Comments on: Dissecting BassaBids online auctions

By: ravi

ravi — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:36:17 +0000

can nebody reply 2 my above question bcoz i did win

By: ravi

ravi — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 05:36:49 +0000

if i win,how do i pay watever my bid has won.

By: BassaBids Online Auctions

BassaBids Online Auctions — Tue, 19 May 2009 17:47:58 +0000

The whole site is free now.

If you want to make a bid it costs nothing, you only pay if you win the auction whatever that price is.

By: B Sharma

B Sharma — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:30:36 +0000

Additionally, BassaBids is not the only one – and maybe not even be the first one – in the field. I heard of Humraz Auction House in UK several years ago doing the same thing. Their model appears to be more transparent too, where they disclose the initial seat price and the number of seats so you know before hand what will be their approximate gross inflow on a certain item.

By: B Sharma

B Sharma — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:45:35 +0000

Regarding BassaBid’s Dave’s comments – now the remaining bids are simply mentioned as a percentage, which means that they may still be requiring the same 8500 bids as before, you just don’t see it now. Or, in other words, the transparency is gone. This may be a reason why the MacBook Air bidding has been going on for the last seven months and there are still more than 99% bids remaining. At this rate by the time bidding is over on this item the technology will probably have changed and the Air will look like a quaint equipment from bygone days!

And one question – if your bids is not the lowest unique bid do they tell you if your bid is too high or too low?

By: Dave H

Dave H — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:58:50 +0000

Hi,
Thanks for the review of BassaBids, it was very well written.

Just for the record we have changed the number of bids required in the auctions. We hadn’t updated those figures since we started putting the system together and were playing with different auction models and different bid prices. They were meant to be updated before we went live, but your review meant we had to take action now.

Regards,
Dave Hoskings
BassaBids

By: Golbguru

Golbguru — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 03:17:07 +0000

Yan and Scott: Yeah…I get it…I guess earlier I was just looking at the “free trial” scheme in which bidding is free. For $1.99 just to be eligible to bid that does look like a lottery.

By: Scott

Scott — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:52:09 +0000

I agree with Yan. BassaBids (or any other lowest/highest *unique* bid auctions) is a bargain just like buying lottery is a bargain. Sure, you pay only $5 for a ticket, but imagine how many million dollars you can get back!!

Except the majority of lottery buyers never get their money back. Neither do those entering into this kind of unique bid auctions.

Worse is the psychological effect surrounding this kind of “gambling”. If you spend $1.99 to place a bid, and found out that your bid is not unique, what are you going to do? The person who is in the right mind, who probably would not have participated in the first place anyway, would back out, thinking “well, there goes my 2 bucks.”

But the ones who really want that MacBook Pro will continue to spend money on bidding, with no guarantee that he/she will win.

Tell me that it is not gambling…

By: Yan

Yan — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:41:28 +0000

In gambling, if someone wins, they take everyone else’s money minus the cut that the casino gets.

With BassaBids, the winner gets the prize (which judging by the first auction is much less than the sum of all bids) and the rest people simply lose the money they spent to pay for their bids.

It is close to how lottery works in the sense that the winning bid is not a function of your skills but rather a pure luck. The interactive part in the form of ‘your bid is not unique’ alerts adds a gambling element to it.

By: Golbguru

Golbguru — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:34:23 +0000

I meant if someone else wins the bid…you don’t have to loose your money on that.

In gambling, if someone else wins the money…it means you are definitely loosing it. :) (well except at slot machines).