Times are Tough and Penny Auctions exposed

Times are tough and every penny counts. Some people are taking that idea to a new level through auction sites where pennies could get you a camera or even a laptop.
If you are willing to wait for a great deal, penny auctions are a great solution to saving a few bucks. There's an online penny auction based in the metro that's growing by the day where you can bid on everything from gift cards to MacBooks.
The Nevada company foopile.com started just a few months ago and it's gaining popularity.
Think of it as an online auction but you're bidding by the penny. And even though each bid costs 49 cents, you can still grab a good bargain because it can save you from paying the full value of an item.
"My best deal was MacBook Pro for $19.62, took three hours to get through, but definitely worth it," said penny auction user Joseph Bruschie.
Another customer got a $300 digital camera for only $50.
But we here at Penny Auctions Exposed are a little skeptical and aren't sure that we've seen any real proof that these online penny auctions are such a great deal. So we decided to put these websites to the test. What better way to find out the truth than to conduct our own study?
To get started, I have been using normal online auctions regularly for the past 6 years so I volunteered to be the guinea pig. I created an account at foopile. While there are a few penny auction websites online, foopile.com is one of the most credible and trustworthy websites in the marketplace. They gave me 3 free bids just for joining and did not try to fool me into agreeing to additional hidden offers, purchases, or fees. Another reason why I chose foopile is because it is the most practical and easy to use website I found.
Here is what foopile claimed on their website...

•All Auctions Start at 1 Penny

•Each time you bid the item price increases

•The last person to make a bid wins the auction

•When a bid is placed, the timer increases

•If you don't win the auction, you can buy one full price and redeem your bids placed for full credit.

We were pretty skeptical, but wanted to find out for ourselves if this website could actually worked as it claimed and if we really could get a great deal.
Putting foopile to the Test

The foopile.com signup was quick and painless and took me literally 10 seconds to get signed up.
In order to give myself the best chance of winning, I opted to buy their 250 bids package for $122.50 Update: On sale right now for $99
My Test - Try to win any auction on the site no matter the cost:
My Results
Day One
The first day I decided to go after one of the items which I thought would not only be a little easier to win, but useful as well.
A 100 Bid Voucher.
If you win, you get 100 extra bids added on to your account - great, I could use that to continue my test.
I waited for the timer to reach down to the 5 second mark and placed a bid. 10 seconds later another user bid above me. I placed a bid butler order for the next 10 bids, which seemed to go by pretty quickly. Okay - 11 bids down.
I decided to let a few other bidders battle it out for awhile until the price got up to $1. Thats when I set my bid butler for 50 bids.
About 20 bids down the road the other bidders gave up and I won! Great, 100 won bids by only using around 30 of my bids - what a deal.
Day Two
Today I decided I would go for something a little more active as far as bidders. An iPod Shuffle.
Again I went in with the idea of spending as many bids as I needed to in order to win the auction. And if I didn't win, then I would simply exercise my Buy One Now option.
This time I waited for the price to reach above $1 and also waited for bidding activity to slow to a crawl.. I put in a couple bid snipers, and when they started firing I knew that it was time to jump in. I set my bid butler to 100 bids and sat back to watch

72 Bids later - I was the winner of a new green iPod shuffle. That means that I got a $55 product for only $36 - sounds like a great deal to me.
Day Three
Now I was getting really bold. Today it was time to bid on something even bigger - I had my eye on an iPod Touch.
This time I waited until the price reached $2, then started placing a few bids to test the waters. There still seemed to be alot of activity, so I set my bid snipers and waited. Eventually it reached $3, and the bidding was starting to slow. I jumped in and set my bid butler at 100 bids.
Another user apparently had the same idea and we got into what is called a 'bid butler war'. This is where the timer moves quicker because the bid butlers are bidding against each other. Normally the timer increases 10 seconds with each bid, but a butler war it only increases 1 second per bid
Needless to say the 100 bids went pretty quickly. I placed another 100 bid butler, then another 50 bid butler after that. After getting to that point and still not winning, I decided that my best option was to use the Buy One Now.
So in the end I ended up getting a product worth $184 by spending $184 - not a super deal, but I certainly didn't lose anything.
Day Four
Today I decided to purchase a 1000 bid pack for $490. This was mainly because there was a new iMac on the website worth $1800 that would look great sitting on my desk. So to start off, I had about 1075 bids to work with.
Once the counter reached down to 5 seconds it was like a feeding frenzy, people were bidding like crazy - sometimes it seemed that 10 bids where hitting at exactly the same time. Definately not the time for me to start bidding - so I waited
The price quickly got to $10, and the bidding slowed down a bit but not by much. I set my bid sniper in case I snoozed too long while I was watching the auction and missed out.
The price got to $20, then $30, then $40. Thats where the bids started to slow down and I decided it was time for me to jump in. I set a 100 bid butler and watched it go, then another, and another. 300 bids down.
I played normal bidding and bid snipers for awhile - price reached $50. I put in two more 100 bid butlers.. 500 bids down.
600, 700, 800, 834... WIN
I had to do a double take - I couldn't believe I actually won an iMac at a final auction price of $67 + shipping, plus about $400 worth of bids. So for an $1800 iMac, I only had to spend $500. Now if that isn't a steal, I don't know what is!
I couldn't be any happier with the results.

I spent at total of $700 and received products valued at over $2000, plus I still have 200 bids left over.

Conclusion Like us, here at Penny Auctions Exposed, you might be a little doubtful about getting a good deal from a site which may seem too good to be true. After conducting our own personal study we are pleased to see that people really are getting great deals if they stick to their guns and bid to win (myself included :) )!
Good Luck with your auction bidding,
Source:Jennifer Huggins- Consumer Reports
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