The advent of online penny auctions over the past few years has created an explosion in popularity as more and more internet surfers scour the web for better and cheaper ways to win auctions. Like many other penny sites, Rockybid.com relies on a purchased credit system for bids, so that you must pay a certain amount per bid before you win and are allowed to purchase the item. This Rockybid review looks at the positives and negatives of the site, as the method of how Rockybid works does allow for purchases of extraordinarily low cost compared to market value, but can be a frustrating and unsuccessful foray for bidders who do not understand how the system works.
Like other penny auction sites, Rockybid only offers new quality merchandise that has only just hit the shelves, so there’s no crumbling or degraded items on the bid list — everything is pristine and ready to be shipped. The most common bids are for new electronics; laptop computers, video games, plasma TVs, mp3 players, next gen cell phones, DVDs, and so on. The original bidding cost for these items is less than 1% of their market value, so that a sixty dollar video game may only be on auction for three or four cents. Auctions last twenty four hours, and for the first twenty three hours the price rarely raises.
In the dying minutes of the auction, however, the mechanism which fuels penny auction sites over the net kicks in. Customers tracking items swoop in at the final seconds in the hopes that they are the only ones monitoring the progression of the auction; when they are they have effectively won a brand name product for practically nothing. But the overwhelming odds are that they are not, and any number of other registered users are ready to throw in their bids to take the auction, extending the life by thirty seconds or a minute so that others can bid. As each bid is sixty seven cents, it’s easy (and tempting) for customers to use dozens if not hundreds of bids in order to get, say, a thousand dollar television for only a few bucks. As such, the “final minute” of the auction may take hours or even days before the last bidder has tossed in the raise.
This is the method how Rockybid (and nearly every other penny auction site on the Internet) works. Although sixty seven cents is practically nothing — not even the change in your pocket — when a dozen customers are bidding on the item, it may take hundreds of bids before the dust settles and one customer claims the item. In that time, bidders may find they have thrown away fifty to a hundred dollars in bids without even claiming the item. Due to the notion of perceived cost, customers realize they have “invested” into the auction and are reluctant to give up the chase, when in reality, the only way to get a return on the sunken cost of these bids is to put even more money into the bidding process. Each bid raises the cost of the auctioned item by a few cents, which seems trivial given that 99% of the price is knocked off. However, this makes it so that a computer that started at only fifty cents can be bid on so much due to the price cut that the auction price actually surpasses the market value — and that’s not counting the money invested into the bidding process.
Penny auction sites such as Rockybid can be a source of entertainment, and for lucky bidders may even yield a phenomenally cheap product. However, the bidding process makes these auctions a money sink if customers aren’t careful of their personal limits on finances. One should remember that Rockybid’s means of profit is from customers, not the actual auction value. Enjoy the bidding, as a five cent item may be too good to be true.