You may have seen commercials for a site called "Beezid.com", whichfeature name-brand items for insanely huge discounts. For example,the particular commercial I saw showed an auction for an iPad going for less than $20. Wow, that's probably $200 less than a used, firstgeneration item... on eBay! I love pointing out when old adages apply to relevant topics. You know the saying that goes, "if it seems too good to be true, it probably is"? In the case of penny auctions, that is most definitely the case.
Before I get started, I want to mention another interesting anecdote I discovered whileresearching this topic. Doing a quick search for "beezid scam" on google gave me some interesting results. The sponsored ad by google was of course a link to the site in question- that was no surprise.The next two appeared to be blogs, like this one, which appeared skeptical of the site at first. Reading further I saw a link for afree 25-pack of bids for signing up on the site. Oh, you betterbelieve my skepti-sense was tingling after that.
These penny auction sites are not outright deceiving their users though. In fact, theyare very upfront and honest. They explain how everything works right off the bat: Every auction starts at $0.00. Each bid increases the auction price by a penny. Here's the catch, (which theyexplain to you as well); you have to pay money each time you bid. Let me state this more clearly. You are paying to bid, whether you win or not, you are spending money to raise the auction price. From online reviews I've read, each time you bid on Beezid, you are charged $1.00*. So let's think about this:
Before I get started, I want to mention another interesting anecdote I discovered whileresearching this topic. Doing a quick search for "beezid scam" on google gave me some interesting results. The sponsored ad by google was of course a link to the site in question- that was no surprise.The next two appeared to be blogs, like this one, which appeared skeptical of the site at first. Reading further I saw a link for afree 25-pack of bids for signing up on the site. Oh, you betterbelieve my skepti-sense was tingling after that.
These penny auction sites are not outright deceiving their users though. In fact, theyare very upfront and honest. They explain how everything works right off the bat: Every auction starts at $0.00. Each bid increases the auction price by a penny. Here's the catch, (which theyexplain to you as well); you have to pay money each time you bid. Let me state this more clearly. You are paying to bid, whether you win or not, you are spending money to raise the auction price. From online reviews I've read, each time you bid on Beezid, you are charged $1.00*. So let's think about this:
An iPod Touch was sold for $19.07. I'm no mathematician, but I believe they sold an iPod for $1907... plus the $19.07 the"winner" must pay. The MSRP on the most expensive version of the iPod Touchis $399. Even if the figures in my example are off by a few dollars, I can almost guarantee this site is making hundreds of dollars on these trendy gadgets.That's just one example. They also have laptops over $40 and TVs going over$100... and if you're still doing the math, that's actually $4000 and $10,000 people have paid to raise the auction price that high.This is how penny auctions work. I would call it a scam, but they tellyou exactly how the system works right when you sign up.
In case you were thinking you could jump in on an auction and bid at the last second, they've thought of that too. Every time someone bids, time is added to the auction clock. You know what, I don't even know why they even call these auctions. This is nothing like an auction whatsoever. I am not endorsingthis site in any way shape or form, unless you enjoy gambling for merchandise. Okay, not even in that case.
* You can actually bid for bid packs which may be cheaper... but of course, if you don't win the auction you're not getting that money back.
Best Penny Auctions sites are very good way to shop online.
ReplyDeleteOf course bots can detect blogs like mine and add their own advertisements. They don't care if it's a positive or negative view apparently.
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