View Full Version : Mad bid?
GeneticBubble
30-09-09, 08:39 AM
So i just saw an advert for www.madbid.com (http://www.madbid.com) went on the website and theres auction selling ps3's and the like for stupidly low amounts...
to me something seems to good to be true, does anyone have any experience with this website?
the_lone_wolf
30-09-09, 08:54 AM
"New Ford Focus, RRP: £14,945, Current Bid: £354.16, You save: 97%"
Yeah... Sounds legit...;)
Something's deffo rotten in the state of Denmark here!
Why would someone auction £75 or £300 cash?
http://uk.madbid.com/show/121863--75-Cash-EARLY/
http://uk.madbid.com/show/122033--300-Cash/
I would avoid this like the plague....
_____________________________________
Just seen the ploy!
You bid in increments of 1p. So if something starts at 0p & 10 people bid the current bid is 10p.
Each bid costs £1.50 whether you win or not.
So for £75 cash, currently at £1.51, they've already got £226.50 (or £151 profit).
Avoid like the pox as there's only one winner here!
SoulKiss
30-09-09, 09:01 AM
Its a great piece of business.
You have to buy the bids at about £1 each, but they only raise the bidded amount by 1p
So, if 100 people bid on something the bid goes up by £1, and they make £100 profit.
which means if they sell a £300 PS3 for £100, then they took in £1000, so made £700.
So thats how it works.
Is it a scam, probably not, but its borderline.
Oh and if you look at the registration form they also farm your Mobile Number - they say its to send you confirmation of registration , but why not use the email address you are also asked for for that?
Oh and if someone bids with less than a set amount of time left, the counter resets, so no sniping
GeneticBubble
30-09-09, 09:05 AM
_____________________________________
Just seen the ploy!
You bid in increments of 1p. So if something starts at 0p & 10 people bid the current bid is 10p.
Each bid costs £1.50 whether you win or not.
So for £75 cash, currently at £1.51, they've already got £226.50 (or £151 profit).
Avoid like the pox as there's only one winner here!
=D> well done that man, so thats how they make there money, where did you find it said that?
=D> well done that man, so thats how they make there money, where did you find it said that?
The right hand side column - "BUY BIDS" shows the pricing strategy.
_______________________________________
Edit: It's actually worse than that - everytime someone bids on an item in the last minute of the Auction End Time - the auction end gets another minute added onto it, so if you've got 2 bidders both trying to buy the same item they will continue to attempt to outbid each other.
Jeez. Stupid people need only apply. Now, where's that 3D Pyramid scheme salesman....
GeneticBubble
30-09-09, 09:10 AM
Haha, can't believe i missed that, guess i will now go buy random rubbish on ebay where my bids are free :D
SoulKiss
30-09-09, 09:23 AM
I am SOO jealous of this site.
Wish I had thought of it...
suzsv650
30-09-09, 09:31 AM
"
shinnanigans
"
Aint there some one on here called that?
Mr Speirs
30-09-09, 09:39 AM
Yeah it's a scam. Basically what you bid you have to pay regardless of whether you are the highest bidder or not. If you are unsuccessful the amount you bid will be creditted for you to use on another auction.
Also when anyone bids the clock is reset and the full time of the auction is left to run for others to bid, essentially the auction is never ending.
SoulKiss
30-09-09, 09:47 AM
Yeah it's a scam. Basically what you bid you have to pay regardless of whether you are the highest bidder or not. If you are unsuccessful the amount you bid will be creditted for you to use on another auction.
Also when anyone bids the clock is reset and the full time of the auction is left to run for others to bid, essentially the auction is never ending.
ITS NOT A SCAM
Its a beuatifully crafted way of parting people with cash, but its not a scam.
I am trying sooo hard to find the way in which it is dodgy but it isnt...
Its kind of like ebay, but with an admin-fee for each bid, and its down to people to decide how much they will pay ultimately, and how many bids they are willing to lose.
I really am in awe of this site...
hindle8907
30-09-09, 09:50 AM
If you know you want somthing and you buy quite a lot of bids you can endup geting a bargin its allbout how far you want to go .
Mr Speirs
30-09-09, 10:04 AM
ITS NOT A SCAM
Its a beuatifully crafted way of parting people with cash, but its not a scam.
I am trying sooo hard to find the way in which it is dodgy but it isnt...
Its kind of like ebay, but with an admin-fee for each bid, and its down to people to decide how much they will pay ultimately, and how many bids they are willing to lose.
I really am in awe of this site...
If a company is charging £1.50 for each 1p increment in a bid in which you are pretty much guaranteed not to win then in my book its a scam.
Its all fake I reckon anyway...I mean what idiot would be the first person to bid knowing it would cost £1.50 and have absolutely no chance of winning.
hindle8907
30-09-09, 10:10 AM
If you know you want somthing and you buy quite a lot of bids you can endup geting a bargin its allbout how far you want to go .
^^^^
SoulKiss
30-09-09, 10:11 AM
If a company is charging £1.50 for each 1p increment in a bid in which you are pretty much guaranteed not to win then in my book its a scam.
Its all fake I reckon anyway...I mean what idiot would be the first person to bid knowing it would cost £1.50 and have absolutely no chance of winning.
Why would you make it fake/scam - thats negative publicity, lawyers costs, court appearances and jail time - which are all hassle.
Looking at it closer, the average bid price is < 80p - if you sign up now you get 3 free bids, then if you pay for 15 more @ £14.99 you can get a further free 20 in dribs and drabs over the next week, just by logging in and hitting the collect free bids button.
There is so much money to be had off this legitimately that if I was running the site I would be so strict on making sure that every t was crossed and i was dotted.
Will I ever use it - no, not a chance - you would need signficant seed-bid capital to win anything, I think £250 worth of bids would get you some of the bigger items, but at a price where you would not be making that much of a saving - say £250 worth of bids on something that goes for £1000 that has an RRP of £1500, so your saving being worth the same as the risk.
Its no more illegal than the lottery and I believe you probably have more chance of winning on madbid.
the_lone_wolf
30-09-09, 10:21 AM
Perhaps the domain name "mad2bid.com" was taken???
TheOnlyNemesis
30-09-09, 10:21 AM
i agree with soulkiss, it looks legit just one of the smartest and most profitable business models on the internet for a long time.
hindle8907
30-09-09, 10:32 AM
http://www.swoopo.co.uk/ has been around for donkeys. its just the same .
suzsv650
30-09-09, 10:55 AM
http://www.swoopo.co.uk/ has been around for donkeys. its just the same .
looks much more promising, a lot less bids so more chance of winning on that one..
There's a Ford Focus on there now at £355.96. If everyone's bid is £1.50 the site has already taken 35596 bids on it, which equals £53,394. It's a winner everytime for the site and somebody gets a bargain. If that car sells for a grand, the site will have made over £100,000 from it.
It's genius :cool:
looks much more promising, a lot less bids so more chance of winning on that one..
...and another sucker is born....;o)
suzsv650
30-09-09, 11:01 AM
...and another sucker is born....;o)
lol id never ever bid on any of them, just stating the obvious, who ever invented it is a loaded genius!
...and another sucker is born....;o)
We're the suckers for not thinking of it - how can you not think this is a good idea? :confused:
We're the suckers for not thinking of it - how can you not think this is a good idea? :confused:
It's kinda immoral isn't it? Preying on their greed....
I know the people bidding have to got to be stupid or ignorant of what the chance of winning are compared to the outlay - but part of me thinks that activiities like this should be banned.
...of course by my rationale we would also have to ban smoking - Yay! and the national lottery - not so yey!
Owenski
30-09-09, 11:25 AM
+1 soulkiss
Its sooo brilliant its un-fair.
Someone sat down and either suddenly had a way of making a sickening amount of cash. Or they thought long and hard about it. Either way its absolutly brilliant in essance everyone wins!
Everyone has an equal chance to win the item at what ever the price shown plus how ever many bids that person has already spent. ie if the auction was for £10 and you more than 3 times at £1.50 a bid, you'd only make money if the winning price was less than £5.50. Increase the scale of the factors I've just used and you go some way to understanding how brilliantly brilliant the idea for this website is.
Immoral schmoral, whoever owns that site is gonna have all the money they could ever need in a relatively short amount of time!
SoulKiss
30-09-09, 11:26 AM
It's kinda immoral isn't it? Preying on their greed....
I know the people bidding have to got to be stupid or ignorant of what the chance of winning are compared to the outlay - but part of me thinks that activiities like this should be banned.
...of course by my rationale we would also have to ban smoking - Yay! and the national lottery - not so yey!
Nope, not at all.
I have no problem with this site - I have a couple of things I would do differently that would make it fit MY workd view a bit better at the cost of some profit from the site, but I have TRIED really hard to see where they are doing something that is wrong ands have thus far failed.
Yes, its idiots that use SMS Bids @ £1.50 each, yes anyone not studying the auctions for a couple of weeks before getting involved (ie whats the price a PS3 usually goes for on this site and not bidding until it reaches there).
There are some nice psycological tricks being played but nothing that is misleading or false.
I think one of the most brilliant things is it requires zero stock- you can literally do this from your bedroom and send your partner / gopher / trained chimp out to buy the item and post it when the auction ends.
the_lone_wolf
30-09-09, 11:34 AM
...its absolutly brilliant in essance everyone wins!
Except the other 399 bidders who lose their £1.50...;)
Owenski
30-09-09, 11:49 AM
Except the other 399 bidders who lose their £1.50...;)
but they had just as much chance of winning as the person who did win, so they may not have won but at least they werent robbed.
You've got to be in it to win it.
Just thought also its fail proof.
ie when the price is like 20p and not many people will think its worth a bid cos its 1.50 wasted. But in the same vain that will have you thinking that in its self makes it worth the bid. Because not many other people will want to 'waiste thier £1.50'
Absolutly brilliant... how do we set up a similar website?
Owenski
30-09-09, 11:52 AM
I think one of the most brilliant things is it requires zero stock- you can literally do this from your bedroom and send your partner / gopher / trained chimp out to buy the item and post it when the auction ends.
+1
even better, tell the winner of the focus to go to a local ford garage. Select the model/colour they want and ask the dealer to phone your number. You answer pay electronically and the winner is free to drive the car away.
I want to make love to the idea behind this website and make loads of little baby websites that I can love just as much as this one.
the_lone_wolf
30-09-09, 12:00 PM
but they had just as much chance of winning as the person who did winThat's a raffle, not an auction...
Owenski
30-09-09, 12:02 PM
but its an auction because with every bid you place the price increases.
plus you know the value to the bid your going to place so you've got no come back at all.
Question:
Do all auctions start at 0p?
the_lone_wolf
30-09-09, 12:10 PM
but its an auction because with every bid you place the price increases.
You missed the point there...
Contrary to your post everybody doesn't have the same chance of winning, and I said it would be a raffle if they did, the person willing to bid the most has a certain chance of winning, and everyone else has a zero chance of winning but is paying for the privilege...
yorkie_chris
30-09-09, 03:52 PM
It's kinda immoral isn't it? Preying on their greed....
Hell no.
Owenski
30-09-09, 03:55 PM
You missed the point there...
Contrary to your post everybody doesn't have the same chance of winning, and I said it would be a raffle if they did, the person willing to bid the most has a certain chance of winning, and everyone else has a zero chance of winning but is paying for the privilege...
ahh i get what your saying.
But still its awsome!
Warthog
30-09-09, 04:41 PM
I still can't see why some people would bid at 0p? Surely you know you are going to get outbid? Maybe they start the auction at a lowish price already?
SoulKiss
30-09-09, 05:52 PM
I still can't see why some people would bid at 0p? Surely you know you are going to get outbid? Maybe they start the auction at a lowish price already?
What if your rational is "Oh look its at zero, no-one will bid at just 1p, I know, I will and get it for a penny and a bid."
Its all about headology and the chance of getting something for nothing/not much :)
brilliant idea!!!
does anyone actually know how long any of the auctions have lasted?
The Swoopo site apparantly made 20 million euros of revenue in 2008...
yorkie_chris
01-10-09, 11:14 AM
The phrase "laughing all the way to the bank" comes to mind.
Graciepants
01-10-09, 11:52 AM
so how do you actually win then? if everytime someone bids it resets the clock? just wait until the auction is at a high enough price that no one is bidding anymore? or bid at 4am or something?
SoulKiss
01-10-09, 12:19 PM
so how do you actually win then? if everytime someone bids it resets the clock? just wait until the auction is at a high enough price that no one is bidding anymore? or bid at 4am or something?
You have it right - you have to wait until no-one else bids - and with autobidding on the site the 4am strrategy might not work.
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