Is bidoo.ca a scam?
Before signing up for a penny auction it’s important to learn how these things really work. The reality is penny auctions realistically shouldn’t be called penny auctions, truth be told the “penny” in a penny auction could in fact be called 10 cents, 20 cents, 30 cents, a point, a token or even a credit. Do you follow me here? The term “penny auction” in regards to bidoo.ca is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. Truth be told nothing on bidoo.ca is being sold for pennies. Below I will prove my point.
Bidoo.ca penny Auction is nothing more than a marketing gimmick – I’ll prove it to you!
Before you sign up for anything personally I recommend reading the terms and conditions that’s first and foremost, below is a brief explanation of their terms and conditions for the record the date in which i’m writing this is April 2011 so depending on when you read this things on bidoo.ca may have or may not have changed.
Purchasing Tokens (“Bidoos”)
11. Under reservation of other dispositions outlined within these terms and conditions, you must purchase tokens called “bidoos” in order to have the right to participate in an auction on the Website. A bidoo is priced at $1.00 plus applicable taxes. Bidoos can be purchased on our Website by following the relevant instructions. These are payable by credit card through the PayPal electronic payment service or the provided telephone payment service. Note that the 6% transaction fees are not refundable following completion of the transaction.
also if you sign up for bidoo.ca and want to pay a penny to bid you get this message.
“Each bidoo costs only $0.70!”
Something else to think about is the prices you pay to purchase “bidoo’s”
Basic
25 bidoos$17.49
Basic+
50 bidoos$34.99
Premium
100 bidoos$69.99
Premium+
200 bidoos$139.99
How Bidoo.ca really works!
There’s nothing wrong with Bidoo.ca making a profit, but don’t be fooled into thinking that anything on bidoo.ca is being sold for pennies, in the example above the cheapest bid pack is being sold for $$17.49 and lowest price people pay to place a bids seems to be 70 cents. My point is the term penny auction is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. Their use of the word “penny” could have easily been replaced with credits, tokens or points. It’s similar to taking the kids to chuck e cheeses and buying them tokens so they can try and win tickets to purchase overpriced candy and toys!
Penny auctions are borderline gambling without the cash payoff! But… if you play your cards right you might be lucky enough to come away with a nice prize. The odds are obviously against the consumer so personally I would approach bidoo.ca with caution, you may also want to read the rules and follow some of their tips before signing up.
Final thoughts on bidoo.ca
Personally I wouldn’t call bidoo.ca a scam unless they’re not delivering their goods to the winners of their auctions. Personally I would never waste my time at bidoo.ca it’s way too risky for me plus most of the items they have up for auction are things I can buy at Wal mart or Canadian tire for less than $17.49 and I won’t have to wait on delivery. That being said do not let my opinion stop you from signing up for bidoo.ca just don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Please leave your comments or your experience with bidoo.ca it helps others!
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE PURCHASING BIDS
This isn’t a bidding site, It’s a casino. Auction prices have absolutely nothing to do with the auction item or it’s value. A $100 item going for $8.87 and a $250 item going for $0.27 should be just one indicator…
You purchase bids at a cost of around $0.70 each. You then bid on items in increments of 1 penny. Only it’s not 1 penny, it’s the $0.70 you paid for each of the bids. Every time you bid, a counter begins at 20 seconds, counting down to 0. If you were the last bidder, you then purchase the item at the amount bid. but people continue to bid and so the counter continues to reset at 20 seconds. Obviously you need to stay in front of the computer because if it counts down and hits zero before you bid again, the other guy/ gal wins. The thing is, every time you place a bid, you are paying $0.70. This means if you bid on an item and your share of the bidding means you placed 64 penny bids, you didn’t spend $64 cents; you actually spent $44.80. And what did you get for $44.80? Well if you weren’t the last bidder, you got nothing!!!
Check this out= I continue to bid, along with others, and the price of an Ipod Touch rises to $4.84. Then someone out bids me and my computer slows down, or the internet lags a little or I run to get a glass of water. The counter counts down and I lose. He now uses his credit card and buys the Ipod for $4.84. BUT, lets break down that $3.84
$4.84 = 484 penny bids
If each 1 penny bid actually costs bidders $0.70 then Bidoo.ca just sold an Ipod for $343.64 (338.80 in bids plus the purchase price of 4.84)
The winning bidder placed 267 of those 1 penny bids, so he actually paid $186.90 plus $4.84. He got an OK deal, but everyone else got nothing for their Money…
Sure you might be the winner, but…
The actual sale price of the item means nothing. The winners almost seam random and some item winners come out of no where and all of a sudden the auction ends. Your bids that cost you $40.00 to purchase end up giving you nothing in return.
On top of all this, there is no info regarding other bidders, so who knows if they exist or if they are computer generated bidders.
In 2 hours, here’s what I did
I purchased 50 bids that cost me $36.74
I then used 35 of those bids on an auction to win an additional 100 bids.
My mistake was that I thought the item was paid for with the bids I already bought. When I won the auction, I had placed 35 bids and was the final bidder at $64.16. What I didn’t realize was that now I had to pay for the 100 bids and the price was 64.16.
I thought, “Boy was that stupid. In essence I just spent the equivalent of $24.50 in bids and now I had to pay $64.16. That’s a total of $88.66 just to have 100 more bids. None the less, Stupid me figured I’d play differently, so I completed the transaction. Then I went on to bid on a few item. I would have had a great deal, purchasing a $50 gift card for $1.29, but all of a sudden I was clicking franticly to be the next bidder and my bid didn’t register. The other guy had won!!! Then I did the same with another item and spent 2 hours watching the countdown over and over again (had my son continue bids while I went to the washroom) then again at one point the auction didn’t register and again, I lost. Good news is, I did eventually win an auction.
Yeah, me!!! The auction was for 25 bids and I only bid 6 or 7 times before winning the auction for $0.44. With the bids I placed and the purchase price of $0.44, I only spent $5.34 for 25 more bids. Pretty good eh. Wait a sec, I STILL HAVENT ACTUALLY WON AN ITEM…
With my remaining bids, I set out to actually win an item. I spent another 2 hours or so bidding on a $100. gas card. My bids ran out at $4.65. I was done and there was no way I was purchasing more bids. Please, please, please learn from my mistake. These penny auction companies are making a fortune. A supposed $799 camera sold for a mere $36.99 and the auction lasted over 7 hours. Some poor guy was in the auction for the majority of it and then he got out bid and lost. Bidoo.ca sold the camera $800 camera for over $2000. The guy who followed the auction spent over $100 and got NOTHING.
Paul
I had played, won free credits for cheap, 25 credits, ran out, so I decided to buy 200 Credits, 140 bucks plys tax.
Decided to bid ob a camera, got outbid, no camera, down the money.
This site is a waste of TIME and MONEY!!!, DON’T BE FOOLED, it is borderline gambling
I also want to add they introduced a new depth to the scam yesturday. Now on the big ticket items there is ” Automatic Bidding ”
Meaning people can set it to bid for them, and how many times, as well as to the last to seconds. so when the clock reaches 0:00:01 POWWW!!! a bot bid for and against you.
The problem with this is that the new “bidders” with low bid amounts can barely compete.. and there just seem to be those with a bottomless pit of bids to work with….
What a tangled web they weave… :/
They say that “nothing” is sold for pennies…And while this is probably mostly true, it’s not actually 100% true. I signed up for an account in May 2011 – I understood how the whole thing worked, but decided to give it a try anyway because you got 5 free bidoos just for signing up. So i signed up, got my 5 free bids, and wouldn’t you know it, first bid I placed, I won! Honest to god! I admit it was only an iron lol, but I won it for $0.04 (If you don’t believe me, go ahead and check out their website in the “Sold Items” section – my user name is Kayestofkays, and I won an iron for $0.04 on May 12, 2011…you’ll have to go back several dozen pages, but they do have a record of all sales in reverse chronological order). So anyway, I won the iron for $0.04 and paid for it with my cc – all that showed up on the bill was the charge for $0.04 (there wasn’t even any tax because 13% of $0.04 isn’t even 1 penny!!) and the iron showed up on my doorstep about 5 days later – free shipping of course! I admit the vast majority of people spend tons of money and get nothing, but to say that absolutely no one gets an item for pennies is a total lie. I got an iron for $0.04!!
@Kayest Interesting you should say that. Because if what you’re saying is true you didn’t even pay a cent. You got 5 free bids Kayest so if what you’re saying is true you didn’t pay for anything… “Nothing” is sold for pennies on bidoo.ca. The pennies are marketing gimmick nice try though!