“Is there such a thing as a safe penny auction?” My friend Chuck asked me the other day.
“That depends on your definition of safe” I replied.
“If you mean is there any penny auction site where if you bid and lose you can get your money back then yes I can recommend a bidding site for you. Most notably is the biggest penny auction site in the US, Quibids.com. They have a buy it now option on every single item. The catch is, that you are paying the “Quibids Retail Price” and not the discounted price you could probably find with some internet searching. You probably saw the Q bids TV commercial that explains how it works briefly but were wondering what the catch is.
What is the safest penny auction site today?
- Quibids.com = Overall safest. 100% of auctions have a buy it now feature (lowers risk and lowers reward). They are also the largest in the US. They are also a member of the BBB.
- Beezid.com = safe but risky as they are trusted by the industry but do not feature BIN on any of their auctions. Amazing deals can be had but it is not easy to win on Beezid.
- Happy Bid Day – smaller site but a history of fast shipping and legit auctions
- SkoreIt – some auctions have BIN but the prices are on the higher side. Very competitive and very fun
Low Risk Bidding vs Trustable Penny Auction Sites
So, that only answered part of Chucks question to me about wanting a safe penny auction site. He wanted one that he knew would not cheat him. A penny auction site that cheats is indeed a bidders worst enemy.
“I need to know that the penny auction site is not using a computer program to bid against me and keep the auction going and me spending my bids.” Well, that is a whole different animal and in this case you are looking more for a trustworthy penny auction site. This is so important. Penny auction sites that use shills, have scripts built into the software to bid against you or engage in any sort of bidding against the users is a site that should be blacklisted and never bid at.
The good news is that there are legitimate penny auction sites that give you a fair auction. You can find these sites listed at the top of our most trusted penny auctions This is the most important thing. If you are bidding at a site that will cheat against you, you will never get a good deal. There are legitimate penny auction sites that I would not call a ‘safe place to bid’ because you can lose money bidding there. Beezid.com comes to mind. It is legit in that the site is not cheating or using shills but it is risky because none of their auctions have a BIN option. They are a high risk, high reward site, and they are also trustworthy.
Safe Penny Bidding Site vs Legit Penny Auction Site With Risk
The big thing to point out when talking to people about being able to safely bid in a penny auction is that you first have to pick a site that you trust. This is the first step.
Next, you have to decide if you want to play in a lower risk, lower reward penny auction site like quibids. Or if you can stomach a higher level of risk for a higher chance of huge reward you could consider a trustworthy, but more risky site like Beezid or HappyBidDay.
What To Consider Before Bidding
- Reputation Established – You do not want to be the guinea pig on a new penny auction site at this point in the game unless someone really special comes around
- Buy It Now option / feature available. This one fact is the KEY INGREDIENT into determining whether an auction is “low risk / low reward” or “high risk / high reward”.
- Buy It Now Prices are “reasonable” to you. – You will never find it as cheap on a penny auction sites BIN price as you will on Amazon, ebay, or craigslist. However the prices shouldn’t be that far out of the ballpark either. If the BIN prices are too high (like on the watches on SkoreIt) then the ‘BIN’ feature is more or less worthless to you in your choice to bid in the auction.
- Time in business – While the penny auction industry is still very young overall, the business is extremely difficult to do profitably and most new penny auction sites fail. Even those who became very big, like Swoopo and others.
Important Bidding Advice & Tips To Help You Win
- It is not easy to win a penny auction. You need a winning strategy, you need to invest time researching your competition and you need to know exactly what you are getting into before buying bids
- Top 10 Bidding Mistakes made by newbies every day
- Penny Auction 101 – The Basics. Make sure you understand how the pay-to-bid model works before you sign up at any penny auction site.
