Updated September 2, 2026
If you're searching for a Bidzaroo review or asking whether Bidzaroo was a scam, you've encountered one of those old internet businesses that has almost completely disappeared from the modern web.
Bidzaroo appears to be offline, and unlike larger former penny-auction companies such as QuiBids, very little reliable information about the website remains readily available.
Rather than inventing a history we can't substantiate, we decided to investigate what can still be independently verified.
And we did find something.
There Really Was a BIDZAROO LIMITED
Official records from the United Kingdom's Companies House identify a company named BIDZAROO LIMITED.
According to the government corporate record:
- Company number: 07460377
- Company type: Private limited company
- Incorporated: December 6, 2010
- Registered office: 48 High Street, Haslemere, Surrey, England, GU27 2LA
- Status: Dissolved
- Dissolved: June 19, 2012
That gives us something much more reliable than an abandoned domain or an old affiliate review: an official government record showing that a company using the Bidzaroo name actually existed.
What Was Bidzaroo?
This is where the historical record becomes considerably thinner.
Bidzaroo appears to have existed during the period when penny auctions and pay-to-bid websites were proliferating across the internet.
Unfortunately, we couldn't locate enough surviving first-party material to responsibly reconstruct Bidzaroo's exact auction rules, bidding prices, refund policies or product inventory.
That's important because many old reviews of discontinued websites simply copy claims from other old reviews until speculation eventually starts looking like fact.
We're not going to do that.
What we can establish is that the Bidzaroo corporate entity had an extremely short life: roughly a year and a half between incorporation and dissolution.
An Interesting BidFan Connection
While researching Bidzaroo, we discovered something particularly interesting given the number of old auction websites RichInWriters has been investigating.
UK corporate records show another company called BIDFAN PRIVATE LIMITED.
And both BIDFAN PRIVATE LIMITED and BIDZAROO LIMITED were registered at:
48 High Street, Haslemere, Surrey, GU27 2LA.
That is an interesting historical connection, but we need to be careful about what it proves.
A shared registered address doesn't automatically establish that BidFan and Bidzaroo were the same business, shared ownership, shared technology or operated together. Registered offices can be used by multiple unrelated companies, accountants or company-formation services.
So we're not claiming more than the records establish.
What we can say is that two companies carrying names associated with the online bidding era were registered at the same address and both were subsequently dissolved.
Bidzaroo Was Dissolved in 2012
This is probably the most useful fact for anyone encountering the Bidzaroo name today.
BIDZAROO LIMITED isn't an active UK company.
Companies House records show that it was formally dissolved on June 19, 2012.
That means consumers shouldn't treat an old Bidzaroo review, advertisement or archived promotion as though they're researching an active company today.
This also creates another reason to be careful with abandoned domains.
Old Domains Can Eventually Belong to Someone Else
When an internet company disappears, its domain doesn't necessarily disappear forever.
A domain can expire.
Someone else can register it.
That new owner may have absolutely nothing to do with the original business.
This matters when researching discontinued companies because an old review might tell you to visit a domain that was legitimate for the original company fifteen years ago but is controlled by somebody completely different today.
Never assume that ownership of an old brand's domain proves you're dealing with the original business.
Why Were Penny Auctions So Controversial?
Bidzaroo existed during an era when penny-auction websites attracted enormous attention.
The basic concept used by many sites sounded incredible:
An expensive television might apparently sell for $25.
A laptop might appear to sell for $18.
A gift card might sell for a fraction of its face value.
But the displayed auction price didn't necessarily represent how much money participants collectively spent.
A One-Cent Bid Wasn't Necessarily a One-Cent Cost
This was one of the most confusing parts of the penny-auction model.
On many penny-auction websites, participants first purchased bidding credits.
Placing one bid might increase the displayed auction price by only one penny—but the bidding credit itself could cost considerably more than a penny.
A good comparison is an arcade token.
The token represents one play.
That doesn't mean you paid one cent for the token.
Likewise, a penny-auction website could display a one-cent increase while the participant spent substantially more for the right to place that bid.
And if you lost the auction, the money spent bidding could be gone unless the particular website offered some form of purchase credit or alternative arrangement.
That's Why the Final Auction Price Could Be Misleading
Imagine an item appears to sell for $20.
If every bid increased the auction price by one penny, reaching $20 could represent approximately 2,000 individual bids.
If each of those bids cost participants 50 cents, bidders collectively could have spent approximately $1,000 in bidding fees while the website displayed a $20 final auction price.
That's only a simplified example—the actual economics depended on each site's rules and bid pricing—but it demonstrates why consumers needed to understand more than the number displayed beside the product.
Was Bidzaroo a Scam?
We don't have enough surviving evidence to responsibly make that claim.
That's the important conclusion of this review.
Bidzaroo's apparent disappearance and the dissolution of BIDZAROO LIMITED don't prove that customers were defrauded.
Businesses fail all the time.
Companies voluntarily dissolve.
Business models stop working.
Competition eliminates companies.
And the penny-auction industry itself declined dramatically.
What we can establish is that the company existed, had a relatively short corporate life and is no longer active.
The Larger Lesson From Bidzaroo
RichInWriters has now looked back at numerous websites from the penny-auction era.
Many of them are gone.
That's more interesting to us than trying to retroactively attach the word “scam” to every failed company.
The penny-auction model created an unusual relationship between entertainment and shopping. Consumers weren't simply deciding whether an item was worth its purchase price. They were spending money for opportunities to bid while competing against other people doing the same thing.
Some consumers won impressive bargains.
Others could spend money bidding and leave without the product they wanted.
Traditional ecommerce ultimately proved much easier for ordinary consumers to understand.
A Simpler Alternative Today
If your objective is simply buying a product online, we'd generally prefer transparent ecommerce over paying for opportunities to bid.
With Amazon, you see the product price, shipping information and purchasing terms before deciding whether to complete the transaction.
Amazon certainly isn't perfect, and consumers should still compare prices and sellers.
But there's an enormous conceptual difference between:
“This product costs $100.”
and:
“Pay us repeatedly for opportunities to potentially win this product.”
For most shoppers, straightforward pricing won.
Our Bidzaroo Review Verdict
Bidzaroo is essentially an internet artifact at this point.
The website appears to be gone, and official UK records show that BIDZAROO LIMITED was dissolved in June 2012.
We found too little surviving evidence to make a responsible determination about whether the original website deserved to be characterized as a scam.
We'd rather tell readers that than manufacture certainty simply because “Bidzaroo scam” happens to be something people search for.
What remains useful is the lesson.
If you're considering any modern auction or shopping platform where you must purchase credits, tokens or bids before having the opportunity to buy something, calculate the real cost rather than focusing on the displayed auction price.
Ask what every bid costs.
Ask what happens when you lose.
Ask whether credits expire.
Ask whether you can obtain a refund.
And compare the total potential cost with simply purchasing the product normally.
If you just want straightforward online shopping, Amazon and other conventional retailers provide a much easier model to evaluate: find the product, examine the price and decide whether it's worth your money.