When you want to use a penny auction site to make purchases, always look for one that is safe. There are several benefits to opting for a safe penny auction site. This page lists a small number of safe penny auction sites.
Safe Penny Auction Sites – Top List of Reputable Penny Auctions
- QuiBids.com – Largest penny auction site with legit reputation and 100% auctions offer Buy-it-now
- HappyBidDay – they do not have the buy-it-now options but this is a smaller site with legit auctions, real bidder and no shills!
- Skoreit.com – Extremely competitive, I recommend our skoreit strategy guide if you are planning on playing there (or any PA really). We have won a lot of auctions on skoreit and received the item every time.
Can I lose money in penny auctions? Are they cheating?
Penny auctions are not discount shopping stores. You can lose money and not get any products in return. They are not places to spend money you can not afford to lose. Penny auctions need to embrace the fact that they are a competitive game and inform their potential customers better about what they are getting into. If you are new to penny auctions I hope you have googled to find out what penny auctions are all about and how they work because the ads and marketing can certainly be misleading.
Penny auctions are a game.
It is so important to play the game at reputable penny auctions that have established themselves. We do not recommend playing at any new penny auction sites as the market is so early in it’s development that new sites are coming and going weekly if not daily.
If you are not playing at one of the trusted and reputable penny auction sites then I will be blunt and say that you may have very well been cheated. Especially if you went to a new penny auction site and saw that it was nice and flashy looking and that they had a ton of high end products going and the auctions ending at really low prices but did not look any farther then you should look again. Find out how much traffic the site has, if they are well known at the popular penny auction forums, if they have been around for a while and what the reputable penny auction reviews you can find about them.
What Makes A Penny Auction Site Safe?
There are a few things to look at when determining whether or not a penny auction is safe or not. First are they trusted? Do they have positive reviews from portals like ours and the penny auction communities and forums? Are they honest in that they do not employ shill bidders of any kind (real people or computer programmed bots)? Finding an honest penny auction site is the first important factor. The site has to be legit in it’s bidding practices. If they are not honest in how the bidding works then you can not feel safe bidding on their site ever. The next factor to test is that the site is verified to actually deliver won auction items. The long answer is you can google and research each penny auction site you are considering by name and read forum threads, reviews and find them from reputable penny auction information sites like BestPennyAuctions.net.
Overall requirements for a penny bidding site to be considered safe:
- Fair Bidding Practices
- Honest and Legit Auctions, Verified To Deliver Won Auctions
Safest Penny Auction Sites via lowest risk of losing money
Assuming you are bidding on honest sites already, the next thing bidders are looking for is are there any sites that you are guaranteed not to lose money on. In this situation, people are looking for the reputable penny sites that offer a ‘buy it now’ feature that allows you to apply the amount of money you spent on bids towards the purchase price of the item you were bidding on if you do not win the auction.
Looking for the safest penny auction of all? Check out Quibids for a worldwide, legit penny auction site that offers Buy-It-Now Auctions all day and night long.
The second benefit is that when the products are brought in directly from the vendor, you will have assurance that it is genuine. Thirdly, when you use such a site, you will have the assurance that you have a fair chance to win. Fourthly, you will also know that those you bid against are genuine bidders. So, with secure penny auction sites offering these many benefits, it is important to choose one to bid at. Here are some to choose from:
For easy math, lets take an example of a penny auction site that has a buy it now feature and sells bids for $1 each. Lets assume you purchase $100 worth of bids and have 100 bids. Every time you bid on an auction you spend 1 bid (which cost $1). Let’s assume you are trying to win a $50 pair of sunglasses. You can “safely” spend 50 bids trying to win this auction. If you spend all of your bids and do not win, you have the option to apply the $50 in bids you spent towards the $50 buy-it-now price, making your checkout price $0.00. Assuming you are willing to pay $50 for the pair of sunglasses then all you did was took a chance at winning the auction for less than 50 bids and potentially winning a great deal. Imagine if you timed it just right and won the auction for 10 bids, which you had a chance to do.
Sure there are a few extra costs, like the paying the ending auction price (usually a few dollars) and the shipping price but you can find out this information up front.
So, to play in a truly safe penny auction you have to find a site that offers a buy-it-now feature. A handful of legit auction sites offer this and each with their own twist you need to know about. Our favorite buy it now penny auction site is BidRivals because the vast majority of their auctions offer a BIN feature. Skore it is also solid with their buy one auctions but you need to make sure you do not plan to use any promo bids thinking they are full value, they are not.
Bidding on a ‘buy-it-now’ auction site is one way to lower your risk to almost nothing.
Is there a way to safely play in a penny auction?
Yes, you can utilize a function of the site that acts as a ‘buy-it-now’ option. Essentially how these work is they apply the price you spent on bids on that particular auction towards the purchase price if you lose the auction and want to buy the item right out. If there is a $50 gift card going up for grabs that offers a buy-it-now option then you can safely spend $50 worth of bids trying to win this auction. Calculate how many bids you need to use on the auction to reach the $50 price point and use those in the auction. If you time it right or get lucky then you can win the $50 gift card for way less in bids spent. Or, if you have competition then you can stop bidding as soon as you spend $50 in bids and once the auction is over, you have the right to purchase the item using the amount you spent on bids (costing you $0 extra).
- Make sure you understand how the ‘buy-it-now’ program works at which ever site you play on, as they are all somewhat different
- Make sure you know the real retail value of the item you are trying to win. For example on skoreit there are some watches that have retail values of $495 but in reality you can buy them on amazon for $75. There is no point in planning to do a buy-it-now option if the PA sites retail price is widely different than the actual price a discount shopper can find it at online
- Make sure you know how much the shipping charge will be. That is the one gotcha that does add risk to ‘buy-it-now’ style auctions that give you full bid price against purchasing the items. There are usually always shipping charges
- Of course make sure you are playing at a reputable, trusted site. Nothing worse than winning an expensive item cheaply, paying a big shipping charge and the site ripping you off never sending the item. It has happened, be careful!
Our Top Rated Legitimate Penny Auction Sites
HappyBidDay.com is a trusted, safe and reputable penny auction that is old enough to have an established reputation but new enough not to be full of overwhelming power bidders. Members of our team have won auctions at HappyBidDay. They give away a lot of free bids and this is both good and bad. Claim 50 free bids & 20% off at HappyBidDay – Click Here It is good because you can really win auctions with these free bids (happy auctions only) but it is bad because every single day people log in and get more free bids added to their account (just for logging in). The more people with free bids the harder it is to win with your free bids, so it’s a catch-22! If you are looking for a safe penny auction to bid at and that does not have the huge competition of some of the other sites then give HappyBidDay a try.
SkoreIt.com
Another site that is dedicated to offering its patrons a safe penny auction experience is SkoreIt.com. It carries certification from DigiCert, a service provider for assurance of secure encryption and identity. The provider’s report on SkoreIt.com states that the encryption used by the site is the powerful 128/126 bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). This is used to secure payment and membership information that you share are SkoreIt.com This site also carries a certification from GoDaddy.com.
View our full review on Skoreit.com
BidCactus.com
One of the safest penny auction sites is BidCactus. This site offers patrons access to a report by Ernst and Young. The auditing company states that BidCactus is a site at which bidders are genuine users. The report states that the site employs effective controls to ensure this. As a member of Entertainment Auction Association (EAA), BidCactus is dedicated to encouraging integrity in the auctioning industry (entertainment).
Authorize.net Merchant Verified asserts in its report about the site that BidCactus is an authorized merchant with them. As a member of the organization, the site is dedicated to using e-commerce transaction processes that are secure. GoDaddy.com states that these transactions at BidCactus are encrypted using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) of 256-bit.
- View our full review on BidCactus.com
In addition, there are other safe penny auction sites too, at which you can place bids. Some of them are: HappyBidDay.com and Beezid. We like to feature these sites because many of them are already members of the entertainment auction association, which is the governing body designed to legitimize the online penny auction business model.