FreshWebz Web Design & Affiliate Marketing Blog

bid4vouchers.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!