The Top 5 Customer Complaints on QuiBids

We’re not exactly wild about the fact that “scam” is one of the words that comes up early and often when customers look for information about QuiBids on the Internet. In fact, we take a healthy amount of offense, since our customers win thousands of steeply-discounted items on our site every day and sound off about it regularly via social media.

Now nearing our third year of operation as an entertainment retail auction site, we’ve heard loads of complaints about QuiBids — that it’s a scam, a rip-off, that it’s not legitimate, and so on. Sometimes we do receive really well-considered and friendly criticisms of how the site works (which we always take into consideration, thank you very much!), but the bulk of user complaints are so casual, general, and unfocused that they obviously stem from users’ failings to understand our auction model, which is carefully explained in the QuiBids 101 section of our website. We hear a lot of the same stuff over and over again, and while our Customer Support Team is always happy to help users out, we fear many careful online researchers get scared away before they even get the chance to place a bid, much less win a laptop for $1.99.

So here for you, we’ve assembled the QuiBids Customer Support Team’s Top 5 Customer Complaints to explain why some people accuse us of all that nasty stuff, and why it’s simply not true.

1. “I didn’t know I was spending real money!”
We’ve heard this one since we launched QuiBids in October 2009: it’s the most common culprit behind accusations of scamming and illegitimacy. A lot of customers breeze past information resources like QuiBids 101 and the company blog and fail to understand that — unlike eBay — you don’t recoup your bids if you lose an auction. The “How does QuiBids work?” page at QuiBids 101 is a good place to start if you’re looking for more information about this.

We always recommend that you Buy Now in cases like this. This feature guarantees that you’ll never pay more than the listed price on QuiBids — even if you don’t win an auction — so long as you choose to use it!

2. “Where are my items?”
Next most common is the more understandable complaint regarding the whereabouts of your won items. We advise that you hit up the Shipment & Returns section of our FAQ, and that you bear in mind that most items arrive within 7-10 business days of payment. You can usually track your shipments at the Order History section of My QuiBids.

If you haven’t received your won item 14 business days after payment, then we advise you to contact our support staff.

Also, in the event that you win an item that we no longer carry in stock, you may choose between a list of comparable items (provided by QuiBids) or to simply have your bids refunded, per our Shipment & Returns section.

3. “QuiBids uses bots and shill bidders! It’s a scam!”
Much like a college basketball game, the last twenty seconds of an auction often get dragged out for much longer than that. While coaches call timeouts to strategize whether or not to foul a key player or run a particular inbound play, experienced QuiBids users typically bid the most at this point in the auction, sometimes extending it for over an hour.

Users often misconstrue this last-minute bidding technique as evidence of bot or shill bidders (illegitimate scripts written into an auction site meant to increase the number of bids in an auction), but that’s just not the case. Our site rules forbid their use: in fact the rules are so stringent that our own family members (sorry guys!) are even forbidden to use the site. It’s all a concentrated effort to preserve QuiBids’ fairness and legitimacy.

For a little more than our assurance, we recommend you check out the Better Business Bureau, which has accredited us since September 2010. We’re very proud of our “A—” rating.

And while it might not make for the best bedtime reading, here’s a PDF containing an assessment conducted by Grant Thornton LLP (an Oklahoma City independent auditing firm), which concluded that “bids on auctions are placed by bona fide users, that QuiBids does not manipulate the bidding process to inflate the bid price or affect who wins the auctions, and that winning auctions and ‘Buy Now’ orders are fulfilled.”

4. “I thought I won!”
One of the more confusing parts of running a business online is dealing with computers’ lag time across the Internet. Users sometimes report that they clicked Bid in the closing seconds of an auction, but didn’t win the item. For the record: we don’t recommend waiting until the last few seconds of an auction for precisely this reason.

This unfortunate phenomenon is caused by lag time or data transfer delays between your PC and QuiBids’ servers, which can be augmented by any number of factors, including dated operating systems, old versions of Internet browsers, or a slowed-down Internet connection. If this is the case, you needn’t worry about losing a bid, because we didn’t receive it.

To make sure you’re up to date on your technology, we recommend the Technical Problems page at our FAQ.

5. “QuiBids is making way too much money!”
Customers, bloggers, and critics have pulled out their calculators to try and nail down just how much money QuiBids earns on a given item. While we appreciate their interest in our business model, the occasional accusations of profiteering are unwarranted, as they rarely account for Voucher Bids (which are free) cast in an auction, nor the number of customers who choose to Buy Now. The latter feature does eat directly into our profits, but it’s worth it to provide an out for customers who lost money bidding in an auction.