Madbid is a penny auction site that claims to save users up to 90 percent off high value items like iPads and cameras. The site promotes stories of users who have managed to buy a new iPod touch for £21.18 and a Kindle Fire HD for £41.66.
However, Madbid has gained criticism because, unlike ebay, users pay for bids. This means that you could spend endless money bidding on items and never actually win.
How Does Madbid Work?
In order to bid on an item, you will need to buy credit. The cost of credit varies but if you buy a pack of 80 for £9.99, each credit works out around 12p.
You can then spend these credits bidding on items you want. Each auction will have a set number of credits that are required to count as one bid.
For example, you will need to spend 7 credits to enter one bid for the MacBook Pro auction. In this case, each bid costs you 84p. If you bid five times in this one auction, you’ve spent £4.20. If you don’t win, that’s £4.20 gone with nothing to show for it.
Credit Purchasing
Once you have finished with the registration process, you must then move on to the purchasing of credits. They can be bought in packages ranging from £9.99 for a credit package of 80 credits to £374.99 for a package of 3,750 credits. This means that each credit runs about 12p. Credits should be used up to 180 days after they have been purchased. After that time, they expire. Credits enable participants to join in and take part in the different auctions available.
Items Available
One of this site’s most attractive features is variety. The first question you should ask is where do items come from? There are five major sources: warehouse products, warehouse closeouts, overstock surpluses, wholesale stock and manufacturer stock. All products are brand-new, carefully packed and completely sealed. Additionally, products come with manufacturer warranty. As for diversity, if you are a regular penny auction visitor, the first thing that will strike you is that so many items can be found in MadBid.com. Participants can find products in a wide range of categories that include:
Cars: Yes! MadBid is one of a kind in this sense as participants can actually bid on brand new cars like Audis, Mini Ones or Fiats 500 for the incredible price of £4,730. At least that is what they advertise on their homepage.
Electronic Gadgets and Goods: Computers, HDTVS, I pads, Tablets, I phones, state-of-the-art cameras and all sorts of technology like software, GPS and Kindle Fire HD.
Household Gadgets and Electrical Goods: Vacuum cleaners, blenders, mixers and hair dryers.
Gaming Consoles and Toys: Xbox, Play Station, battery-operated toys of all kinds.
Pros
Luxury Brand Name Goods: All goods published on MadBid are certified and seem to be really good. There are hardly any complaints at all concerning this issue. Products are just the way they have been published online and are delivered promptly to your home address. Some users swear they have won really good-quality items and have paid ridiculously low prices for them.
Safety and Privacy: The site is legitimate alright. Even if you disagree with the system, transactions are carried out the way they are expected to and purchased bids are safely kept in your account until you use them. Safety seals are for real and no one has reported identity theft or abuse so far.
Cons
pending gone out of control: What they never tell you anywhere on their site is that you could end up losing a fortune just trying to bid on a product you finally never get. In the end, it would have been a much better deal to just buy the item by traditional methods. Even if the site now offers the chance to transfer used bids to your account in order to use in future purchases, it generally amounts to nothing because items tend to be somewhat overpriced and you end up spending much more.
Automatic Turn-off: The auto bid system is really tricky. For one thing, you lose control over your bidding and even when they ask you to set a time or money limit, biddings carried out with the auto bid tend to go nowhere, at least for you. To make matters worse, the site does not only offer automatic bidding assistance, but a new really dangerous feature called automatic bid recharge. That is, should you run out of bids in the middle of an auction, the system will automatically reload for you so that you can continue. Angry users who requested a refund were turned down and accused of not reading terms and conditions every now and then because they can change.