Since the days of online poker playing have been compromised by stricter laws and enforcement, businesses have needed to come up with some kind of similar money-maker that wouldn’t fall under those restrictions. After all, when people are looking for deals in a rough economy, shouldn’t someone else be there to take advantage of that? And thus came along the penny auction, online auction sites in which bidders pay for bids that are used toward desirable items such as brand name bags or electronics. Think Ebay merged with a  dodgy Vegas slot machine.

These days, while some penny auctions are forced to close their doors due to financial difficulties,  the world’s largest one – Quibids – is still going strong. To date, SiteJabber users have contributed a whopping 613 reviews for Quibids, and they just keep coming in. So that you don’t have to weed through the numerous reviews, we’ve done the gardening for you: a round-up of what SiteJabber reviewers think of Quibids.com. If you’ve ever fought any evil robots, pull out that old gear because there might be some bots lurking around here.

The Good

As with every operation akin to gambling (what a penny auction essentially is), there are bound to be winners. As one might win a lottery, potentially you could be a winner too. But in this case, winning comes at the expense of a whole lot of other people who have lost a pretty penny (pardon the pun) on bidding for the same item. So while you won the iPod for $100, hundreds of other people put in just as much, if not more, making the company upwards of thousands of dollars on a single item.

SiteJabber users who give Quibids “Cool” or “Love it” ratings generally have much advice to offer to the ones who lost out: everything from tips on how to use bid machines to how to play the game logically. No matter the tips, though, even the winners find themselves on the losing side more often than not.

SiteJabber user J V. writes: “The bottom line with this site is that you have to get lucky. End of story. It’s as much a gamble as if you were walking into a casino with $60 bucks and pumping into a slot machine that flashes ‘$1500′ at you.”

T F. provides a sound piece of advice in his review: “As for the more expensive items: they are very tough to win, you need some luck, a little skill, extreme patience, and, the ability to know when to walk away. It is almost exactly like gambling and can be very addictive. So BE CAREFUL! If you have a gambling addiction, STAY AWAY!!”

The Bad

Penny auctions like Quibids are smart. They know that people like nice things, and they know that most people want those nice things as cheaply as possible. Who wouldn’t? By masquerading gambling as a fun shopping experience, Quibids has managed to bait thousands of bidders into buying bids that eventually get them nowhere. Or if you do get somewhere, you end up paying a lot more than you bargained for as the company charges you shipping for each item, even when something might not require shipping!

As reviewer Melinda L. explains: “you get lured into ‘buying’ bids. I bought 45 bids for $25. I then started bidding on an iPad that was going up in 1 cent increments and wasn’t getting anywhere with that, so I started bidding on a $15 gift card for iTunes. But I ran out of bids. So I stupidly went to buy more bids, which cost me another $25…and concentrated on getting the iTunes card. I still didn’t win it… so then a little window comes up and says ‘Sorry you didn’t win this, would you like to buy it for $2.57’? So I thought…OK, I’ll buy it. Even though an iTunes certificate can be transferred into your iTunes account for free (just with a transaction number) they charged me $1.90 in shipping/handling charges. So, in the end, my $15 iTunes card ended up costing me over $53.00. STAY AWAY FROM THIS SITE!!! I was lured onto it by them showing me all these great deals people had won, but I don’t believe than ANYONE actually won a prize worth over $200 for less than $5. What a horrible rip-off.”

Stas M. offers more insight into the specifics: “The site is a scam for the bidders and a cash cow for the operators. For example an Amazon Kindle recently sold for $112.10 (retail$259) – sounds good for the winner, but to reach $112.10 in 5 cent increments, it would take 2242 bids!! So since each bid costs 60 cents, the bidder wasted $1345.20 for a $259 item!!… How do you even know that the people that are outbidding you are real people?…”

Good question, Stas, that leads us to our final section.

The Ugly

How do you know that you’re bidding against real people on Quibids? You don’t. Remember when we asked you to get on your robot fighting gear? SiteJabber users have done a lot of sleuthing to conjecture about Quibids’s use of bidding bots to do their dirty work for them. By doing so, Quibids would be able to guarantee that you use more bids (money) in order to stay in the bidding game. While it’s hard to prove this to be true, our reviewers have some interesting observations.

Luke D. explains in his review: “I have no doubt that Quibids has bots, of course the site says they don’t. I watched one particular name bid hundreds of times on every electronic item, the bids alone cost more than some of the items, once each item was sufficiently run up the name would just go away, I watch it bid on 3 items at exactly the same time over and over. This one name bid thousands of times today and hasn’t won a single item. That is most definitely a bot.”

…either that or a really bad gambler.

SiteJabber user Y P. also adds a few important points from his own informal evaluation of Quibids: “…being subject to ‘automatic auction extensions’ that keep happening until the product has no desirable value means that it is designed to have users fail or quit the bidding – but not before they paid fees for wasted bid attempts to the ‘auction house’. Lastly, there is zero oversight when there is no real community of buyers and sellers and everyone is anonymous (partial names or usernames). Mix that with a seller that has the capability to anonymously outbid you because he owns the site and you get one incredible scam…If you are the type of person who go for banner ads that said, ‘Congratulations! you won!’ then this is for you.”

At SiteJabber we need not say more about this new form of gambling. And of all the penny auction sites, Quibids takes the cake for the most number of complaints and the least concern for customer service and satisfaction, according to our community.

To write your own review for Quibids or to read more reviews, visit the Quibids review page here. Share this via Facebook and let your friends know about Quibids.

For more information on penny auctions, read SiteJabber’s Stay Safe Online article here or see the two infographics we’ve developed here and here.

Note: SiteJabber corrected misspellings within reviews for this article.

Image source 1, 2