had now paid $66.76 for the entire collection of Rocky movies and LOTR on Blu Ray. That is more that half the price I would pay retail. I still had 128 bids left. Wasted some more on fooling around. Now I was down to 50. I bid on the PS3 game “Drake’s Uncharted.” 5 bids later I had won it for 18 cent. $66.76 + 4.99shipping + .18total + 3.00 for 5 bids = 74.93 for 9 Blu Ray movies and a video game. normally after tax I would have paid over $200 for this stuff. I’m still left with 45 bids and am waiting for my next win. Moral of the story is, if you start small, with stuff that is easy to win, you will reach the value of your dollar with bids to spare, and then who cares if you don’t win the Ipad because you already got $200 worth of stuff for $74.93!!
THIS IS A SCAM FOLKS!!! CALL YOUR CREDIT CARD COMPANY AND REFUSE THE CHARGES. CALL YOUR CONGRESS MEN / WOMEN AND TELL THEM THIS COMPANY IS A SCAM AND SHOULD BE STOPPED. THIS IS A SCAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CALL THE CONSUMER PROTECTION AGENCY AND JOIN ME ON FIGHTING ANOTHER INTERNET SCAM THAT FOUND A LEGAL LOOP HOLE TO STEAL MONEY FROM THE INNOCENT !!
BY THE WAY… GAMBLING ON THE INTERNET IS NOT LEGAL – THIS GOES TO THE PERSON WHO SAYS IT IS NOT A SCAM and says – It’s a gambling site.
THIS IS A SCAM FOLKS!
Just ask yourself who you’re bidding against??? Do you think they will let an iPad go for under 600?? NEVER – IT’S A SCAM FOLKS!!
Ok, I’ve seen alot of people bashing this site. I’ve personally put in roughly $2,000 in bids, but I have come out with about $5,000 in retail items. Actual retail prices. Now, as far as seeing three bids placed at once, sometimes there is a error where you see that, but it isn’t actually three at once, it’s three different people bidding.
I’ve won 34+ items, and am still winning. It’s all about getting items when people are focusing on “Hot” items. I’ve won 3 things 500+ and a majority of things 100+. I paid no more than $36.00 for an item + shipping, and I’m still making money if I turn around and sell the items. All in all, it is not a scam, it’s a great idea of a website, and don’t be angry just because you don’t realize how to bid, it takes time, patience, and sometimes you have to be on at the right time
.
Keep using it – it’s reliable and works.
Let the bidder beware. This is set up to run until the news gets out and the constable arrives and kicks down the door. It is orchestrated in such a way that new members are allowed to win ‘bid vouchers’ at a low price. You will then find, having won a trove of bids and or a another widget, i. e., three auctions in a single day, that you are restricted from bidding for 24 hours. When you return to the fray with your bounty and with visions of $28 laptops dancing in your head, you will see that your multiplicity of ‘bargain’ bids will quickly vanish into the ether, because in the interim, the number of bidders has dramatically increased. QuiBids will then offer to apply the sum you have squandered in futility to a ‘new’ $45 package of bids so that you can repeat the process. These guys will soon join their role model, Bernie Madoff in the slammer, trust me…Pass it on, please.
I’ve never won anything, nor tried this type of auction, but I hardly think it’s a scam. So what you spend $50.00 and dont win anything, thats the cost for playing, ever goto a carnival and dump hundreds of dollars and only come home with cheap stufed animals… or goto las vegas and come back flat broke? whats the difference. You have to take your chances, you gottah spend money to make money. If you dont like to take chances… dont bash it, just dont bid
Not sure what to think here! Checked out their BetterBusinessBureau page which doesn’t tell you much… (below)
http://www.bbb.org/oklahoma-city/business-reviews/internet-auction-service/quibidscom-in-oklahoma-city-ok-90016706#ratingdetails
Maybe they have shill bidders? Maybe not. Sounds like illegitimate bidders would have to be all automated because they have so many auctions going on at once. If thats the case then this site is a total scam.
That being said my take is that its a legit site that is profitable because many users are hoping to win a big ticket item for cheap and bid without the intention to use the Buy it now feature.
They are EXTREMELY up front about how it works and if you understand the auction system then you really can’t complain about losing an auction. Winning an auction is obviously very difficult although I’d imagine with some research and stats background you could figure out how to at least increase your chances of winning by implementing some type of system based upon data from previous auctions(time of day an item sells for, amount of bids, number of bidders, etc). Sounds like you’d need a PHD level math/stats degree to find any significant results this way though.
I have not bid on anything yet or even bought any bids, I have been watching some auctions and researching how it works, if I ever did buy a bid package and try to win something it would be an item that I already intended to buy (I’d use the buy it now option in the event I lose). Although it sounds like often time the “retail” price is more expensive than picking up the item in a physical store (ie. many people reference the ipad example).
Overall Questionable Place to Shop unless you’re congizant of the fact that you are essentially paying this company for the “SHOPPING EXPERIENCE” not the item.
I was bidding for a ps3 controller and it was down to just me and 1 other dude. I tried immediately bidding after he did a few times to try and scare him off but that didn’t work. SO then I waited till the seconds got down to 1 and bid. It said I was in the lead and I watched the counter count all the way down to 0, thinking, YES I WON this controller for only like 30 cents! And then I see the other dude won. At no point did it ever say he bid again, until it announced him the winner. I have seen some shady stuff like a few people on there every day making 100′s if not thousands of bids a day.. the same people. (most likely bots) but this most recent thing is rediculous. I clearly won that bid, & then it just gave it to the other guy. I’m going to see if I can get my money back for those bids. something is just not right.
Interesting article about Quibids:
http://notmytribe.com/2010/penny-auctions-quibids-swipebids-et-al-are-more-than-scams-theyre-fraud-818056.html
Buyer beware!
QuiBids’ CEO Allegedly Behind Misleading Weight Loss Marketing Testimonial Sites:
http://www.pennyauctionwatch.com/2010/06/quibids-ceo-allegedly-behind-misleading-weight-loss-marketing-testimonial-sites/
Great comments by those who spend no time researching anything. You focus on the winner instead of the second page. There are no losers unless you yourself want to be a loser. For instance a $100 item I will bid up to 150 times and then quit. My fees are at $90 and I wait for the auction to end. Of coarse a newbie jumped in and won the auction with only three bids but that does not matter to me. I go to my home page and pay $10 buying the $100 item for $90 bids + $10 equals $100. Did I get a great deal? YES! I wanted the item and paid retail the same as if I went to the store and bought it. I also had the chance to get it at a cheaper price but did not the same as if I did not look in the newspaper last Sunday and find it on sale.
Losers? If you are EXPECTING a $1000 item for $20 that is gambling. If you are going to buy it anyway it is a fun way to try for it on sale.
No loser here.
I basically agree with the scam comments. This is not a raffle. A raffle gives everyone an equal chance of winning. This may be rigged. But even if it’s not, you chance of winning at then are small, and you have to be lucky to be the at the end. I guess that’s why people compare it to a raffle. Because you have to be lucky. But it has nothing to do with a raffle, because you may have to invest a lot, and winning has to do with timing at the end. It’s a brilliant concept. They make a fortune. It is basically a scam. Had I read more, I would have saved $17.
I have bid on Quibids for several days. I have won $100 gift certificates for $1.50 and several “bid packages” at OK prices. It is frustrating to lose an auction because someone is not willing to give up. However on Sunday June 27th I saw a Nikon D90 sell for under $4.00, and a Sharp HD TV for under $8.00. Amazing. The day prior I watched two people fight over another Sharp HD TV for hours eventually using almost 1,000 bids each!
Another early auction I won was for a $40 audio speaker set that I won for $.04.
While it is frustrating to watch your bids slip away I think the best way to come out a winner is to focus on the bid packages because wining them will lower your “per unit” cost of each bid so you are not spending $.60 per bid. I think the ‘heavy bidders’ are using voucher bids they have accumulated so their per bid cost is down around $.05. $600 bids at $.05 each would be $30, which is not bad if you won a major auction for a $1400 TV.
It is crazy how some auctions for a 50 bid package sell for $.20 while others sell for $4.00.
I’ve been watching and bidding on this thing for two days now and something is definitely rotten in Denmark (as the saying goes). I’m pretty descent with odds and statistics and the odds back up my observations. I observed for a day via the watch list, the $50 voucher auctions… I averaged their sell prices for over a day at $3.80. So I decided to bid on one to see if what I thought was going to happen would happen and it did. I tried this on 4 different auctions and the results were the same everytime. If I was observing auctions but not bidding the items sold for really cheap…really made you want to bid next go round! But on the auctions that I would actually actively bid on the price would sky rocket and bidders would come out of the wood work. For example: watching some of the voucher auctions, just observing not bidding, they would sell for as low as .83 cents and usually were around $1.50 or so with the avg. being $3.80 but as soon as I would start bidding the auctions would skyrocket way past the average and way past what the odds would say are fair. I watched it go past $6.50 many a time before I stopped bidding and of course a few seconds later someone would win it. I did this with the ipad and the Nikon D90 too and the results were the same. Observing only, items would sell for really really cheap; start bidding and the prices would skyrocket way past what the normal, average auction prices had been. This happened on a statistically significant level and is worth seeking some sort of law enforcement guidance as this site isn’t above the board. Or at least a class action litigation for everyone that has lost money.
WANNA CATCH THE BIGGEST SCAM OF YOUR LIFE?
TRY SWIPEBIDS AND BEFORE YOU LOG IN, THEY TAKE $150 FROM YOU.
QUIBIDS JUST HAS A WAY OF MAKING A LOT OF MONEY OVER YOU GUYS BY GUARANTEEING ONLY ONE PERSON CAN GET SOMETHING FOR A LOT CHEAPER, ASSUMING YOU WIN.
WITH SWIPEBIDS, IF YOU WIN, YOU DONT REALLY WIN.
BUT IF YOU HAPPEN TO WIN, THEY CHARGE YOU THE MONEY FOR THE ITEM BUT YOU WILL NEVER RECEIVE IT IN THE MAIL.
QUIBIDS IS SMOOTHER.
what about the gift cards like walmart and target?
Thanks to you all for posting what you know about Quibids. I was going to sign up,
in fact I did register, but something told me to do a search. So I searched the name
and rip off after it, and came up with this site here. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
As I can’t afford to lose money right now, who can really ?
A lot of con men come from Oklahoma , I bet the Dixie Mafia or some group of thieves
are behind this site. I knew some people from Oklahoma who were very shady folks,
not to say all people from there are bad, not at all.
Love to see them get investigated cause it sounds like a scam to me.
I have talked to an expert in how casinos manipulate their Slot Machines’ payouts. When you start playing, you’ll usually win a couple/few $2 – $5 winnings within the first few plays. This makes the gambler feel “Lucky” or “Hot” on winning. They are then “lured” into plunking the rest of their money, only to win a few more small winnings, until they have depleted all of their money…
…sound familiar with QuiBids? IT SURE IS! That’s why they first recommend you to the beginner’s 25 additional Bids auction. Someone always legitamately wins THAT auction (like getting that $5 payout from the slot machine). Then you proceed to beginning throwing away your bids toward a REAL item. If the item’s current bid price is high enough, there will be ONE lucky winner. However, if the bid price ISN’T high enough, a “bot” will outbid you or the system will “Freeze” for a brief, making the bot win the item.
And for that “lucky” winner….in addition to their winning bid, they’ve also paid for any of their used bids, plus big fees and Shipping & Handling charges….
….So the real question here is, why go through this gimmicky system, with little chance of winning, when you can Ebay/Amazon/Google/Yahoo/Shopzilla shop for the best price with shipping? At least you know what it’s going to cost you BEFORE you pay anything! Penny auction sites like this don’t save you pennies, it rips you off by dollars!!!
Currently, one bid costs $0.60. One bid only increased the total amount bid by $0.01. This means that QuiBids is taking in 60-1 on every dollar. According to the site, the last Mac Book Pro went for $249.53. This means that off of a $1,500 laptop, $14,971.80 was generated for the site off of bids. Scam or not, they are raking it in. How can I invest!?
Anyone else see the pattern of comments by the supporters of quibids? They practically are all the same. Don’t worry guys, we’ll all be laughing when these a** holes are sent to federal prison for fraud and quite possibly embezzlement due to the shill bidders. BTW, gambling is illegal in Oklahoma and it’s only a matter of time before the hammer comes down unless you’re blowing a state senator. Simply because you call a raffle-defined in Oklahoma as gambling-an auction does not make it so. These idiots are seriously going to rot in jail for multiple fraud and gambling charges. I hope they get charged for every bid placed, that also may match the amount of times they’re raped anally. I’ve never bid on that stupid site, but they’re obvious crooks.
This site is a major scam and I have a full proof on this from my own personal experiences.
I had participated on an auction for Dsi XL for my son’s birthday gift. According to their AD, if I didn’t win the auction, I had a choice to use a “BUY it NOW” option. I did use the “Buy it Now” option when my bids full filled. I had spent about $100 in bids and just paid the differences to purchase the product outright. When I didn’t receive my bought item (as it was over a month and nearing my sons birthday), I contacted Quibids over the phone and email about my purchase. Both were literally impossible. Finally, after two months, I was able to get a hold of their customer rep. By this time, (after 60 days and past my sons birthday) I had already purchased his gift at nearby Best buy and no longer needed it. Because the item was not shipped YET, I had told them to cancel it have my total amount (bids that I have used for the auction and the extra funds) that I had used to be credited to my C.C. They agreed over this term. After few weeks, I receive an email that they were only refunding the extra amount that I had used to purchased the item not the bids that I have used. So basically, it’s like this. I spent $100 on bids along with another $100 to purchase the item. They do not full fill the order for 2 Months and when you ask for a refund, they only give back half…. Wow…. I wish I can operate my business like this. I would be rich… But then again, there is common decency and fair business ethics. I have more but this is one of many. What Quibids doesn’t realize is that they picked the wrong guy to scam. I’m now preparing a full class action lawsuit against this company and will do everything in my power to bring this to justice.
I started in quibids, bought the beginner pack, won the bogus voucher lol then was off to try and win more vouchers, rookie me bid more than I should, took a couple days off from bidding to study and learn patterns. BidoMatic and regular bidding is completely different ill tell you that much. So far I’ve won about 3 decent items, I saw that I was out about $80(bought another bid pack) so i though why not get a profit, I studied when and how long a $200 gift card(the one where you choose where you wanna spend it) would last, put them on my auction watchlist, observed they usually sold from anywhere between $20-$70. I’ve won a $200 gift card($46.62) and also a $100 gift card($15.52) so overall I made a pretty decent profit, as long as I utiize the gift card for whatever things I really need. You basically gotta learn the system, you have to go with the mentality that you might lose, I usually bid no more than 10 bids per hour, once I see there are few bidders I begin to bid only if the timer gets to 1. If their auctioning off a tv or ipad why on earth would you start bidding at $40 or $50 when you know its going to be sold for atleast $100. You have to utilize the others bids to win yourself. Also what im going to try now is win voucher auctions, not the baby vouchers cause you’ll lose out but I mean the big stuff, 250 vouchers. I won one recently for $15.36 and had already had bids so I ended up with around 320, its a pretty good deal knowing that 45 bids runs for $27. Now lets say I won a couple more if these which I will be trying to, that puts me at about 750 bids. Now maybe you can understand why some people can bid over and over again, its probably not hurting them like its hurting you because their using vouchers. Although quibids automatically uses bids you purchased instead of the vouchers, they will gladly refund the purchased bids leaving you with money in your pocket and tons of bids to hopefully win a better product(if you use your bids wisely). Now I’m not saying I got this all figured out but I know damn sure that I know a dumb bid from a smart bid haha its soo easy just to click the mouse but you gotta play the game smart! Gunna start building my vouchers to hopefully win the new xbox 360 elite console and a tv in the near future. Biggest thing in this game is patience. No patience, no win, no happy camper.
This is a rip-off among all grand internet rip offs. I sumbled upon QuiBids off some add link on MSNBC and thought I’d take a look. I registered to just create a watch list and then see what items sell for. (Thank god I did not actually buy any bids!) The reality is that you are better off playing the lottery. If you will, sit down with a calculator and average the cost of what you will expend vs. what QuiBids actually profits on an item. An item “won” for $50.00 means that there were actually 50,000 one cent bids. Thus 50,000 x .60 cents per bid = $30,000.00 profit to QuiBids.
If you spend 100.00 to get 166 bids that means that is only 166 x .01 cents, i.e; $1.66 ( a dollar and sixty six cents) Thus for a item won at $50.00 you might have blown through $100.00 of your own money just to bid a very small fraction (basically 1/50th) of the sale amount and thus an approximate 1 in 50 chance of winning. Lets say on the absolutely RARE chance you win a large item you most likely spent alot on buying the bids and still have to pay the winning amount and shipping. Meanwhile everyone else lost their shorts BUT is offered the “Buy it Now” less what was paid for bids. (which is fair enough if you are say at least 20% into the total retail cost of the item…which they do appear to mark-up to a higher retail value anyway) — So, the best option you have is #1 – DO NOT buy/bid more than the item is worth at THEIR offered retail, and B; when you lose (which you will I promise you !!!) be prepared to pay out the addtional diffrence, again at their higher mark-up, to actually buy the item. (and not suffer the loss of your purchased bids).
The scam in this is that yes some people obviously do win (or they would already be shut down) BUT…just like the lottery..it’s totally random choas theory with no proven way to win. Just like the ring toss at your state fair you get sucked into bidding in attempts to win and then once you lose over and over again you are often inclined to spend even more in hopes of getting back what you lost. This is gambling addiction 101 folks!
The kicker to all this IS…IS…you do not really know if the other bidders are ALL real. You can of course assume that many are in fact real people just like you but in this day and age of sofware and porgramming technology you HAVE to assume the feasibility that there is a percentage (either large or small) of bidders that are “bots” which are controlled by the system to keep the bidding going…and going…and yoiu could easily assume it would do so until the value at minimum exceeds a retail value. Even if a “bot” was to win..guess what…they would just relist the item..(so why wouldn’t they do this)
Think about this….an Apple iPad which is sold for $250.00 on QuiBid really means that 25,000 bids were placed meaning a real profit of $15,000.00 (250 x 100 x .60) The only people profiting in all this (aside from very few random lucky folks) is QuiBid. That $15,000 thus allows them to restock their wharehouse with at least 30 to 40 more iPads to auction off. ($15k / $400 assumed bulk purchase wholesale)
Whomever created QuiBids is a genius. This company is making big, no HUGE money hand over fist all at the expense of the next fool who believes in “getting a deal”. Again, bid away…but before you do make sure you are already willing to pay their full price. These people have set this up to get you either way…coming AND going! Once you’ve bought into it…the hook is in your mouth and you are their next catch.
I was so excited checking out this site, but before I was going to join I typed in “quibids scam” in a search and found this page, Thanks to all that contributed. I’ll let this one go.
It may or may not be a scam but it certainly is a bad idea and a waste of money for most people.
Worse yet–the site is NOT secure. Your credit card information is not safe when you use this site. My credit card was revealed and as a result a charge for more than $2000 was posted to my account. I have quite a mess to clean up with my bank as a result of this.
BEWARE. NOT secure.
Quibids is entertainment just like gambling is entertainment. If you’re looking for a “for sure” bargain, wait for a sale in the store. When you buy these bids you need to consider that money spent on entertainment and maybe you’ll get lucky and maybe not. So you say, I’ll spend $100 and when it’s gone it’s gone whether you win something or not.
You buy the bids for 60 cents each, but when you use the bid, the price of the item only goes up 1 penny. Do you think they are doing this to be nice? This is a business and the primary goal is to make money. The winner gets the benefit of the 1 cent bid. If every bid raised the cost of the item 60 cents, they wouldn’t make money and the winner wouldn’t really be getting as much of a benefit. There really is no free lunch guys, somebody has to pay for everything eventually. When, you win, you have a lucky day, but the other bidders make that lucky day possible for the winner.