madbid

paddyrg

OlliesDad wrote: »

It's not actually a Daily Mail article at all.. there is a link to an advert at the bottom of the actual DM news articles that is made to look like it is just another article.

Sounds like it's worth reporting to the ASA - if an advert is dressed as editorial it should make it very clear that it isn't actually editorial. IIRC the Mail got a slapped wrist over this in the past.

HeimRoller

Interestingly enough it is not just the DM that has this "link" to the article. I was logging onto my aol mail today and saw the ad.
Initial thought "it is too good to be true".
30 seconds surfing this site and lo and behold.....

I can understand people getting caught out by these stories of great bargains, and at the end of the day someone must win each auction.......however as I said earlier "if it sounds to good to be true......"

Stoke

HeimRoller wrote: »

Interestingly enough it is not just the DM that has this "link" to the article. I was logging onto my aol mail today and saw the ad.
Initial thought "it is too good to be true".
30 seconds surfing this site and lo and behold.....

I can understand people getting caught out by these stories of great bargains, and at the end of the day someone must win each auction.......however as I said earlier "if it sounds to good to be true......"

If it sounds too much to be true then it's almost certainly !!!!!!!!. There's a number of these fake blogs that talk about MadBid and talk of these instant success stories. Then I accidentally found this poorly disguised marketing video on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnFHJZmRlso

(uploaded under the name Madbidder)

I had a look through a few articles regarding MadBid's tactics, and they're very clever. Not only do they have control over your money and the way you can use it, they also have automated bots which regularly bid on items to inflate their price and put off other potential buyers. Often these bots will win and then nobody wins the auction as such, but Madbid has made a !!!! load of money, straight from your pocket, without giving anything in return. Many of these bots will work across several countries and aren't even well disguised.

OK, just this second, I've decided to look on Madbid.com and guess what, on the front page, four of the ten auctions finished with bots as winners.

Keep the hell away from this place.

Protocol45

When people log onto a gambling website, they know what to expect. The word gambling is a clue and we know that you win some lose some.
On eBay, you can bid on 100 items and not pay a single penny unless you win.
MadBid is a dodgy mixture of the two. You bid on items but it is a gamble, if you don't win you lose money, if you win you will win big. The big headlines catch people. "I won a Mini Cooper for £50" is pretty catching.

But what is the legality of this? I know the law is a blunt instrument and Madbid is probably not doing anything illegal, but it still leaves a bitter taste.
It is basically a website for people to pump money into it, no different from me setting up a site asking for paypal payments for prizes.
Even though there is nothing illegal going on, I think the site should be shut down, if for no other reason than to give out a message, praying on people like this and making A LOT of money of them will not be tolerated.

cookie365

Protocol45 wrote: »

Even though there is nothing illegal going on, I think the site should be shut down.

Yes, who needs democracy, or the law of the land, or certainty of rights, or debate on proposed legislation before it comes into force?

If it's not illegal, it's legal.

If you think it shouldn't be legal, use your democratic rights as a citizen to support a change in the law to make it illegal.

shaun_from_Africa

Protocol45 wrote: »

Even though there is nothing illegal going on, I think the site should be shut down, if for no other reason than to give out a message, praying on people like this and making A LOT of money of them will not be tolerated.

Sort of like the thing that the governments do in China and Russia (and various other countries as well) you mean?
Don't like it, close it down irrespective of it being set up and run totally within the law of the land.

2nd_mouse

Every aspect of madbid.com is heavily stacked against the bidders. From the ridiculous situation where users have to pay, up front, for each bid, in the form of credits - to the auto-bidding process, which can wipe out 1000 of your credits (approx. £100) in less than 30 mins, sooner if the bid duration time is down to 5 seconds:

1. There are never more than 10 or 12 auctions on the go at any one time. thereby ensuring that there are many bidders for each auction.

2. There is no search facility on the site, so you can only bid on whatever items are currently live.

3. Each item carries a 'multiple credits' figure, e.g. 4x 5x 6x 8x - meaning each bid costs the bidder these multiples in credits.

4. Each auction item can only have ONE winner. So, all other bidders lose the credits they have just used in bidding. They do offer a discount on an item's RRP based on the amount of credits used by the bidder, but these offers expire after a short time and anyway, if you add the cost of the spent credits to the discounted price, you end up paying the full RRP anyway.

5. Auctions can last for days, so even if you are prepared to monitor the auction over a very long period, you will still have no idea when the optimum auction price has been reached and consequently, it's impossible to judge when the best time to start bidding would be.

6. I work in the IT industry and can see that their site uses very sofistcated software - this makes me wonder if these auctions are kept running artificially. A little tweak in the programme could easily place a robotic bid just as it looks like the auction is about to end. Just a thought from my suspicious mind.

7. When all the spent credits and final auction price are totted up, madbid are probably raking in much much more than the value of the auction item.

Bottom line:
Don't get involved
They describe themselves as the 'No.1 fun shopping site' when in reality, it's just a money making exercise on behalf of the owners. A casino where bidders have very little chance of actually getting a bargain or even winning.

OlliesDad

2nd_mouse wrote: »

7. When all the spent credits and final auction price are totted up, madbid are probably raking in much much more than the value of the auction item.

I doubt they would be doing it if they were losing money!

2nd_mouse

OlliesDad wrote: »

I doubt they would be doing it if they were losing money!

From what I've seen, there is never even the slimmest chance of madbid losing money - the odds are all stacked in their favour.

Pollycat

2nd_mouse wrote: »

From what I've seen, there is never even the slimmest chance of madbid losing money - the odds are all stacked in their favour.

I think you'll find that OlliesDad was being ironical.