madbid

flicks

I feel sorry for you OP and anybody else who has found themselves in the same shoes. I looked at madbid a few years ago and I needed to find a reason that they could sell expensive cars and equipment for next to nothing.


It was all there in the terms and conditions. It may have been a sad way to spend an evening but I used to work out how much they actually received for the items they sold for a pittance and I was gobsmacked.


Can't believe people still use this site. I guess a few people could get lucky by going in at the right time but I knew it wouldn't be me.


Hope you find a way to get your money back but I'm sure they have themselves pretty well covered.

bradders55

What the hell is a credit?? What sort of transparency is that. What they should say is:
You pay to bid and it costs between £0.20 - £3 per bid depending on each item for auction.
We keep your money if you do not like our style of auctioning, which is basically we chose when the auction ends, it does not necessarily end with the highest bid. We reserve the right to stop the auction for an indeterminable time.
We reserve the right not to send you the items should you be the one who 'wins' ( a very loosely WIN as win is not really an appropriate word, given it is more luck and a gamble).
We basically have the right to determine who wins the auction.
Auction defined-
a public sale in which goods or property are sold to the highest bidder.
"the books are expected to fetch a six-figure sum at tomorrow's auction"





Call me daft but Madbid's idea of an auction is certainly not mine. It is gambling. I never gamble, I thought stupidly this was a fair and square auction like EBAY. I don't even go on that site because I will not use paypal.

Not being internet aware particularly, this is where people like me get caught. Now I have read many reviews of this site and very few of them are very flattering. I am truly fed up with feeling stupid, so I am afraid no more internet purchases for me. There are enough people out there who have won bids from this company who have not received goods, or who have been shafted, plus they have been fined time again for their unfair and untruthful advertising.

I have not been impressed but then nor have other more internet aware people. The link from the 'article' was there to encourage. The sad thing is I wanted to buy an iphone from my friends daughter who is very ill to make her life a bit more palatable but I cannot afford a new one.

It is not about the money .. it is about the fairness of representation. Madbid is not an auction site, it is a GAMBLING site and how they get away with it is beyond me, truly beyond me. IT IS NOT RIGHT. There is no skill or judgement or fairness, and the more I read the more I think it is fraudulent. Auctions get stopped in mid track, they are ended on a whim when bidding is busy still, they clearly have their own bidders to heat it up, if you look at other sites to see what these bidders have chalked up as wins.

IT is one big rip off. And now they have £45 of my money that I will never have back. What exactly is right about that, where does it say we keep all your money if you chose not to bid!!

Protocol45

I thought I would share my views on this site as I recently became a full blown fool and signed up and paid £25 for credits.
The problem I have with this site is a simple one, it is misleading. They say when the timer ticks down, you win. But that is simply not true. The auction ends when Madbids servers say it ends, when it either has used a lot of peoples credits or reached a high enough bid.

Take this example. Two people bid on an item, iPhone. Each person enabled autobid.This means they will bid and bid until they run out of credits. So what happens? The auction is going to run for ever? Of course not, it has to end sometime and this is more than likely determined by the servers at madbid. It simply wont end when it reaches zero.
This is made worse by the new player auctions. Simple auctions for credits which you can only ever bid on once. And you know what? You will win one everytime. It makes you think there is a chance of winning, you feel lucky, cocky and you go for something else.

Shortly after realising this, which I should have done beforehand, I just enabled autobid on a set of headphones and went to bed. Spent 500 credits and didn't get a sniff.

There is people who win items, no doubt I'm sure, but they are rare indeed. They only show you one page of auctions because if they had pages and pages you could stand a higher chance. Its less auctions and more people so the bidding is a frenzy.

Finally, to make things worse, when you sign up you are enrolled into daily txt alerts for offers. If you are thinking you reply STOP, you are wrong. You have to go onto the site and untick, but when you do it they says the mobile number is already registered. So you are stuck with receiving marketing txts FOREVER. Filthy pigs.

raybaybaby

Hi,
Signed up yesterday as saw an ad for an ipad being won for £27. Great I thought, buy £27 of credit and use it to buy the item. Caught in the frenzy of getting something dirt cheap I got £27.99 worth of credit (500 credits), didn't fully read or understand the jargon, thought that you used the credit to buy the item - not using the credits in order to bid and then if you won you had to purchase the thing for the auction price and pay £6.50 postage.

I know you don't get something for nothing but this site is an absolute rip. I placed two bids (cost 16 credits) now I have 484 credits and when I asked to close the account and could I have a refund of unused credits - the answer is no because I'd used some. Just waiting to hear back to see if I can use the credits like real money to buy something from a closed auction - not holding out for getting anything back though.

I just looked at the auction I had been involved in and the ipad sold for £177.40 which is about half price. However 17,740 bids had to be placed to get to that target, if each bid cost 8 credits (just under 18p per credit) then you can see how companies would be dying to sell their stuff on this site.....

In my opinion, this madbid site is an absolute rip. I usually fully read everything and look for reviews on sites etc before I do anything - but alas I was hooked. Stupid me.

I'm posting this in the hope that it helps someone else will read this before being ripped off or at least go into it with their eyes open.

Ray

anotheruser

Seems like the Madbid ads are doing the rounds.
I saw a blog post on it and thought it sounded interesting but as soon as I signed up (using duff info - of course!) and foudn you had to pay to get credits to bid, it got a bit too complicated for me.
I'll stick to ebay as I know what I am getting (or maybe I don't!).

Browntoa

People need to continually complain to the ASA about their dodgy advertising , I've complained in the past about them using the term "online shopping site" when it's basically gambling , enough people must have done the same as they no longer use it in their adverts

Jellytots831

I saw an article in the daily mail on Tuesday about this editor
Who didn't believe that you could truly "win" the stuff so cheap
And she went on it signed up used a trial thing and bam got an iPad
For £25... I thought I could do with that so I started signing up for this trial just to have a look and the trial required my card details
Thought nothing of it as most trials do you just have to cancel within
A time frame. Well that "trial" cost me £28 according to my online banking... They then proceeded to automatically sign me up for rapid
Recharge ? I had never heard of this until I started trying to find reviews of them or indeed the original article I read once I had noticed the amount debited from my bank statements. Then the next day after disabling this feature after finding it well hidden I tried to do some online food shopping ... Only to notice my account had been emptied and was well overdrawn so I rang the bank low and behold mad bid had repeatedly 4 times taken 39.99 over a half house period where I was at work so I was nowhere near the site I wasn't "bidding" on anything but yet these amounts were taken! so they have now taken 200 of me without my knowing authorisation I wrote them an email of complaint yesterday as it appears their phone lines are only open 10-5 min to fri. I told them I would go to trading standards the ombudsmen etc etc you get the jist... And well they have said no to giving me my money back! I have raised a dispute with my bank as I did not authorise those transactions knowingly. And well their response was...

Your account was charged for opting ‘Rapid Recharge feature’. Please refer to our Terms and Conditions or click on this direct link for more details. Sorry, but we are unable to refund the used or partially used credits package bought by the rapid recharge feature.


Please help I need that money I am a single parent who had to borrow money to buy food this weekend I cannot let them get away with this I desperately need that money to live. Anybody know how I can get this back? As surely they can't be aloud to do that. Even if they state something vague in the terms and conditions which I have since read surely charging 40 randomly should be something they have to make clear not only that it says it will charge it when you fall below a certain credit limit... Well charging me 4 times in half hour where I was working not bidding and not on the site my "credit" could not have fallen low on that many occasions that quickly as It was unused?? I need some help please!!

mattyprice4004

Unfortunately it's probably going to be an expensive lesson - but really, how could you believe you were going to get an iPad for £25? What would be the point of them being £300 in the shops if you could grab one for less than a tenth of that?

I do see how the ads are misleading, but some common sense must be used too.

Pollycat

Jellytots831 wrote: »

I saw an article in the daily mail on Tuesday about this editor
Who didn't believe that you could truly "win" the stuff so cheap
And she went on it signed up used a trial thing and bam got an iPad
For £25...

I find it hard to believe that an article in a daily newspaper (even the Daily Mail) - however indirectly - would suggest this website may get you a bargain.

Are you sure you read the whole article, not just the headline or first few lines?

Are you sure it was actually an article or was it an ad?

I really doubt that you will get your money back if you've already been knocked back by Trading Stadards and your bank.

RHemmings

A lot of people who get scammed are scammed because of greed. In these cases, in hindsight, you can often see that logical reason and due diligence just goes out of the window when people think they're going to get something for nothing, or next to nothing. Looks like that's been happening here.

It used to be said 'you can't scam an honest [person]'. To me it looks as if madbid and similar sites are designed to make it look as if there is an above-board chance of getting something for next to nothing, so that honest people are sucked in as well.

Oh, and personally I'm suspicious of a Daily Hate journalist winning the IPad. It could have happened by chance, but I wonder if madbid.com knew that a journalist was experimenting with the system, and did something to make sure that they won.