Aero-M Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Found this site called madbid.com. http://uk.madbid.com/ I thought the bargains were to good to be true. But after watching a few items go for silly money it seems if you have a few hours spare you could win. The auctions start at £0.00 and every bid is a penny, each time someone bids the auction timer starts again. Auctions are between 30 seconds to 90 seconds. The last thing I saw sold on there was a dyson rrp £240 and it sold for £4.82, on a 90 second auction so about 4 and a half hours waiting. everything is new I have a code which gives you 5 free bids. Enter mvc3 when you register. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGav Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Complete and utter con really.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fizzle Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Complete and utter con really.... why? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marbleapple Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 why? Beat me to it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kev_A Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Sounds too good to be true. Probably is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fizzle Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 having just looked at the site, i tend to agree! to be the one who wins would be very time consuming only going up 1p at a time could take forever and thousands of bids, u have to buy your bids, (roughly £1 per bid unless bulk buying) cant just whack in a £10 bid on an item etc.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stratty Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Looks a bit of fun though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanGX Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 I know the website. Each bid costs approximately a £1 but you can get free bids every time you log on, or when you invite friends, etc. It does require you to be hugely disaplined and dedicate several hours to it. I've not won anything, but that's because I've not got the number of bids you'd need to stand a chance. They've had some really good high value items on there, like Mini's for example, going for £150 or so. Its actually remarkably clever. Think about it. If the site is getting £1 for every bid cast, although the winning bidder is getting a fantastic top of the line laptop (for example) for £30, the bidding process would have earning the website about £3,000 minus whatever the laptop actually cost. As mentioned, it does require someone to be sitting at their desk and constantly bidding on it and paying for the bids in the first place, but if you pick the right item and commit to that item, you could be laughing, in theory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dr_jekyll Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 you can buy a MILLION BIDS , YOU WILL NEVER WIN Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snooze Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Yeah - madibid.com is fundamentally a lottery not an auction site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hogmaw Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 That's genius. So the camera on there now for £14.27 has reaped the owners of the site over £1400 - and it's not stopped yet! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marbleapple Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 That's genius. So the camera on there now for £14.27 has reaped the owners of the site over £1400 - and it's not stopped yet! Thats presuming all the bids are legitimate (i.e. not from the site itself). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 These sites should all be banned. It is false advertising. You have to multiply each winning figure by 100 to see what it ACTUALLY went for. Am I right in saying that if you have the winning bid you also have to pay how much you bid? Say you win a car for £100 using a 1p (actually £1) bid, you have to also pay the £100? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aero-M Posted December 31, 2009 Author Share Posted December 31, 2009 These sites should all be banned. It is false advertising. You have to multiply each winning figure by 100 to see what it ACTUALLY went for. Am I right in saying that if you have the winning bid you also have to pay how much you bid? Say you win a car for £100 using a 1p (actually £1) bid, you have to also pay the £100? From what I understand of it you buy your bids, 1 text bid cost £1.50 but if you bulk buy it gets slightly cheaper: Package Price Saving SMS Bid £1.50 0% 10 Bids £10.49 30% 15 Bids £14.99 33% 25 Bids £22.99 38% 50 Bids £44.99 40% 100 Bids £84.99 43% 150 Bids £122.99 45% 250 Bids £199.99 46% 500 Bids £374.99 50% I only went on there with some free bids from a voucher code website, The mini, I phone, laptop and 37" tv have been going since this morning and are still going. But the dyson I was watching did actually sell for the £4.82, you then have to pay the vat and delivery on top. So you don't actualy pay anymore than the end of the auction price as you would have already brought your bids prior to bidding, so it costs you a pound to buy a bid but only increases the auction price by a penny. I can see you would only win when everyone else gets bored of waiting hours/days for bidding to come to an end, it gets to the final couple of seconds and someone will bid and start the countdown timer again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave17 Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 That's one expensive mini at £22700 if it's a £ a go! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chucksim Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Apologies for cracking open an old thread but I've had God-awful experience with madbid. Wish I'd done due research before ditching over £300 down the pan. Obvious bully bidding/collusion going on, items taking forever to ship, zero support, and now 10 second timers. Anybody considering these "bargains" needs to have their head examined. Wish I'd come across pages like these before joining up with crooks. More evidence ... http://comparepennyauctions.co.uk/content.php/463-Madbid.com-Fail-to-delivery-auction-win-9-months-on! http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/brunel/A78285126 http://madbidforums.com/index.php?/topic/53-bully-bidders/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TonyP Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Strange first post:blink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havard Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Strange first post:blink: That's Aero M for you..!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scoboblio Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 I must be missing something here, if a bid costs £1 but only puts up the auction price by 1 pence, then the 'amount' quoted at the end of the auction is a completely arbitary figure, and doesn't bear any resemblance to the amount that the winner actually paid for it? E.g if I bid a hundred times on an item that has 5,000 other bids put on it, the 'winning bid' would be £50 but I've already paid £100? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
straightsix Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 I might set up a 'madbid' to sell my car..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 If you bid 100 times, you'd have paid £100 for the privilege of putting those bids in, then you also pay the winning price if you're lucky enough to win the auction. The website makes the vast majority of its money by people buying the bids at £1 a pop. The final hammer price is less crucial to the website. It's still needed in order to entice people in, so they can put the "This brand new car was won at auction for only £412" garish adverts in newspapers. But you're right: for the reason you gave, it's more of a lottery than an auction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Josh Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 A dumb post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 I don't know how much competition there is in the sector but I guess it's a very low overhead business, therefore other auction sites could come along and charge much less per bid. Might start a price war among the sites which new entrants would struggle to match. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Have you worked out how much the TV adverts say things are? On the advert it says "Brand new Ford Focus sold for only £800! That's a saving of 93%!!" Does a new Focus really cost £75,000?! I think your maths is wrong: 93% discount would give an initial full price of 800 / (1-0.93) = £11,400 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neo2810 Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Have you worked out how much the TV adverts say things are? On the advert it says "Brand new Ford Focus sold for only £800! That's a saving of 93%!!" Does a new Focus really cost £75,000?! Josh, did you do maths at school? £800 a saving of 93%, means they are saying the £800 is only 7% of the retail price. £800 is 7% of £11,428.57.... About right for a Mini. These sites are con's indeed though. Whatever you bid, unless you win, you lose with nothing to show for it. I'm also led to believe they have a baseline price (number of bids) at which it cannot go before hit so the site itself bids with 1 sec left to keep the price rising. Once they have made their cost and profit, they then let the timer run free. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.