Every once in a while Lebanon buzzes about certain type of websites. A few years ago group deals websites were mushrooming everywhere, and right now seems the time for auction websites like BidZeed.com and BidAffairs.com.
Judging by their names these website first seem like regular bidding websites, but the process of purchasing their offered items has little to do with the real concept of bidding.
To be able to participate in the ongoing auctions, you first start with buying a number of bids ($17.5 per 25 bids at BidAffairs for example), and from then on each bid you place will increase the price of the item by one cent, and at the end of the auctions you end up paying for the bids you have placed ($0.7 for every single bid) in addition to the final price of the item. So for example if an item in fact costs $500 and got sold for $10 (1000 bids), then the website will earn $0.7 x 1000 + $10 = $710, while the user will end up paying for the number of placed bids plus the final item price.
Some people will consider such deals a steal, but I tend to see it more as gambling since each bid you place is non-refundable. Assuming you place 20 bids and don’t end up winning then you practically have paid $14 for nothing, and there’s actually a high probability for this to happen since the website keeps on extending the auction end time by 15 seconds each time someone places a bid. So it’s not like the whole thing is limited by a clear time-frame in order for users to try to make use of the last few seconds.
I wouldn’t go as far as calling such websites a scam, but they just don’t feel right to me.
Update:
BidZeed team e-mailed me last night to let me know about a feature I missed on their website called “Buy Now”. In case you weren’t the highest bidder at the end of an auction, this feature will allow you to purchase the selected item at retail price while deducting the value of the bids you have spent from the original price.
I thought it’s worth updating the post to mention that such feature exists since it differentiates BidZeed from other similar websites and gives you the option to not waste your bids for nothing, given that you of course want to purchase the item in question at the price set on their website.