Quibids Buy Now

Quibids Buy Now

Most penny auction websites operating today offer Buy It auctions in one form or another. Buy It auctions are auctions where the auction losers can purchase the item at hand (often at retail value) and either receive a credit or refund based on the number of bids they have placed. Anyone who has bid on penny auctions knows the feeling of losing 50, 100 or even 1,000 bids on a single penny auction! The advantage of Buy It auctions is that bidder risk is lessened because bidders (who are willing to pay retail) can avoid losing bids to a lost auction. Buy It auctions usually work in 1 of 2 ways.

Case #1: Bid value applied toward final auction closing price

In this case, the bidder can take the value of the bids lost on the auction and apply it to the purchase price. The amount you owe to purchase the item at-hand is calculated with this formula.

Item cost =

[Retail value of the item] –[# of bids you placed] x [cost of each bid]

Let’s say you placed 100 bids on auction whose retail value was $100 and each bid cost you 60 cents.

Item Cost = $100-(100*$0.60) = $40

In this case, you’d have to pay an additional $40 to acquire the auction item. The following penny auctions offer this style of Buy It auction:

Case #2: Bids replenished after purchase

In this case, the penny auction website allows you to purchase the auction item for retail value and replenishes the bids which have placed. So if you placed 100 bids on an auction and lost, you could choose to pay the full retail price and simply get your bids back. The following penny auctions offer this style of Buy It auction:

Which Buy It Model is Best?

In our opinion, Case #1 (bid value applied to sale price) is a better deal. We’d rather get monetary value for the bids we lost than simply get them back. We can always choose to buy more bids later if we want to.  If you’re a bidder who is willing to pay retail for a specific item, Buy It auctions are a really fun way to try to win items at a bid discount with very little risk.

Which type of Buy It penny auctions do you prefer?