How do you pick up a real bargain?
June 3rd, 2010
Great question. Is there such a thing as a free lunch? Well pay per bid auctions and Exceet are about as close as it gets. But let’s leave Exceet out of the discussion for now. Pay per bid auctions allow winners to pick up great products for 70%, 80% even 100% off their retail prices. Incredible. But how is it possible? Simple. Everyone who bids on the auction has to pay to place their bid, but there is only one winner. Each bidder has contributed to the pool and the eventual winner is the beneficiary of all those tiny contributions.
So if you are the winner you gain hugely…but at the expense of all the other bidders. So is this fair? Well that’s where a lot of the controversy starts. Many (certainly the most vocal) people argue it’s totally unfair…even a con or a scam. At a minimum it is very cleaver marketing. I mean who wouldn’t want to pick up a $1,000 Apple computer for $20? Heck, I would! 
But this is maybe where I go against those vocal advocates. I think it is a valid auction model on two conditions:
- It has to be transparent – what I mean here is people need to not only know that they are paying to bid but that there is only one winner and loads of peple who will be disappointed in each auction
- The rules/model has to be fair – and this is where I think all pay per bid auction sites have failed to date and deserve critcism. Since the sites are the ones listing the items and they design the model, they set the model to ensure they win on average…and the clients (you and me) loose.
Until they change there business practices they will continue to get a huge amount of criticism.
Just a final note. Exceet was set up for this very reason. We applied the eBay fairness to the pay per bid auctions. The terms are designed to be fair and Exceet earns it’s income by charging a portion of the auction selling price. That means we want auctions to end (not run on and on like traditional pay per bid auction sites) and we win when users win. So that means that users (you and me) can enjoy the thrill of pay per bid auctions and maybe snap up a bargain AND do it on 100% fair terms.
Until next time…
Categories: Buyer Auctions, Lowest Unique Bid Auctions, Penny Auctions, Reveal the Price Auctions, Zero Price Auctions
