I am watching Cops today. Yes, I love watching Cops, it was the same one I have seen a million times. If I was in a dark room and that “lady” would speak I would know her voice without seeing her face. She is the one that says Excuse my beauty. Well, I notice a commercial for a website called Bid Rodeo. I was like ok I will check it out. I put in the code for the 10 free bids and started bidding. It was such a waste of time and such a scam if you think about it. You have to pay for your bids. You can bid for free on Ebay. Everything goes up by a penny. Not only that but they extend the end time each time someone bids. Let’s crunch some numbers shall we?
Each bid raises the price by a penny, that undoubtedly sounds like a really good deal seeing as you can bid on ipads, ipods, and Amazon Gift cards to name a few. Well, me being the skeptic I am, was thinking where is the catch? I thought it might be extremely high shipping, no it seemed about normal. I thought what the hey I’ll use my 10 free bids just to see. After the clock just kept winding down and adding more time. I started imagining those people that were counting down the clock as if the space shuttle was about to take off, to win their prize. Of course someone out bid them by a penny and the vicious cycle went on and on.
Out of curiosity, I wondered what the prices of the bids are. Some of the items included what the company calls bid packs. So, then I scoffed at the ridiculousness of this website. You can get 800 bids all for the low price of FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS ( which is equal to 8 dollars of bids) Now here comes the math.
I will use an ipod for example since that is what I used my bids on:
Let’s say you and another person each bid each bid 800 times for the iPod. You are the only two bidding and it ends at 16 dollars even. You also have to pay the bid price plus shipping. You might think Yay! I just got an iPod for 16 dollars plus shipping in reality, you paid 516 dollars plus shipping for the iPod. The company made $1000 of the iPod through the bids. You could buy an iPod and an iPad for $516 I am assuming. I don’t own an iAnything. Let's also remember that even if you bid you are NOT guaranteed to win anything. After you bid 800 times you might end up empty handed, with nothing to show for your $500.
Two pieces of advice:
If it sounds too good to be true, than it probably is. My second piece of advice is If it doesn’t make sense than it’s not true.
I am sure Bid Rodeo will in fact bilk innocent people out of their money with promises of cheap goods. These are just MY OPINIONS, you can decide for yourself. I just felt like I needed to warn my readers.
OH.MY.GOSH. It's sad that many people will probably fall for it. Thanks for letting us know!
ReplyDeleteI bought a 4th generation iPod from http://stlouisbid.com (a bid site). Final price, including the bids was less than $50. Considering I saved a lot more than I spent, I think I got quite a deal. It is true, if you don't factor in the cost of the bids, you can lose money on these sites. But, I haven't so far.
ReplyDeletePaying to bid is a ridiculous idea. I hope they make NOTHING.
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out the scammers! That's ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI remember, in the days before there was an internet, on which to get scammed, a friend of mine got all caught up, in a mail sweepstakes. It was one of those ones where they'd send you some trinket, and tell you that you won, and then they would tell you that you have to send in $30, to be entered in the next level of the sweepstakes, and it went on and on, like that.
I kept trying to tell him that it was a scam, but he would get his little piece of paper from the mail and read it to me, and show me that he had already won stuff.
I finally had to just shake my head, and keep my mouth shut.
BTW... I still have never heard about him winning the million dollars...
Surprise, SURPRISE, Surprise! ;)
I had never heard of this before your post! Thanks for the info!
ReplyDelete