We recently interviewed Viraj Karia, CEO and founder of just opened UK Penny Auction Quick2Bid.com.
Penny Auction Watch: What got you interested in the entertainment shopping industry?
Quick2Bid: As an entrepreneurial team, we have always been very keen to create a unique online business that brings people together to give them excellent value, whilst donating to the charities we care about.
Over the last 18 months, we have seen this genre of ‘pay-per-bid’ auction grow significantly. It has the potential to emerge as a great young industry with a fantastic new direction for auctions and shopping in general. Unfortunately, there are many sites that have drawn a great deal of online criticism and created mistrust, spoiling it for the rest of us.
Quick2Bid has given us a great opportunity to do ‘pay-per-bid’ auctions in a completely different way. It has therefore been crucial for us to shape Quick2Bid as an engaging, transparent and tactical game with an interactive, user-friendly experience. We are determined to build the right profile, in the right way with the online community and look forward to working on this with PAW going ahead
Penny Auction Watch: When will you open?
Quick2Bid:Â We opened on Thursday 12th November and to celebrate our launch with a big bang, our first featured auction is an amazing winter trip for two from the UK to New York City. To sweeten the deal, we will also include $500 in spending money. This featured auction began midday, Saturday 14th November and will finish on Wednesday evening, the 18th.
Penny Auction Watch: What kind of items do you have lined up?
Quick2Bid: We have something for everyone – not just run of the mill electronics. We want our users to be excited about our products. Our weekly featured auctions will offer our bidders those must-have products they can’t wait to tell their friends about. This week in addition to the New York trip, these auctions will range from shopping sprees to designer handbags to the latest robotic gadgets.
On a regular basis we will be auctioning computer games, iTunes vouchers, iPod Nano’s, even Skydiving experiences and much, much more!
We aim to make our offering increasingly varied to suit all tastes and we’ve got some really unique product ideas coming up. We love hearing suggestions and every week we will be giving free credit to the ideas that we like the best. We want everyone to get involved!
Penny Auction Watch: What are the timer increments between bids/does this vary by auction?
Quick2Bid: When there is 15 seconds or less on the Timer, every bid will reset the Timer back up to 15 seconds in the ‘going once, going twice…’ period of the auction. We will also have a final 15 seconds countdown phase where the timer will not reset and bidders can compete to nab the prize at the last second, in auctions that have gone on for too long.
Penny Auction Watch: How much are your bids?
Quick2Bid:Â The price to place a bid in our auctions begins at 50p and increases by a penny after every three bids. If you bid early on in the auction, you automatically earn Bonus Points, which allow you to keep bidding at 50p a bid in the latter stages of the auction. This makes the game tactical and interesting from the very start and we offer plenty of tips and strategies on how you could outbid your competitors with as little credit as possible.
Penny Auction Watch: What are your shipping costs?
Quick2Bid:Â Once an auction is won, we do not charge a final price or any shipping costs whatsoever. On Quick2Bid, you only ever pay for credit on what you have bid on and won as we want our great bargains to remain just that!
Penny Auction Watch: Do you plan to be open to other countries and the US or solely UK?
Stage one is the UK. We want to build our customer base in our home market and become one of the top UK auction sites. Once we have achieved this we will then look to take our unique entertainment shopping concept to the US and Europe.
Penny Auction Watch: Are there win limits, limits /household?
Quick2Bid:Â To keep the game interesting and fair for everyone, there will be a bid limit of three wins per person in a 7 day period. This limit will be adjusted upwards as more people use the site.
Penny Auction Watch: What is your bid refund policy?
Quick2Bid: Quick2Bid is a ‘pay-per-bid’ site and thus does not refund on monies credited into user accounts. Part of the fun of Quick2Bid is the tactical game and the great upside is if you win, you have a fantastic prize for a small price; if you don’t win you have only paid a small amount of money to take part in the game.
For more information, see our terms and conditions.
Penny Auction Watch: Can you tell us more about Quick2Bid’s charitable donation options?
Quick2Bid:Â We are dedicated to providing a great all round experience for our users, from the opportunity to win fantastic products to the best customer service, but we are really keen on giving in general and Quick2Bid gives us and our users the chance to do just that.
Every time a user adds credit to their account we will match 10% of it, which then goes into their “Available Charity Fundsâ€. The user can then select the charity they would like to donate the funds to from our four partner charities – Cancer Research UK, The Children’s Trust, PeTA and The Parkinson’s Disease Society.
We shall also be organising fund-raising events in the future, where we will get the Quick2Bid community to get involved.
Penny Auction Watch: Is there a story behind the name/theme?
Quick2Bid: We wanted our name to demonstrate that our site is different to other penny auctions – it is not about always bidding at the last second, it’s about playing fast and playing tactically. A lot of time went into coming up with the name, but eventually we had a EUREKA moment and Quick2Bid was born!
Penny Auction Watch: Is there anything else you’d like to add? 🙂
Quick2Bid: We are aiming to be the UK’s most strategic and fair penny auction site, committed to giving our customers the best must-have products at a fraction of their retail price.
You can visit us at www.Quick2Bid.com. We welcome any comments, feedback or suggestions so please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Thanks Quick2Bid!
UK Penny Auction Watch readers let us know of your experiences with Quick2Bid in the forum.
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jemimabond47 March 12, 2010, 8:15 am
There is no warning given at the beginning, that any bid one makes, whether or not one wins the auction, will reduce one's credit balance.
There are only about five to ten items on the site at any time – so the selection is not good either.
My advice to anyone – give it a miss. Keep your money, otherwise you will pay for someone else's purchase.
Online penny auction March 31, 2010, 12:19 am
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Don't bother July 29, 2010, 2:58 am
Quick2bid.com is a rip off bordering on a scam.
Scant selection, goods take forever to arrive, users are bribed to give them feedback all over the place (twitter, facebook and on site). Seems to be full of either bots or autobidders.
If it isn't a bot I've just seen someone bid over double an items value just to TRY and win?
Also states items sold by amazon – they actually mean amazon marketplace.
Again if it isn't a scam it's still the worst rip off you'll find on the net. They'll let you win junk like a bottle opener , a space hopper or wait for it.. more credit. But try winning something big it'll go to the bots/ crazy people whichever of those it is.