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.
