http://www.flickr.com/photos/clkg/ / CC BY 2.0
I mentioned in my ‘Tis the Season for Sweet Deals post that I would provide a strategy for participating in JoJolie auctions. I don’t have a strategy for you, but I do have a review and it’s not pretty!
Everyone is looking for a great deal. Times are rough for everyone and looking fabulous requires a lot of creativity. My recent experience with JoJolie goes to show that some things are too good to be true. Do your research ladies!
You receive 5 free bids when you sign up for JoJolie and then you have to purchase the rest of your bids in packages. For details on how this works check out How to Shop at JoJolie.
If you’re seriously bidding to win, forget about getting by with your 5 free bids. You have to be serious. You have to buy bids and you have to buy a lot of them. Don’t let the $3 price tag on JoJolie’s homepage fool you. The bids can cost you nearly $1 each depending on how many you purchase.
Let’s do the math.
If you check out the JoJolie website you’ll see that the Coach Nubuck Brooke Bag sold for $6.55.
Bidding starts at $1 and it goes up a penny for each bid. So it took 555 bids to get the price up to $6.55. Let’s say each one of those bids cost 75 cents (which requires you to buy a bid package of 25 bids that costs you $18.75…wait a minute $18.75 + $6.55 is $25.30, which is NOT $6.55, even if it is a good deal. And chances are you won’t win a bag with just 25 bids, but I digress.)
It took 555 bids to get to $6.55 cents meaning that at 75 cents a bid (which is generous, because some people may have paid more for their bids depending on many (or few) they bought) the price of that purse was more like $416.25. That cost is shared amongst all the bidders, which is great if you win. But if you lose (which, by the way, is most likely in a game of chance), you just paid for some stranger’s Coach bag.
Sounds a lot like gambling, doesn’t it? Maybe you win, maybe you lose, either way they’ve got your money.
It was a frustrating–and expensive!–experience that I do not wish to repeat.
My online Recessionista Party, however, is not a game of chance. You’re not gambling! You’re getting awesome deals and free shipping!
December 8th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Another important thing to note: as the clock ticks down people will bid more frantically. Once it’s below 30 seconds, each bid will add 10 seconds to the clock, with a maximum of 30 additional seconds. This is not a conventional auction where the clock winds down and the highest bidder wins. You think the correct strategy is too wait until the last possible instant to place your bid, but that isn’t true. Not only do you have to place the last bid, but in order for you to win nobody else can bid after you, which isn’t likely. This makes the situation a bit of a scam as the more bids you place, the more opportunity you give for others to bid, basically undermining you own chances to win. Sneaky, huh?