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Dec30
Is bid4vouchers.co.uk a scam, or a genuine site?!
Filed under: Opinion; Tagged as: auction site, auctioneer, auctions, bargain, bidders, face value, fee scheme, risk, shilling, store vouchers, suspicions, voucher5 Commentsbid4vouchers.co.uk is a site that auctions store vouchers, with the winner typically winning a voucher at 75%-90% off face value.
To make a bid, you have to buy a pack of bids up front, which is how the site says it makes its money.
Your chances of winning a bargain seem very good, as each item shows a “previously sold for” price, which is ALWAYS way below the face value of the voucher. In addition, since finding the site, a few days ago & monitoring it steadily, I’ve watched most auctions complete with only one or two bids.
However, in ALL of my auctions (I’ve bid on about 9 or 10 now), I ended up competing against someone who just went on & on bidding! Never more than one person though! I’ve spent nearly £200 on bids, with the price on each auction going way higher than any of the “previously sold for” prices. For example, the last auction cost me 65 bids before I ran out of money! That’s £30!!!
Much like any auction site, there is no protection from the practice of bid shilling, in which the auctioneer uses a puppet to place bids in his own auction. This practice is illegal in legitimate auctions, but is particularly nefarious in bidding fee scheme auctions. Due to the risk of shilling, even after the players have spent large quantities of money purchasing “bids” in the auction, the auctioneer can still deprive any of the players of a winning bid by placing an additional bid of his own.
My results seem suspiciously high compared to previous auctions. There is no way to contact other bidders, so no way to check whether such bidders really exist. Whenever I wasn’t involved, the auction seemed to go for peanuts & rarely was I bidding against more than one person.
I don’t have enough evidence to say the site isn’t genuine, but I have suspicions, based solely on my experience & would like to know if anyone else has had the same results as me!
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5 Responses to “Is bid4vouchers.co.uk a scam, or a genuine site?!”
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marion keenan December 31st, 2009 at 9:35 pm
I also feel suspicious of this site, as you say there is always just one other bidder.
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FreshWebz Web Design January 6th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Thanks Marion. They did give me some story about the site being quiet over the Christmas period which is why there was only ever one other bidder. Hmmm!
During the course of bidding for £100 Next vouchers, I decided the other person was going to go on forever & did a “buy it now”. The vouchers ended up costing me £150, but better than losing all my money for nothing I thought.
Today, the postman brought me a letter, containing £100 Amazon vouchers!!! So, even if you buy the vouchers at an over inflated price, you still don’t get what you paid for…….
I heartily recommend avoiding this site!
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I agree; I have been involved in a dozen auctions with this site. As soon as I bid I am in a bidding war….ALWAYS…without fail!! It doesn’t matter whether I bed for popular or less popular vouchers early or late in the day the result is always the same….it is IMPOSSIBLE to ‘win’ an auction at a reasonable price as appears to happen nearly every time when I am not bidding! I have resorted to the ‘buy now’ option on several occasions ..but beware, in one auction I opted for ‘buy now’ when the bidding had become stupid only to be informed that I was only allowed 2 ‘buy nows’ per month…this is stated nowhere on the site and I lost the auction and all my bids…very expensive!!
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FreshWebz Web Design January 14th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
That’s outrageous!!! Is there nothing you can do if it is not mentioned on their site?
I questioned the issue of replacement vouchers with them & they said:
I’m sorry to hear you had a problem with your order. When using the bailout feature, we cannot guarantee you will receive the same type of voucher as the auction. It’s a feature to help you retrieve your bids
from the auction if you feel you want to ‘bail out’ at any time, the actual vouchers auctions only go to the winner.I did find this in the “legal stuff” section: Should bid4vouchers.co.uk not be able to deliver the vouchers ordered, bid4vouchers.co.uk shall be entitled to substitute the item with a comparable replacement brand to the same value, or provide a refund if this is the user’s preference. The user’s statutory rights are not affected.
But no-one told me my vouchers were not available, or offered me a refund; I just got the Amazon ones!
I also said I suspected some “shilling” going on to which they replied: Please note, staff do not bid on the auctions.
I’ve also placed a post about this on Money Saving Expert, http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2186439 & the consensus of opinion seems to be that I was daft to think it WASN’T a scam!!
It’ll be interesting to see if ANYONE has ever won an auction with these people!
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SeaShells February 1st, 2010 at 11:43 am
Thank you for posting this warning. I have been wondering this myself how are they earning money by selling those vouchers at such a low price? It’s seems too easy to win. Actually I have been very tempted to buy their bids since by observing from the previous auctions it only takes a few bids to win, plus they good testimonials. So I decided to try with their 5 free bids. And as Marion and Emily said, there’s always suddenly someone bidding against you when you started to bid. But luckily I haven’t bought any bids from them and decided to do a google to see if they are a scam or is there any complaint. Now I think I might just go to the genuine website to order those vouchers.
