View Full Version : Another Penny Auction



Thunder
07-15-2011, 02:29 PM
http://www.autoblog.com/2011/07/14/cnn-shows-how-man-won-chevy-camaro-on-auction-website-for-5-28/

This is amazing what this guy won. If he had kept his mouth shut, then just maybe I would happen to come across the new site and try my luck. Now its flooded with people trying to outbid each other.

He won a $31,000 Bumblebee Camaro for $5.28 site bux....just over $400 total.

Midtowner
07-15-2011, 02:36 PM
Quibids.com is the site.

They're making big money over there.

BBatesokc
07-15-2011, 02:50 PM
Give me a break. This was a great marketing ploy that's all. $40K to get national coverage promoting your new penny auction site and thus driving millions of bidders to a site that had zero the day before. That Camero was their loss leader and it paid off big. If this wasn't a planned publicity stunt then several cars would have sold the same day for the same low price. I'm betting they did one auction, let it go cheap and then sent out tons of press releases.

I say bravo to them.

SoonerDave
07-18-2011, 08:41 PM
This is just one of a multitude of variations on the "dollar auction" scam (okay, okay, technically it isn't a scam, but it's just really, really dumb). Swoopo, quibids, ubid, and who knows how others operate on the same principle - sell "bids" and pray you're the last one to bid. They've so far managed to skate about a sixty-fourth of an inch above the law because they're technically not a gambling site (in the vein of games fixed by mathematical chance), but man, you don't have to watch for long to realize that the people making the bucks are the ones running the site, not the folks buying tons of bids on things they never win, but then claim a huge bonanza if they finally happen to win something. Best advice? Stay away.

Midtowner
07-18-2011, 08:57 PM
^I'd hope that that'd be the case with any website.... why run an unprofitable business?

BBatesokc
07-19-2011, 05:01 AM
These penny auctions sites serve as a good way to flush out the consumer idiots amongst us.