Quibids scam or not

Question: Is Quibids a scam?
Verdict: Not scam.

Quibids is a penny auction site, which is quite different from the regular auctions that you are aware of, like traditional auctions or even websites like eBay. Penny auction is a kind of Bidding fee auction, so each bid you place, you need to pay for it.

In spite of what the founder says, there are few parallels between traditional auctions and Quibids. Thus, you should know well the risks of Quibids before venturing to bid on the site. The simple fact is, it is a high-risk-high-return strategy. You might win big time or you might lose a lot of money without anything to show for. There are of course a few Quibids strategies that you can use (read my series on Quibids strategies on this blog) to maximize your returns, but the risk is still there.

That being said, once you understand the risk of Quibids, you will soon find out that Quibids is not a scam. They are here to stay and they have a successful business model. Quibids is not a scam because they will not withhold your winnings or not send you auctions that you have won. They also have plenty of cool features that are not aimed to scam you.

Bottom line: you can trust Quibids, but don't be so sure of your luck!

A number of penny auction sites have recently closed shop. One of the more famous group includes Swipebids/Swipeauctions. This was bad, but it wasn't surprising, considering the way the site was run. It was a totally unsustainable model and there was no way to make sure it was run profitably. I would say it was more like a Ponzi scheme, where all you do all day is to win more bids, which are essentially worthless.

On the other hand, Quibids has real auctions with real products, not just bids. People do win real here. In addition, I am amazed by Quibids in that it was able to come a long way since the first days. They do need to work on many aspects, including some better ways to advertise, but overall, I think Quibids is great and Quibids is not a scam. Quibids is legit company.

How to Win on Quibids: Part - 1

Learn how to win on Quibids before you spend money on the site. This is an extension post to my existing post on Quibids strategy-1: Volunteer's Dilemma. The purpose of this post is to make things simple and explain once more, in detail, how this works.

When deciding strategies or how to win on Quibids or any other penny auction site, it is important to consider 2 factors:
1. Economics
2. Psychology

People tend to ignore the last one, but it turns out that the psychology of the bidders plays a more important role than the economics of the situation. This is why, there is no universal Quibids strategy that will always win. However, you can maximize your chances depending on the auction at hand. Any person with some experience on Quibids or a similar penny auction site will tell you the same.

The Quibids strategy based on the Volunteer's Dilemma works because you are being aggressive. Highly aggressive. This tends to scare bidders, especially the careful ones. This is important to remember because most of the bidders at Quibids are simply looking to get lucky - place a bid and pray no one outbids them. This is ridiculous - Quibids is famous and has many people at any given time. You can easily beat most of the Quibids bidders this way by being aggressive.

When 2 people are being aggressive simultaneously, only one can win. The person who can remain tenacious longer will be the winner, as simple as that. This is how to win on Quibids - you have to hold your own against aggressive bidders. If you are looking not to waste bids, then you will end up winning almost nothing while spending a few bids on all auctions, thus losing a lot in total.

When you start out on an auction, you should make sure that you never quit. If you do, you will end up losing much more than what you bargained for. However, if your total bids exceed the price of the item, you can as well stop and use the "But it Now" option of Quibids. This is great so that your losses are limited but your profits are not.

I have a whole series on how to win on Quibids and Quibids strategies, so make sure you understand the rules of the game before going out there and winning. Good luck to all my readers!

Quibids Free Bids: Get yours now

For a long time since the start, Quibids free bids were never given out. There were only 2 ways in which you could get Quibids bids:

1. Buy bids directly from the site at the rate of $0.60/bid. This is the primary method even now. These Quibids bids are the ones that you directly pay for. If you request, you can always get a refund. These bids also add towards the "Buy it now" feature of Quibids if you do not win an auction.

2. Win Quibids bids as bid vouchers. Quibids bids vouchers come in different sizes. Initially, the sizes were of 25, 50, 100 and 250. They later introduced the 15 bid voucher as well. These are good for starters and beginners to practice their Quibids strategies and skills and understanding Quibids.
However, it is important to remember that voucher bids do not count towards the "Buy it now" feature.

For a long time, these were the only two options through which you could get Quibids bids. There were no Quibids free bids then, but now, things are changing. They are introducing other ways in which you could win or get Quibids free bids.

3. Quibids recently introduced Quibids badges. Read my post here about Quibids badges. Basically if you are active on the site, you can get Quibids free bids as rewards from Quibids. They seem to be generous with these bids at least when they introduced it.

4. Certain auctions were recently started that give free bids in addition to the product. Thus the auction goes like this: Product X + 5 free Quibids bids. By winning such auctions, you not only win the product but also some free Quibids bids.

So here are the ways in which you get your Quibids bids.

It is nice to know that bids still retain their value. If it is too easy to get bids, the site cannot function. This is what happened with SwipeAuctions, which turned out to be an outright scam. A lot of people could see why this had to happen sooner or later - the site was giving away too many free bids. Thankfully Quibids knows its limits.

Quibids Auction - Millionth Auction Winner tease

So Quibids is back to teasing all the users. They send out a newsletter, not with the name of the winner, but with an announcement of an announcement 2 weeks from now! Apparently Quibids will announce the winner in a couple of weeks.

For those who do not know, Quibids is celebrating the million auctions since the site started. Quibids is giving away $10,000 in cash to the millionth auction winner, the auction remaining anonymous and for the moment, the winner too.

This is a great achievement in my opinion, at a time when other Penny Auction sites like Swipebids and Swipeauctions turn into outright scams and few others like Swoopoo are just unable to compete with very limited products. Quibids has emerged a clear winner in the battle of the best Penny Auctions on the internet, and its prospects only seem to be getting brighter.

If you are looking to win at Quibids, you can read through my posts on Quibids strategies. I have a 3 part series so far, but will include other strategies as well.

Quibids Strategy 3: The Waiting Game (exposing some Quibids Myths)

This is Part 3 of the series on Quibids strategies that I want to publish. These strategies are not conjured up from thin air. They are written from personal experience, but more importantly, personal research. Most penny auction strategies, like Quibids strategies, are to do with Game theory and probability.

You can also find Part - 1 and Part - 2, which deal with different strategies.

Theoretical Efficiency Vs. Practical efficiency:

To understand Quibids and indeed any other Penny Auctions, you should first understand that the theoretical best Quibids strategy need not be the best practical strategy.

To illustrate, consider a typical Quibids macbook auction, as shown below:

The cost of the Macbook, finally, was $426.65. This was a 1 cent Quibids auction (see the top left hand side of the image). This means each bid incremented the cost of the macbook by 1 cent. Thus, in all, there were 42,665 bids placed. That's quite a lot of bids!

Now, consider the time it takes for placing these many bids. This is a really hard question to answer, as anyone who has followed the Quibids auctions knows. There could be 2 people bidding in tandem, in which case things can move quickly but usually people only place their bids when there are less than 5 seconds left.

As an average case, I am assuming it takes 2.5 seconds between bids (I think it is a good number for an average in this case. Other smaller auctions usually have larger average time between bids).

So the time required to complete the auction is 42,665 * 2.5 seconds = 106,662.5 seconds. This comes out to 29.6 hours. That is a huge time interval of over 1 day!

Now, let me ask you - how many people can sit non-stop in front of their computer looking at the auction process for nearly 30 hours to choose their best strategy? Not many.

This is why the theoretical best Quibids strategies will differ so much from the practical best Quibids strategies.

Best Theoretical Quibids Strategy:

Here is the best theoretical Quibids strategy: Wait for the last moment to place your bid. This means, bid on the Quibids auction when the timer is 1 second.

This seems simple enough and most people intuitively do use this for their bidding - let the people fight it out and I'll come in when the time is right.

This is a simple strategy and people are easily deceived by its applications. Let me expose the myth that this is THE strategy to apply to penny auctions. In fact, all the videos on Youtube that claim to show 100% Quibids strategy wins simply use this basic technique, which turns out, isn't the best practical strategy after all for all Quibids auctions.

The problem is, this isn't always the best practical strategy. For example, in the above Macbook auction, can you sit for 30 hours non-stop in front of your computer to see when the timer reaches 1 second? Well, I don't think so.

When to use this Quibids Strategy:
The waiting game strategy should ONLY be used for small Quibids auctions. By small, I mean auctions that usually have less than 200 bids placed on them. In such cases, you can win Quibids auctions by using this Quibids strategy of waiting till the timer goes to 1 second and bidding.

Word of Caution:
When you are using this waiting game Quibids strategy, it is very important that you never quit! This holds even if there is an aggressive bidder, using a strategy I described here (who uses the volunteer's dilemma problem).

The reason for this is simple: If you quit, you will be left with nothing at all. This doesn't hold for all strategies, but in this instance, you must not quit.

Why People Fail?
This particular Quibids strategy seems intuitive - you wait till the last moment to bid, thus saving your bids and ensuring they are not wasted when someone else is placing his bid before yours.

So why do people fail? Simple - they quit!
When someone is bidding aggressively, they will quit. The problem with this strategy is that it appears to reduce risk, while the truth is it can practically be a very high risk Quibids strategy. The reason for this is what people practically do - they get intimidated by aggressive bidders and never win. They lose a few bids in hundreds of auctions and thus they end up with nothing to show for their efforts and bids.

Therefore, this seemingly simple Quibids strategy can backfire and you need to ensure you know exactly why, when and how to use it. Do not try this on big auctions like Holiday trips, cars and macbooks.

What Auctions Can I win this way?
Try out the smaller bids: 15,25 bid auctions are ideal for this. Also, anything with a price of less than $30 can be a good start. Once you know how never to quit and understand how Quibids auctions work, you can proceed to slightly bigger auctions (but never on the heavyweights!)

Good luck Quibids bidding!

Quibids Badges: New incentives for the Website

It has been a while I have written about Quibids, and in the meantime, there have been a number of improvements. You can read about Quibids strategies in my previous blog posts if you are serious about winning at Quibids.

In this post, I want to cover how you can win a little more with Quibids and effectively improve your winning chances.

Quibids has just announced special 'badges' for the members. There seems to be a badge for everything. The good thing is, you get free bids with your badges (I am no fan of virtual badges as such anyway).

In order to get your badges, you will need to claim the badges by logging into your account. The bids are not added by default - you need to claim them.

How to claim your badges?
You will need to log into your Quibids account. There is a new tab titled Achievements. You will see a list of badges that you are 'eligible' for. I don't see any reason why you should not accept a badge - after all, all badges come with free bids. You just click on 'claim' to claim your badge and also your free bids, which are then added to your account.

What kind of Bids are added?
Unfortunately, you will again see virtual bids and not purchased bids added to your account. I am not a big fan of Virtual bids and that is one thing I would like to see disappear from the website. I would consider both virtual and purchased bids should be at par. But well, different people have different opinions about it.

I suspect one reason for still persisting with virtual bids is that Quibids allows you to reverse your purchase and get back cash for the bids that you purchased. It would not be fair to allow monetization of virtual bids. However, I would still like to see virtual bids being counted towards the price of an auction if you don't win.

Here is a screenshot of some of the badges that I have won. You can also see how many free bids are given with each badge in the picture.

It would be great if my readers can share their own badges and their stories. Do you like the concept of badges?

Quibids: New items, new promotions

Quibids has been actively churning out new products and deals for its customers. This is natural, because with the hype, Quibids can make healthy profits off just one item.

For example, a few weeks ago, Quibids had a promotion offer selling a car. That's right, it is a big deal! Quibids put its market value at $20,000. The car was Honda Civic Coupe LX. This is the auction page screenshot after the winner was declared.


As you can see, the item sold for $1740.78, which is a significant saving for the winner. Unfortunately, there is only one winner and everyone else loses. In any auction, there are only two winners - the auction winner and Quibids!

Lets us calculate how Quibids rakes in the money through these auctions by doing a simple calculation from our side.

The auction is a 2 cent auction, and the total value the car sold at is $1740.78.
Thus the total number of bids placed by all Quibidders is 174078/2 = 87,039.
Total revenue for Quibids from this auction = 87,039 X $0.60 = $52,223.4
Total profit for Quibids from this auction = $52223.4 - $20,000 = $32223.4

From a single auction, Quibids has made over $30,000 in pure profits! Quibids claims a small revenue, but really, I am sure they rake in the moolah. The company wants to be open but is surprisingly closed like most other penny auction sites. Quibids is not an outright scam but if a company makes so much money at the expense of its customers, it is something to pause and ponder about.

Now, let us see how much all the Quibidders except the winner, merkmerk, have lost.

Total number of bids placed = 87,039
Bids by the winner = 2,044
Total bids lost = 87,039 - 2,044 = 84,995
Total value of lost bids = 84,995 X $0.6 = $50,997

Thus, in this single auction, all Quibidders combined lost over $50,000! Unbelievable, but true. Quibids and other penny auctions seem to be worse than gambling, where even compulsive gamblers will have a limit to their losses.

Quibids Strategy - 2: Best Time for Bidding at Quibids

This QuiBids strategy is as much valid in 2013 as it was in 2010 when it was originally written. Like with any other penny auction, low competition is the key to winning at QuiBids, and if you know the best time to bid on QuiBids, then you know the least competitive times to bid at.

QuiBids is a penny auction site that helps customers shop for items in a penny auction model. Thus, by its very nature, the ease of winning and the cost of items depends on how many people are online at a given point of time and how many auctions are simultaneously going on. Using the right Quibids strategies, you can win some items for really less, like QuiBids Macbook for less than $100. This is not a QuiBids scam, though QuiBids does rig the model in its own favor (who wouldn't?)

Since the guys at QuiBids are smart people and they have access to tons of user data relating to times, they try to ensure that the bidding process is uniform throughout the day. This means by bidding at one point of time, you should ideally get no advantage when compared to bidding at another point of time. Another way QuiBids tries to make auctions more 'fair' is by restricting some auctions only to certain users, depending on criteria that are not public. This has caused some outcry in the past, but those are the rules of the game.

However, as I would have suspected, the QuiBids guys are not that smart after all :) No, the process is not as smooth as it ideally should be. QuiBids strategy of trying to have an average of similar users/items for bidding doesn't seem to work practically.

Here is a list of times that you should bid during and some times that you should avoid bidding. This is from my own personal experience as I follow QuiBids auctions very closely and see how they work. If you think these aren't accurate or you have a different experience with your own QuiBids strategy, please let me know in the comments below.

Do note that this QuiBids strategy for bidding is not universal and you are NOT guaranteed to win auctions. Penny auctions depend on a million factors that are beyond your control. Worse, it depends on the behavior of other users, which is totally unpredictable. Therefore it is impossible to have a QuiBids strategy that will always work, and anyone who claims the contrary is simply a sham. There are no 100% guaranteed wins at QuiBids or any other penny auction really.

Here are some tips that will help you get the right QuiBids strategies with respect to the bidding times.

Best Times:

• Days: The best days to bid are Wednesday, Tuesday and Thursday, in that order. Some of the cheapest Quibids auctions have been won on Wednesday, somehow. There could be many reason for this. People are generally occupied with more important things during the weekdays.

• Times: The best time to bid in Quibids is around 2pm-5pm, EST. If you live in different time zones, convert it accordingly. This time there are few people bidding and lots of Quibids auctions to bid on. The ratio of users/live auctions is usually highest during this period, which is what determines the best time as Quibids strategy.

Worst times:
It is important to avoid these times as there are just too many people who are bidding on a given auction.

• Days: Weekends are the worst. Try to avoid them. There are just too many people who are free on the weekends and have nothing better to do than sit in front of their computers. You can see this yourself. Sunday evenings are perhaps the worst time for Quibids auctions from the user's perspective.

• Times: The worst time to bid on Quibids is somewhere around the night. In EST, this comes to about 10pm - 2am. This time has too few auctions and too many users. Try to avoid these times.

Demonstration:
This is a recent addition to this blog post to demonstrate exactly what I am trying to tell in this blog post.


Cheap Plasma TV for $4.10, bidding on a Wednesday during 2-5pm EST


Costly Plasma TV for $170.36 bidding on a Saturday night:


So now you know how important it is to bid at the best time in QuiBids. The competition on a Saturday night is going to be huge. Don't just look at the final price. Think of how many people had lost hundreds of dollars on this day trying to win this item. I am sure you can understand how relevant this QuiBids strategy is in order to help you win.

Let me know how your QuiBids experience goes after following these QuiBids strategies.
Also see QuiBids Strategy-1: Volunteer's Dilemma

Quibids scam: Why no Paypal?

Quibids scam propagates in multi-directions and there are several issues with this. In this post, I am going to discuss the Quibids scam with respect to the Paypal issue.

There are many customers out there who want Quibids to accept Paypal. But Quibids always refuses Paypal. Why? The reason is not difficult to understand - Paypal has a policy of return when the goods are not delivered. This means if I buy something from Quibids using Paypal and they scam me into it, there is a way for me to get my money back using Paypal. Unfortunately, this is not the case with credit card transactions. Because Quibids is scam, it doesn't allow Paypal.

I will retract my words if Quibids is able to allow Paypal transactions. I know this is not going to happen because Quibids strategy is not really a win-win but simply a win-lose where it is the customers that ultimately lose. It is like a giant casino where the house always makes money no matter what. And a few lucky customers might make a few bucks, but really it is nothing compared to what the casino makes.

If Quibids is not scam, they should start accepting Paypal. I know Quibids scam and got suspicious the moment they said no to Paypal. All respectable online businesses use Paypal. If Quibids is what it claims, then it should do the same. Quibids should start accepting Paypal if it is legitimate. Unfortunately for the customers, this is not the case.

Quibids scam doesn't allow it to use Paypal. This is one of the Quibids strategy to keep trouble at bay. For example, if you lose a lot of money out there and want a refund, Quibids ensues that there is no way for this to happen. This is why it doesn't allow Paypal. Quibids macbook might be selling for $200 but in the process, Quibids makes a whopping $11,800 profit. This is for just one Quibids macbook. There are thousands of items listed each day. You do the math.

If Quibids claims it is genuine and honest, it should start accepting Paypal. If Quibids is scam, then it should not allow Paypal. The answer is there to see for everyone.

Update: Quibids is now accepting Paypal! That is good news. Quibids scam can be in many different ways, but not through this route! Read my Quibids review to learn more.

P.S. Update: I had a few complaints that they are still having problems with Paypal. I contacted Quibids support and here is their reply:

Hi Sid,

We do indeed! You can use (and inform your followers to use) this link for PayPal: https://www.quibids.com/store/firstbuy.php?paypal=1

Please let us know if there is anything else we can do for you and have a great day!

Sincerely,

Kera
QuiBids Support

Quibids Scam: Stay Protected

Quibids scam is important for all the Quibids users and the truth is, it is not a scam in the traditional sense, which makes it hard to detect. For example, if you win on Quibids, they will not scam you by not sending the item. However, like all other penny auction sites, Quibids sure can scam you in a number of other ways. Quibids scam can destroy users if they are not aware of it. I have seen users lose hundreds of dollars and end up not winning the item. Is this the great Quibids scam? Well, not really, but as users, you need to stay protected for your own good.

For those who are unaware, Quibids is a penny auction site that charges you for each bid you place. In addition, you cannot bid any amount that you want: You MUST bid in increments that are fixed for each auction. Quibids scam works essentially like any other penny auction site - they bring in great money to the website, a single winner might make some profits and ALL the remaining bidders will lose money.

Quibids scam is not obvious to many users. Firstly, you should be aware of the bidding model and the business model of the site. They make money when you lose money, it is as simple as that.

Do I hear you shout "Insane!" Well, it is true. Quibids scam works because there are people out there ready to lose money. Are you wondering how?

It is simple. Irrespective of the number of bidders, there will be one and only one winner. This means the more the bidders, the more the website makes. Thus if it is a 1 cent auction (not at all uncommon at Quibids) and the price goes to $100 (again quite common), the website has made a cool revenue of $6000! Unbelievable, but true. And this is just for one auction. Quibids scam runs hundreds of auctions each day. Do the math and you know how they are rolling in money. Their costs are small and negligible - the price of the product will at most be a hundred dollars. Heck, they even charge huge money for shipping!

On the note of shipping, it is outright funny that Quibids charges $2 for shipping for simply crediting bids if you win a bid voucher, which is done immediately. That's right, for something that takes place automatically, charging $2 is sure a Quibids scam that is insane in my opinion.

To stay protected, read my blog entries about Quibids strategy, which explains how to better your chances of winning an auction. Note that these are not at all foolproof and you can still lose a lot of money, but the probability of a win will certainly increase.

And readers, do keep me informed about your progress. Good luck and steer clear of Quibids scam if you don't want your fingers burnt. Instead, go to eBay and find some great deals out there! If you want to gamble, go to Las Vegas and spend an awesome night there. Quibids scam can be costly beyond imagination.