DubLi Shopping
Posted in DubLi Reverse Auctions
DubLi.com is an online marketplace that provides reverse auctioning to its customers. Until recently, reverse auctioning was something only used for business sourcing, but now anyone can participate and bid on brand name merchandise at close-out prices. Unlike other auction sites where users try to outbid each other for an item, the point in bidding on DubLi is to find the lowest unique bid, rather than the highest.
There seems to be a lot of controversy surrounding the issue of whether or not DubLi.com is a scam or not. Most of the accusations can be accredited to a few very specific misunderstandings.
First of all, an important thing to notice is that DubLi is not a regular auctioning site. DubLi has auctions that are strategic and serve a “means to an end.” It is also a shopping portal that sells merchandise by sending shoppers to other search engines and merchants online, and makes revenue on “click-through fees” and “revenue-share” frees.
The auctions DubLi provides are called reverse auctions. Where on other websites, the seller is charged a fee to sell an item, with DubLi, the user pays a fee of $.80 to participate in the auction, in which the item’s price is constantly decreasing. Each time someone uses a credit to view the current sale price; the price is reduced by $0.25. The crucial part of this auction style for users to consider is that they have to watch the price of the item closely so that someone else does not snatch up the item and cause the other user to lose the auction, and therefore their credits, but to judge carefully when they believe an item is at a low enough price to be worth bidding on or buying.
This $.80 fee, or DubLi credit, is like having to pay any other membership fee – in return for the credit, the user benefits from access to drastically lowered prices, something DubLi, or any other company could not afford to offer unless they received some sort of compensation beforehand.
DubLi has two different auction styles to participate in: the original DubLi “Unique Bid” and “Xpress” auctioning. The “Xpress” style of buying is most closely related to eBay’s “Buy It Now” button, except the price of the item is constantly decreasing. A pre-determined maximum sale price is listed, and in order to see the current price, you must use a credit. Each time someone uses a credit to view the current sale price, the price is actually reduced by $0.25. If the current price isn’t low enough for your tastes yet, you can wait a while until more buyers have viewed the item, and the price drops further. Anyone can decide to buy the item at any time. With “Xpress” auctioning, DubLi users have recently purchased a $50 iTunes Voucher for $0.25, a Neiman Marcus $500 Gift Certificate for $164.25, and an Apple iPod Shuffle, which was originally $74.99 for $5.00. With the “Unique Bid” auctions, users will be notified if their bid is no longer a unique bid, so they can go to the site and place another bid if they are interested.
One thing is for certain: users who are considering joining the website should research reverse auctions and consider all options before diving into this alternative bidding and shopping style.