| Bigger Bidder is a penny auction site, which tends to set off alarm bells; such companies CAN be legit but often aren't. For those not familiar with the concept, in a penny auction, the site owner "auctions" new retail products or gift cards where each bid raises the price by one penny (leading to final sale prices of only a few dollars for gift cards or products worth many times as much) but each bid costs a fee (typically $0.60 to $1) for the user to place. Because the auctions don't end while active bidding continues (similar to the "going once, going twice" approach of traditional auctions, a bid placed within the last few seconds will add a few seconds to the clock), they can get very competitive and tricky to win. Most penny auction sites will be accused of using "shill bidders," having either employees of the website or automated bot accounts place bids in auctions to prevent them from being won by real customers, and a great many penny auction sites actually do this. Bigger Bidder, as far as I can tell, is not guilty of this offence. Bigger Bidder auctions are perfectly winnable; I've won three today alone, and with only 25 bids. No shill bidders prevented me from closing the auctions in the coveted "highest bidder" slot; Bigger Bidder doesn't use them. HOWEVER, each auction has a reserve price that must be met, and it is only after winning an auction that Bigger Bidder informs you that the "reserve" is RETAIL PRICE. The entire point of a penny auction website is that you pay money for the right to bid in the hopes of winning a product at BELOW retail price; that's the prize and the bid fees are the entry fee to play to win it. Yet when you win a $25 gift card, Bigger Bidder tells you that you haven't met the reserve and offers you the chance to pay $25 for it— after having spent money to bid in the first place. If you win an auction, Bigger Bidder WILL refund the bids you spent, regardless of whether you pay for the item or decline to meet the reserve. Additionally, when you win an auction, Bigger Bidder will "contribute" a small (VERY small) percentage of the price towards the reserve; win a $25 gift card for $0.13 and Bigger Bidder will "contribute" $2 or so, offering you the chance to buy the $25 gift card for "only" $23. However, this is still fundamentally a bait and switch, as one is led to believe that winning a penny auction entitles one to pay substantially less than retail price (at least before the cost of the bids has been accounted for). While the bids are refunded to the auction winner, no one would even RISK losing $25 or $30 worth of bids just for the chance of "winning" the right to buy a $999 Macbook for $997 plus shipping if they knew in advance that this is what an auction win would entail. In their defence, Bigger Bidder does warn users in advance that their auctions have reserve prices. However, given their business as a penny auction site, and given the manner in which penny auction sites are expected to operate, it still constitutes a bait and switch in that they fail to disclose the RESERVE price is the same as the RETAIL price. That this omission is driven by intentional dishonesty rather than mere negligence is made obvious by Bigger Bidder's decision to list previously concluded auctions and their ending prices with banners declaring, for example: "99% saved!" when, in fact, the "winner" was asked to pay near retail price, or possibly above retail price depending on how exorbitant the shipping charges are. Once more, in their defence, the amount of Bigger Bidder's "contribution" against the reserve/retail price you will be asked to pay is pegged to the final auction price, so an auction that closes high enough ($50, for example, against a $999 Macbook) will offer notable discounts against retail price, though still higher than what one would expect to pay. In practice, these occurrences almost never happen; I have yet to see an auction stay open that long, and even in my example, the $999 computer would cost the "winner" $250 on top of the $50 closing price, the cost of shipping, and the cost of the bids. I will attempt to convince Bigger Bidder to waive the "reserve" demands, though I don't expect to succeed given that this seems to be their firm policy, and if they refuse, I'll simply forfeit my three won auctions and delete my Bigger Bidder account, warning others to stay away as well. |
