Thursday, May 8, 2014

Membership Fees in Penny Auctions


So you want to join a penny auction?  That’s great.  Enjoyed by millions of people around the world, penny auctions are these sites where luxury items are listed.  People join into the site and see the item listed for a fraction of the price, which is around 5-10% max.  They’ll start bidding on the item, and each bid will add a penny into a pot, increasing the total price of the item by one cent.  After every bid, the time will be extended further but once the time runs out, the item will go to the very last bidder in the listing. 

Most people think that joining a penny auction only requires a penny to join up, but that’s far from the truth.  In truth, the pennies actually cost more than one cent—while the pot only increases by one cent, the cost that the bidder paid for in order to bid that “penny” is not just one cent; it’s around a dime or so.  So that’s one of the things you’ll have to take note of when you join a penny auction.  You don’t spend mere pennies on it. 

There’s another thing you’ll have to watch out for when you join a penny auction: the membership fee!  If you have an eBay or Amazon account, then you got your account for free.  In fact, a lot of the sites you go to will be offering free membership in order to lure you into signing up with them.  Facebook and other social media are dependent on people signing up with them and bringing their whole network in, because the more people make use of their social media site, the more they will make money out of it—thanks to advertisers and other third parties that would just love to pay to get their hands on some useful information generated by having a lot of members. 

That may apply to most social media sites and other online shopping sites, but that doesn’t apply in penny auctions.  Penny auctions will be wanting to make money the minute you start bidding, and the fastest way they can make money is if they have the person aiming to bid on their items paying a fee just to set up the account.  You’ll definitely be informed of this when you READ THE FINE PRINT when you sign up for a penny auction account.  It’s listed in the terms and conditions of the website.  Don’t be afraid of legal jargon and read the whole thing from top to bottom! 

These membership fees will be asking you for a monthly payment—the first payment covering more or less three months of use.  Even if you buy into the membership and decide that penny auctions are not for you there are ways of getting it back.  The first thing that you do is make sure you don’t purchase a bid packet and more importantly don’t use the service.  Because that will only mean trouble!  Once you’ve used the service then you’ll have a lot more difficulty in obtaining the chargeback. 

More often than not what I tell people when they encounter the problem of buying a membership package without them wanting to is to just suck it up and go for the penny auctions: go full on with the whole deal and play the game.  That’s because it’ll be easier to win a couple of items from the penny auctions rather than get your money back. 

After all, they might not be seeing the possibility in turning around the membership fee issue: they could actually sell off the items that they have won from the penny auctions!  After all in a penny auction, one can win an items and only pay 5% of the actual market price of the item for it. 

Think about it, penny auction strategy has been to use high ticket, top luxury items to get people bidding for their penny auctions.  And that’s a fact, these sites have employed the best marketing research teams to conduct studies to determine the best items to put on sale that will attract as many bidders from a wide demographic as possible.  That’s why when you check out the roster of items displayed by a penny auction, you’ll probably find more than one item that you would more or less find in your own must-have’s list.  Like for example, the new Apple iPad Air.  Or the latest iteration of the Samsung Galaxy. 

So if you find yourself stuck in the conundrum of having bought into the 3 month membership of a penny auction that you initially feel to be something you were scammed into buying, then the thing that you should be doing is considering this happening to be an opportunity rather than a crisis. 

You’ve already bought into the membership, so start making use of it for the three months that you’re in it.  That’s three months of unadulterated fun, bidding in various items that will be quite easy to sell.
Stick to the item that you’ve chosen to win, ride it down until the time ends and it’s yours.  Pay for the 5% of the original price then sell the thing altogether!  Even with the bid credits thrown in, it’s very likely that you’re going to be posting a profit when you sell say the iPad that you won lesser than the actual price.  That is one strategy you can employ if you want to make the most out of your inadvertent membership in the penny auctions. 

Nonetheless if you’re still pushing to get back the money spent on your credit card then you’ll be asked to present a set of documents.  And don’t forget that you’ll be requested to do this right before the end of a particular grace period, most likely after 30 days.  Beyond those 30 days, you’ll have forfeited the right to claim your chargeback.  Act fast because these guys actually pay you back, if you’re willing to stick it out and give them all the requirements they need. 

That’s the whole deal in a nutshell.  If you fail to read the fine print there are only two ways to go about it, either you stick it out with the membership—perhaps winning back the money that you “lost” paying for the membership OR acting quickly to get a refund.  If it were me I’d go with the former and make more money out of the setup. 


Friday, January 24, 2014

To Become a Hustler...

Wait for the auctions to ALMOST end.  Speed is the key here: your clicking speed and your internet speed.  People will rarely expect someone to renew at the last 2 seconds of a listing, so be alert!  Then, keep at it.  The key to winning these auctions is to keep demoralising other bidders by making them see in horror how someone else had taken over their win at the last 2 seconds of the auction!