Review – Auctions4acause.com – Reverse auction

Online auction sites are all the rage these days and they come in all flavors.  eBay is the big dog in the traditional auction site format.  eBay is based on a straightforward highest bid system, and even with sniping tools, is still a great place to look for items at a good price.

Other types of auction site has been gaining steam in the past few years.  These models invariably resemble some form of Penny Auction.  In essence, a user registers and purchases “bids” or “tokens” from the auction site.  These “bids” or “tokens” may vary in price from site to site ranging from $10/bid down to less than a dollar.  The price per bid generally reflects the law of averages on a particular site meaning that a site with a higher bid price generally holds auctions for items with fewer or a limited number of bidders, thus increasing your chances of winning said item exponentially.  Sites like Swoopo are time and bid regulated auctions – auctions end and winners declared when the timer runs out and you are the highest bidder.  The catch is that every time someone bids, the timer is extended.  I’ve no doubt that people have come away from Swoopo and similar sites with great deals – but, while I have read up about it and visited these sites, I’ve yet to give them a try.

One site I have tried is www.Auctions4aCause.com

Auctions4acause is no upstart.  It’s been operating since 2003.  The concept for this site is simple and complicated at the same time.  Basically, you may purchase “bids” for $9.94USD via Credit Card or Paypal.  These may be purchased individually, 3, 5 or 10 at a time.  Each bid credit allows you to place a bid on high end tech gadgets like Laptops, TV’s, Kindle, PS3, XBOX, WII, Cameras and more.

Now I know what your thinking – for $9.94USD I get a CHANCE to buy an item for 80-90% of the listed retail price?  I know it sounds like a scam – but I can vouch for the fact that it isn’t.  I’ve personally won an HP HDX Laptop, Sony PSP and Amazon Kindle on auctions4acause.

How does it work?  Well, for starters, each auction has a set number of accepted bids – not a timer.  So you know before you start exactly how many bids will be placed on a particular item and what your odds are.  Secondly, auctions4acause uses a reverse blind highest unique auction system.  Sounds complicated?  Not really!  You see, there is a maximum bid amount set on each item.  No bidder may bid an amount higher than this maximum bid.  To win an auction item, you need to be the highest unique bidder when the set number of bids has been reached. 

Consider the following auction item:

-this auction is for a brand new Sony PS3 with a MSRP of $349.99.  The maximum number of bids allowed is 88, which gives you, the bidder, a 1 in 88 chance of winning the auction.  Not so bad?  Now the maximum bid amount for this item is $4.73.  No one may submit a bid higher than this amount.  So your bids would range from $0.01 to $4.73.  The objective is to end up with the Highest Unique Bid within this range.  By unique, I mean unduplicated.  In other words, no one else has bid this same amount.  For example, if I placed a bid of $4.38 and it was a Unique or Highest Unique bid and you placed a bid of $4.38 afterwards, the bid is a duplicate, not unique, and therefore knocked out of the bidding.

In my own experience, I’ve never won an auction with just 1 bid – although I suspect it may be possible.  Of course the objective is to place just enough bids to be able to play strategically all the while ensuring that if you win the item, you get it for 50% or less…and if you lose, you don’t lose a bundle.

Here is what your account screen looks like when you are bidding on an auction.  The first picture is of an auction I did not win.  It was for a 16 GB iPod Nano.  As you can see, I had placed 5 bids on this item @$9.94USD/bid.  All told I laid out $50 to try and win what was at the time a $200+ item.  The auction closed when all 44 bids had been placed.  When it closed, I had 1 unique bid and 4 duplicate bids.  The unique bid, while unique, was not the highest unique, which means someone had a unique bid between my unique bid of $4.32 and the maximum bid amount of $4.44.  Seeing as $4.37, $4.39, $4.41 and $4.42 were knocked out, that meant there was only 8 other potential bid amounts that could have won this auction.  In this case, had I been closely watching this auction, I would have simply bid those 8 potentials…all told, it would have cost me my initial $50 and another $80 – which means I would have walked away with a $200 iPod for $130 shipped.  Not too shabby.  Unfortunately, I was away for a few days when the auction closed and I missed out.

This picture shows my auction win for a Sony PSP.

Here are the details.  Maximum bids=42.  Maximum bid price=$4.49.  I won with $4.46.  It cost me $70 to win a PSP with an MSRP of 169.99.

Now when I talk about the MSRP – you mustn't forget that you do not pay tax or shipping on this item. 

The verdict:

Though I may have lost a few bucks on this site, if it makes you feel any better – 25% of proceeds go towards a charity of your choice and all told I’ve won about $2000 worth of stuff.  Is it legitimate?  Sure is!

Curious?

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