Mad Bid - anyone tried it?

vicisthebest · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:04

I saw an advert the other night for a website called Mad Bid, have heard of it before and thought it was too good to be true that you could buy something like a Sony Vaio for £24.

Just had a look at the website - seems all above board, sure there must be a catch though.

Has anyone ever been on, won anything on one of their auctions, or had any experience with them?

G|mp · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:04

Go for it, you'd be mad not to!

Destination · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:08

Do you lose your bid cash if you don't win?

Rameses · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:08

lolSwoopo

petecarter · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:10

Each bid costs money, so if you bid and dont win, you're out of pocket. This is where they make so much money, the more times a person bids, the more they have invested in it, so they keep on bidding.

Its all 'above board' so to speak though.

Rotty · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:11

seems to me to be a ploy to exploit the gullible

Spamalot · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:13

I once worked out that a MINI Cooper had generated around £600k worth of revenue for them.

TommyV · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:14

It's a smart idea, kudos to the fella who owns that scam.

Bloomfield · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:15

AmTechFox said:
lolSwoopo

This tbh.

Rids · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:18

I looked at this a few years ago when I saw them and it all seemed too good to be true, the sad fact is, that it is.

The site I was looking at, each bid cost you roughly 50p, you could buy 'packs' of bids to make it cheaper, but for simple maths we will use 50p as the number. When you place a bid, it increases the 'bid price' of the item you are looking at by a specified amount, usually around one or two pence.

So lets look at item that sells for a 'bid price' of £20.00 - thats taken 2000 bids to get there, thats £1000 in bids that people have paid for. Its a complete no lose situation for the retailer in question, and I often wonder about the legitimacy of the situation, as I have never once seen an item drop out of bidding at a low price.

agnes · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:20

Yea, swoopo was the first and original.

Basically, you buy 'tokens' that you use to bid, for a pure example and not factual, you pay £10 for 100 bid tokens, you then use those tokens to bid on something...

So, you win it using your 100 tokens, that's you £10 out of pocket so far, then you have to pay the winning bid amount... Say £50... So in total, you bought something for £60...

If you are clever and catch a bid that hasn't been tainted by auto bids and buyers than spend thousands on there to simply resell stuff. Then you can get a bargain. It's risky...

Swoopo was dodgy in the sense that the bid count kept going up until no one bid... So effectively endless!

I got a 8GB usb stick for 31p and it cost me £3 worth of bid tokens lol. Never bothered again!

ags

RomanNose · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:23

Legal fraud to be honest.

Cuchulain · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:23

agnes said:
Swoopo was dodgy in the sense that the bid count kept going up until no one bid... So effectively endless!

Madbid do the same, every bid adds a bit more time on. The Mini for example, each bid increment goes up 1p and knocks the timer back up to 45 seconds.

Greebo · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:25

The catch is your bids cost money. Everytime anybody bids the auction is extended.

I know/have read about people who have spent £200 on bids before winning a ps3 for £30.

And a great deal for the bidding company. You see £300 items sold with £700 worth of bids.

Glaucus · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:25

vicisthebest said:
that you could buy something like a Sony Vaio for £24.

And how much money in bids ontop of that?
you pay per bid and it ends when no one bids for x-amount of time. you may gets some bargains, but you'll also waste a lot of money on bids that you don't win. They do it because they make money out of it, so on average you will always lose.

vicisthebest · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:26

Thanks OCUK for explaining the scam... I knew it had to be one. So you pay 50p per bid and it puts the bid up by 1p?

Don't think I'll be signing up!

Cosimo · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:26

Nice "legal" way of making money from thousands of punters.

bhavv · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:26

If they keep every bid, then that has to be fraud.

How is that legal?

Glaucus · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:28

bhavv said:
If they keep every bid, then that has to be fraud.

How is that legal?

why would it be fraud and why would it not be legal.

jamief · 18 Apr 2011 at 15:28

chaosdestro0 said:
Legal fraud to be honest.

Not really. People have to accept responsibility for their actions - if they are stupid enough to use these sites then they are entirely to blame.