Penny Auction – Quibids review and success


It’s Matt – I have a little confession –  I love Penny Auction websites. Yes I know, some of them are somewhat less to be desired. But some can actually be worth your time. There is a lot to learn before any one starts to pursue some of these sites.

First you need to have control. With any auction – online or in real life, control is how you succeed. When the action gets heated and the bids are really hopping and you think you are so close to winning, you need to be able to stop when you reached your limit.

As with any auction there is the fine print. Auctions in real life have fees, that not only cover the venue, but they even need to pay the auctioneer and support staff. With that online auctions have fees and certain fine print items that help produce income to support the site.

Another important way to save money and get items cheap at auctions is to watch and learn. Don’t just jump right in and start bidding! Watch and learn. With online auctions there is always another item that is soon to be up for bid. So watch the auction from start to end. Watch how the process works. See when the right times of day are to bid. During the day on week days majority of people are at work, so there are less people online bidding. In the evenings the internet traffic spikes! So there are more people to compete with.

Stay in your budget. Know where you are at before the auction starts, and most importantly – during the auction when things can get exciting and become hard to focus on what matters – the money.

Online auctions have a different type of bidding. They are called “penny auctions” but that is ONLY because the price of the item goes up by a penny each time someone bids on it. BUT each bid cost 60 cents to buy. You must pre-buy your bids before you start to apply bids to auctions. Unlike eBay where it cost nothing to place a bid, online auctions cost 60 cents each time you bid. In eBay – when ever the auction closes and you didn’t win, you loose nothing. But on online auctions, if you are not the winning bidder, you do not get your bids and the cost to purchase the bids back.

So with these tips on auctions, we have bought all of our vehicles at auctions, and many of our electronics and “toys” we have bought in online auctions sites. Quibids is the one I trust. They have also recently been audited by a third party and have shown to have proper accounting, their processes and all the bidding takes place in appropriate ways! And is even approved by the BBB – Better Business Bureau.

Here are cut and pasted images of the items I won along with the total of the purchase with shipping:

This is a brand new 55 inch LG brand LCD TV with 3D technology that I won at an auction for a total of $94

Now the final price of the TV was $64.92 – which means there were 6,492 bids placed. Each bid raises the auction one penny.

With almost ALL online auctions each time a bid is placed – time is added to the auction. So as you bid then say 10 seconds are added to the auction end time. SO unlike eBay where the time is fixed and once the time runs out that’s it the bidding is over. On sites that are penny auctions – each time a bid is place then the time left to bid increases. So the only way that the auction is over, is when the last bid is placed and the 10 second clock runs out because there were no other bids placed.

So here (above) is the Xbox 360 Kinect with 250gb we won for a total of $65.52 with shipping. So there were a total of 5,553 bids placed by different people bidding on it. I will wait till I see the auction slowing and the total number of bidders in the last 5 mins decreases. Then I also take into account the average ending price for the similar items over the last few days. In this case many were ending around $50 in the closing auction price. So that is when I start to get serious and carefully bid.

So if you think this is something you would like to check out – Use the site I use – QuiBids

3 thoughts on “Penny Auction – Quibids review and success”

  1. Never! If this article is actually legit then the author must be very lucky. As she mentioned a one penny bid will cost you sixty cense. So the $64.92 flat screen with 6,492 bids would have required people to spend sixty cense on each one of those bids. If you loose you don’t get any of your money back! Do the math, the customer is the looser and the company is making a lot of money from naive people. All penny auction style sites operate like this and should be considered a scam. Remember: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”

  2. I find myself logging into Quibids almost daily now after I have won three items at unbelievable costs. I have found two birthday gifts and a personal gift within just a month of using Quibids. My advice is to spend some time on the website, don’t just bid on the first item you see.

Comments are closed.