SuperBidRivals Review: It Sucks

This is my SuperBidRivals review. SuperBidRivals is a great program by BidRivals that sucks. Let me tell you why.

The idea is a really great one. In fact, it is something I had been thinking for many months now and finally someone comes up with it. Naturally I was excited. So what is SuperBidRivals?

The concept is simple: You buy the item on the site and put it up for auction. You take the entire risk. As you know, on some products penny auctions make a profit and on others they make a loss. Thus the risk is entirely on you because you have already paid for the item. Of course you get the money from the auction because you own the risk. The site, BidRivals in this case, takes a cut.

This was the concept I had thought of for a great model that brings many people together: those who like to take the risk and those who want to hunt for bargains.

So why does by SuperBidRivals review say it sucks? Here is why:

SuperBidRivals Review: Commission on Revenue, not Profit
Imagine your stock broker telling you that he'll invest money for you in the market. The deal is, whatever money you make, he'll get percentage of it. That is even if you make a loss! If the company he buys goes bankrupt tomorrow, he has nothing to do with it. If it decreases in value, he will still charge you money. Would you choose such a broker? Of course not! This is totally ridiculous.

That is what SuperBidRivals does. You take on all the risk through your money but it is the company that takes a cut from the revenue, not profits. It is ridiculous because if you would end up in a loss, you go still further into a loss because you have to pay the company. Granted they have a name in the industry but this is preposterous in my opinion.

SuperBidRivals Review: Way too High % Commission
So what is the commission that they get? Flat 50% ! Like mentioned earlier, it is on the revenue that you generate and not profits. So how does it work?

Suppose you buy a gift card for $100. It sells for $2. There were 200 bids generated, so the revenue generated is $130. The fair way of course would be to take a commission on the profit, which is $30 (the loss, if it occurs, can be absorbed by you - after all, you take the risk of profit and loss). However, what SuperBidRivals does is that it takes a 50% commission on the $130, which is $65. So you end up with $65 in your pocket and a loss of $35! This is even though you have generated a profit. And yes, 50% is way too high. I would say 10% is a fair deal because it is you who takes the risk, not BidRivals.

SuperBidRivals Review: Opaque as Hell
When you work with affiliates or partners, the first and foremost rule of business is to be transparent with this people. They need to know what they are getting into and not gambling (unless it is deliberate?) My problem with SuperBidRivals is it is opaque as hell.

As a member of SuperBidRivals, the first thing that you should get access to is a database that lists the products and their selling prices over the past. This will give you an idea of the risk that you are about to take, even with their ridiculous commissions. So do you get this information? NO! And in my opinion, this is totally ridiculous. How on earth am I supposed to know what my risk is and what I am getting into if you want to hide the most critical information for me to make an informed choice? (Oh yeah, you want me to wade through 2000 pages of past auctions on BidRivals? Dream on)

SuperBidRivals Review: Concern with Timing
The least you can do is to control when your auction is going to be scheduled for. Of course the correct way to do is to look at the past historic data and current auctions and traffic and decide for yourself. But you are given access to nothing. So I do some research on my own and come up with a time I wish. Can I do that? No.

There is a time window of 6 hours, which is way way too general and helps little. It is almost like they can put your auction up whenever they want.

SuperBidRivals Review: Competing Products
As a general rule in penny auctions, if there are two similar products auctioning in a short period of time, the second one will generally sell for less than the first. So if you want to place your product, you should make sure that there is no similar auction going on before your product. Can you ensure this? No. There can be a same or similar auction 5 minutes before yours and you lose all the bidders to this auction and there is nothing you can do about it. Does it suck? You bet!

You may still want to use SuperBidRivals: Just because it sucks doesn't mean you cannot get money out of it. Perhaps you can make some profit but it is really a black box which seems unfair and ridiculous to me. I would wait for another penny auction to do the same and then I'll join their program. I am sure someone else will come up with a better plan sooner or later.

By the way, BidRivals is a good penny auction that you can have fun on bidding. But SuperBidRivals is a different ball-game altogether and I would be wary of using it. I hope you at least know what you are getting into before you invest hundreds of dollars of your hard earned money into this program.

BidRivals Review

This BidRivals review covers the good and bad aspects of BidRivals. For those who are wondering if BidRivals is scam, it is not. BidRivals is legit penny auction site which will ship your product if you win. However, this doesn't mean there are no negative aspects of the site: all it means is that it will not scam you by not shipping you items if you win them.

In my BidRivals review, I wish to cover both the positive and negative aspects. If you have something to add, please leave a comment and I'll try to include your thoughts (with proper citation of course!) So here we go:

BidRivals Review: The Positives
Here are some reasons in favor of investing your time and money in BidRivals:

• BidRivals is Legitimate Penny Auction: This may sound trivial but you would be surprised to know the number of scams out there. This is why BidRivals is a great penny auction if you are looking for 100% legitimate sites i.e. penny auctions that will never withhold your product if you win. It takes a few days for the product to arrive, but it most certainly will. From the standpoint of the scams out there, BidRivals is certainly a great penny auction site to have fun and earn some great discounts in the process.
  

• BidRivals is Global Penny Auction: If you are not from the US and UK, you really have very few legitimate penny auctions to bid on. Both US and UK are filled with a number of good penny auctions, most notably Quibids is US and Swoopoo in UK. However, if you are from Finland or Spain, I am not sure if you have many good options. BidRivals is a good penny auction in such cases.
  

• BidRivals has Uniform Competition in a Day: This is actually a big deal and you will know if you are active in the penny auction scene. At BidRivals, there is approximately equal competition throughout the day. If you are at a site like Quibids, you will see that the nights are much more crowded than the days and early morning has almost no items to bid on. The reason BidRivals is much more uniform is because it is global and thus spanning many different time zones. The bidding is therefore much more uniform that you may expect at first.
  

• BidRivals has Good Auto-Bidder: This is a two-edged sword so I must mention it in both positive BidRivals review and negative BidRivals review. BidRivals has BidAgent which is a really great auto-bidder. All you need to do is set the number of bids that you want to place and the maximum price up to which you are willing to bid. BidAgent will take care of the bidding for you. Therefore you can buy, say, 1000 bids and put them all in BidAgent for an iPad auction, go to sleep, and wake up the next day to be the winner. This is not possible in many other penny auction sites. For example, Quibids limits the number of bids in its auto-bidder to a maximum of 25. BidRivals has no such limits on BidAgent.
  

• BidRivals has Good Customer Service: It is not the best, but it certainly is quite good. I would say a penny auction like Quibids is much more dedicated to customer service, but BidRivals is not far behind the industry leaders in this area. For any penny auction, it is very important to have good customer service as there can be any number of issues arising. I give a positive BidRivals review for customer service because they are better than the industry average. You would be surprised by how pathetic customer service can be at some of the other sites.

BidRivals Review: The Negatives
Here are things that you should know about BidRivals that are not so favorable. It is important to know all aspects of a site before investing your time and money.

• BidRivals can be Competitive: BidRivals can get really competitive and you might have to spend a ton of bids to win a product. Worse, you might spend a ton of bids and end up not winning the auction. I have seen some of the highest competition for some products in the industry. However, I should mention that BidRivals is not competitive for all auctions - there are many times you will really get 90-95% off retail on this site. However, if bad luck stings you on an auction, it can be bitter. It is therefore important to read my BidRivals strategies to improve your winning chances significantly.
  

• BidRivals Auto-Bidder can Suck: BidAgent, the auto-bidder can be a huge pain sometimes. This is especially so when there are two or more BidAgents competing against one another. In such a situation, single bidders seldom stand a chance. This is not good because it results in price escalation and everyone is almost forced to use BidAgent. Don't get me wrong - it can be a good tool but it can result in being very costly for the bidders too.
  

• BidRivals can have Inadequate Auctions: There are times when I feel there are just too many bidders and too few items. I think BidRivals should work really hard on putting up more auctions. Otherwise it will lose bidders who will never bother to check back. It is important that people win regularly. Immediate profit cannot be the only driving force for a penny auction.
  

• BidRivals has no Search: This is one of the worst features of BidRivals. Most penny auctions want to make it easy for the bidders to find previous winners and the prices of products that were previously sold. BidRivals wants to make this information as hard as possible to get. All auctions are listed in the chronological order, so if you want to know the historic price of say iPads, you have to browse through thousands of pages of crap before you can get what you are looking for. I find this highly annoying and it is high time they allow to search auctions by the name. Reputed sites like Quibids always have this feature, BidRivals doesn't.
• BidRivals has no Exciting Features: Penny auctions try to attract bidders by offering them different types of auctions, but BidRivals can be dull and boring in that sense. If you look at sites like Beezid for example, you will find a lot of variety and thus more excitement. BidRivals can get incredibly boring at times especially when you have 5 BidAgents bidding against one another and there is nothing really happening for the next 10 hours. You will be surprised how bad it can get.
  

I hope this BidRivals review has helped you make a decision whether you want to join BidRivals or not. Drop a comment if you have anything to add or anything that I missed.