How To Get A First Hand Macbook Pro For SGD $12.97 — But wait, It’s A Bloody Scam!
Wait a minute! Someone already got it! Dang! Oh wait a minute, someone else got scammed! Phew, thank goodness.
Sounds like a good deal that’s too good to be true? Probably is.
This thing is like MLM. Good only if you’re among the first few to join, not too good if it’s saturated.
Why?
Based on simple maths, the more people there are on the site, the more bids there will be, the more you’ll have to spend on purchasing more bids and the vicous cycle goes on. But the problem here isn’t about any law of saturation or density tolerance but of a more sinister nature. Read on.
This website, www.bidpax.com is a bidding/auction website, which isn’t really like your average auction website.
The reason because, the items are all given away so cheap! Oh, yes really!
So how can they give away the items so cheap? Here’s what’s on the FAQ pages of www.bidpax.com:
The concept of a penny auction is quite simple, the item price rises by 1 penny/cent/rupee (or equivalent in your currency) every time a bid is placed. There can only be one winner on our auctions and only the winner pays the final ending price.
We are able to pay for these items and offer amazing deals by charging users to pay for their bids in order to participate on our auctions.
Voila! I bolded their income or profit generating or scam scheme or whatever it is that it goes by.
I came across the webby while browsing Facebook when a harmless ad screamed at me, ‘Get a macbook pro for $10.57 now!’, and not only by being the dormant Apple fanboy that I am, I swear that an Alien took control of my fingers and made me left-click with the mouse hovered above the ad.
Cheap right? But do you know how much they possibly earn?
Let’s say if the data on their site is anything to judge by, bids are increased by 1cents everytime, and guess how much it costs to make that 1 cent bid? Approximately SGD$1.40! So back to that Macbook pro going for$12.57, if there werereally only 2 bidders, they’ve actually spent a total of SGD $1759!!! And how much does a Macbook cost? Heh. Not so cheap after all.
And you can only have a finite amount of bids, of which you can ‘top up’ for more bids. They really could replace the $ sign in $12.57 with a monkey head and it’ll still be the same scam, except you’d know it was a scam of course.
I simply couldn’t believe my sleepy eyes at 3am in the morning, and I thought I was dreaming, then I saw more ongoing auctions which are simply irresistible, and started to whip out my card in an attempt to register, when I realised something amiss.
The payment merchant (the company in charge of handling credit card data and all the billing stuffs) was a red flag to me — I’ve never heard nor seen them before!
So I had to see if there’s any info I can get on the company, and lo and behold, the contact page is rather an endless loop of info without any proper manner of an address, a proper names, anybody’s face nor any company registration!
AND THIS IS A DEAD GIVEAWAY GUYS! WWW.BIDPAX.COM SMELLS LIKE A BIG FAT SCAM TO ME.
On further research, the owner of www.bidpax.com was previously tied to a similar scam thingy like the now defunct pennyauction.com, until users complained of items not arriving, thus a change of websites to let bygones be bygones, if you know what I mean.
I wonder how many more websites it’ll change to before more innocent internet users (especially the uninitiated youngsters on facebook) get ensnared in this web of deceit.
And to see it being advertised on facebook’s ad network, it’s scary to think how a thin fine line legit businesses and scams operate these days.
So please, if you know of any friends or family or anyone who’s buying into the program or bidding anything at bidpax, please advise them not to.
Don’t even register, cos you do not know where your personal information is heading into. Dangerous, simply dangerous.
Oh, and please if you see the ad on facebook, don’t hesitate to flag it as offensive/scam.
Note to self: For any future internet venture, it’s good to build trust among your potential customers. Put a face to the business. Build a reputable, reliable brand and work hard, hope strive for the best.
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