Online Auction

If you search google you don't easily find this website. A relatively new website which works quite well and has some interesting things going on inside, Mybananabids is here to stay (well now who can ever predict that)!

SO we came across this website when we happened to meet the founders. They claim the website has been designed from scratch in their labs and is not a result of those ready made template websites available in the market.

We have reason to believe them, because it seems to work differently from most websites. For one their autobidder, and you guessed it right, called bananabidder, is nothing short of a cheeky little monkey feeding on your banana bids! If you care, we'd advise you to stay away from it.

Ease of use:
Clear, consice and to the point. The website is easy to use. The home page shows you the live and up-coming auctions. The header tells you how to start. The HUB and LUB are explained on the left. One look at the website and you know what to do.

Ratin: 4.5/5

How it works:
This website is similar to many other like Madbid, Fastbidder, Flutteroo etc. They service only UK and the best part is that shipping to UK mainland is FREE!! That is one rare treat.
Now apart form the usual penny auctions they have 2 other types of auctions the Highest Unique Bid and the Lowest Unique Bid. What that means is you play blind and bid at a price which you think is the Highest or Lowest, as the case maybe, and is unique i.e. no one else has bid at that same price. At the end of the auction if your bid is the Highest/Lowest unique bid then you win that product.

Rating: 4/5

Bid Prices:
Bids packs available cost between £10 to £500 and hence the bids could cost you anywhere between 38p to 50p, depending on the pack you have bought.

Rating: 4/5

Registration:
Before you read any more of this head over to the website and register, because they are giving 10 FREE bids, when we met them they said it would soon be dropped to 3! Now this is a new website, not easily found so the userbase is proportionally small and winning auctions so much more easy. It's quick to register and you don't need your credit card.

Rating: 4/5

Products:   
The products that you can win are all computer and mobile related. They have the usual apple products and a range of the others. Very specific and the products repeat like on other websites.

Rating: 3.5/5

Quick Tip:
There are bid packs that you can bid on using your free bids and eventually not be paying a penny to bid.

If their facebook page is any indication, they aren't doing too well. But the auctions for high value products tell a whole different story.

Summary:
        -    New website = less users = less competition = more chance of winning
        -    Free shipping!
        -    Bananabidder is nasty!

Rating: 4/5

Just so you know that auctions can be won - here is a video of someone we know winning an auction.

And as a treat here is a video of the cheeky monkey eating your bananas, oh we meant the bananabidder in action!

If bright colours, many options are your thing then Flutteroo is for you. Similar in concept to websites like Madbid, Mybananabids, Swoopo; Flutteroo has three types of auctions - standard penny auction, Lowest Unique Bid and Buy it now.

Ease of use:
Colour coded website, makes it quite easy to use. Three types of auctions clearly marked with colours. The registration is quick and you are ready to go once you buy a bid pack. There are free auctions to practice right at the top of the website. Stable and fast website, makes the experience fun.

Rating: 4/5

How it works:
Three clearly marked types of auctions. The penny auction is where you buy bid packs and then bid while the timer counts down. Each bid increases the price of the product by 1p. If you are the last bidder when the timers hits zero, you win. If someone else bids after you, the timer restarts to its set interval (10s, 15s, 1min...) and you may bid again. This goe son until someone wins.
The Lowest Unique Bid auction is where you place a bid and if it is the lowest and unique bid you win. There maybe users who have bid lower than you but are not unique. It's a blind auction, but not all luck. Learn about it and play smart.
Then there is the Buy it Now, where you can buy the product.

Rating: 3.5/5

Bid prices:
General sentiment, though suggests that it is a professionally run website and one of the best ones out there. The website is reasonably priced with 50p for a bid. From the list of past auctions they seem to have average competition.

Rating: 3.5/5

Registration:
Quick and easy to register and you do not need to buy bid packs when you register. Now the catch is there are free auctions right at the top of the page but you cannot do anything on the website before you buy a bid pack! So they won't let you explore the website before you pay, very pushy we believe.

Rating: 2/5

Products:
The product range is good and you can choose from cheap mobile phones, mp3 players, gaming consoles, games, dvds, television and yes Apple products.

Rating: 3/5

Note:
You can see and read about the team behind the website and that might give you enough confidence to spend money with them and try them out. We were put off by the fact that you had to pay before you could look around!

Special feature:
And, they allow you to swap your winnings for product, cash or bids!

Summary:
        -    You can't try the website before you buy the bid packs, even when there are free auctions.
        -    Colour coded three types of auctions.
        -    You can read about the team behind the scenes.

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

Now for all the UK fanatics who want everything to come from this island, here is your very own eBay! They are called Castoff and are just a nice looking version of eBay, serving only the UK!

But wait... they say they are different...

Now how different is different? For one they are much cheaper than eBay, so they claim and so do the users. So as a seller you pay less, as a buyer you obviously just pay the price.

Ease of use:
Easy to use website. As a new user one can easily find their way around and get on with buying and selling as soon as they sign up.

Rating: 4.5/5

How it works:
As a traditional bidding website, users list products they want to sell and the buyers bid on the product. There is a starting bid price and you can bid to beat the highest bid price until the auction ends. The website looks good and they keep the going ons interesting with competitions et al. As for the options as a buyer you can bid or you can just 'Shake on it' (buy now), they have a little hand shake icon for it like you are actually shaking on it.

Rating: 4.5/5

Registration:
The registration is quick and easy, no strings attached. In a minute you are ready to go and purchase your first product or create your first listing.

Rating: 4/5

Products:
The range of products depends on the sellers and since this is a new website there isn't a very huge range but looks promising as the number of users increase. Even now there is a good choice of products and some very weird products as well, visit the website to find them!

Rating:3.5/5

Special Features:
What are the other goodies available?
They have a Thank you scheme for the sellers! It is a way to thank the sellers, thier customers by giving them a proportion of thier cast off fees. Now isn't that sweet, just like a friendly neighbourhood auction shop.
They also have a naughty corner for listing or rather black listing all users who are not folloing rules.
Last thing to differentiate them, is that they dont have any auto bidders!

Rating: 4.5/5

Summary:
        -    An eBay alternative serving only the UK
        -    New website so not that many users and hence less options
        -    Cheaper than eBay for the sellers, while being easy to use.

Rating: 4/5

Now head over there and show some support. They are new, but they are good!

Swoopo is one of the oldest penny auction websites out there. Swoopo operates in the UK and USA, through different websites.

Ease of use:
Simple intuitive website. One of the earlier ones and hence among the fastest. Easily accessible auctions from the home page. Bids are updated real time and no perceived delay. For past auctions there is information available about the winning bid price, the userid of the winner and the number of bids that were played by the winning user before the product was won. It shows a calculation of the savings after including the amount that has been spent on placing the bids, so a bit of transparency there.

Rating: 4/5

How it works:
One of the biggest penny auction websites. So a lot of competition. But the penny auction concept remains the same, where one bids against a timer and the price goes up by 1p for every bid. You pay per bid and hence keeps the price under control. If you are the last bidder when the timerhits zero, you win the product.

Rating: 4/5

Bid price:
The bids cost 50p and bid packs are available from £25 to £250.

Rating: 4/5

Registration:
A simple registration form which they claim takes 30 secs to fill and get you registered to Swoopo. No free bids though.

Rating: 4.5/5

Products:
Swoopo has a range of products in the categories of games, electronics, vouchers and bid packs. Swoopo was the goto place for cheap mobile phones, cheap WII, cheap Playstations, cheap televisions, microwaves, refrigerators etc.

Rating: 4/5

Being one of the oldest penny auction websites out there, they are trust worthy or they would not have lasted so long. With the new websites coming, Swoopo might be losing its userbase, so it could be a good place to start.

Summary:
        -    Oldest penny auction website in UK
        -    Range of products
        -    Greater competition

Rating: 4/5

Madbid is currently the hottest among the many penny bid websites in the UK. Having secured an investment of £4m from Atomico Ventures (same guys who invested in Skype) Madbid is well on its way to domination. And recently they have been all over the press and television.

The penny bid concept is similar to that seen on websites like Swoopo, bidcactus and quibid all in the USA.

Founded in 2008, these guys have been growing at a phenomenal rate. So if the size of the company determines your trust level, they are sure to stay for a while.

Ease of Use:
A pretty easy to use website that looks clean and fun. Offering all the desireable products it is one of the best sites out there. But as we said earlier, more users means a lot more competition and a quick glance at the high range products in the Live Auctions tab tells you that the competition is indeed quite stiff.

Rating: 4/5

How it works:
The site does not offer much in terms to differentiate itself from other penny auction websites. Simple penny auction formula, where you buy a bid pack; bid on an item which increases its cost by 1p and if the timer reaches zero with you as the last one to bid, you win; if someone else bids the counter restarts from its top value - 10s, 15s, 20s, 1min...

Rating: 3.5/5

Bid Prices:
The bid packs are available from £10 upto £375 with progressively reducing cost per bid. So the more you spend, more bids you get and less would each bid cost you. There are offers from time to time and if you scour the web well, you could find some lying around. So eventually bids can cost a maximum of £1.20, which is quite steep.

Rating: 3.5/5

Registration:
The registration process is quite simple and doesnt take long. You do not require your credit card details but will be asked for a mobile number, needless to say it should be a UK number. When you register they are kind enough to give you 3 FREE bids to get you started. Free sounds good, but three isn't a lot to really get you anywhere. So if you want to get something be prepared to spend on the bid packs.

Rating: 3.5/5

Products:
Their product range is wide and includes products like laptops, PCs, Apple products, food processors, televisions, an odd jewellery item, mp3 players, cash upto £1000, gaming consoles, and cars! Yes, they have regular auctions for the Mini and Audi, but they are highly competitive.

Rating: 4.5/5

Special Note:
Now the big question if this is all a scam. To answer that one would like to consider the fact that they secured a huge amout of investment and have been there for quite some time, three years for a penny auction site is a big deal! They do state that no employees or anyone related to madbid.com is allowed to be a part of the auction, but recently rumours have been rife about a questionable madbid scam! That could also be cause of the large user base and most not winning anything! You have to admit it is a smart business model and Madbid is doing business not charity. They are out to make money and loads of it, no one is forcing you to spend money and bid! Just be warned, it is a game of skill so practice well.

Summary:
        -    One of the most popular  penny auction website in the UK, hence more competition
        -    Good range of products to choose from. Even cars.
        -    Easy to use and stable website.

Overall Rating: 3.5/5

Our advise:
If you are new, stay with the low value products and vouchers and bid packs since they are easier and will give you confidence to spend a lot more for the bigger products. Also look at the past auctions, the price they went for, the names of bidders who have won because they are more likely to be the regulars in there.