Via an article on corriere.it, I just learned of the existence of Bidplaza. If you do not read Italian, don’t worry, it’s exactly the same mechanism as limbo unique, except for the cost. Basically, the player who makes the lowest unique offer for an item wins.
While I wasn’t able to determine how much placing a bid on a limbo unique item costs, it’s very clear from Bidplaza’s website that each bid will set you back 2€ (that’s almost USD 3 nowadays).
Since online forums in Italy are ablaze with questions about Bidplaza, with people wondering whether it’s a scam or a legitimate business, I figured I could do some research about it. Here are my conclusions. Take them with a grain of salt and remember that I am not a lawyer, I an not in any way involved in Bidplaza, nor I have any other knowledge beside what can be gleaned from the Web.
What is the business model?
The business model is very clear, so people should stop wondering how they can give away cameras, computers and cars for such low prices. If they put up an iPod Touch 16GB (list price 399€) for bidding and 200 people bid on it, the site will have made a 1€ profit. If 400 people bid, they will have made a 100% profit on the sale. Of course, this implies that they will get a high enough number of bidders, but if they have some capital they can afford losing some money at the start while the media-driven buzz heats up and the site becomes sufficiently popular.
Is this an auction site?
This is not an auction in any way. It’s more akin to a lottery, as guessing the lowest possible amount that no one else will bid on is more a matter of luck than anything else. I’m not sure there can’t be a playing strategy that gives a better change of winning, but if there is it isn’t obvious and the odds must be only marginally better than a strategy based on picking values at random. If it’s a lottery indeed, is it legal according to Italian law? I have no idea, I’m not a lawyer.
Who is behind Bidplaza?
The bidplaza.it domain is registered by a company named Es Media Srl, based in Segrate (MI). They do not seem to have a website, but if the company is real, anyone could go to the Chamber of Commerce in Milan and ask for information about it. However, their CEO Semih Sadi has a profile on LinkedIn and he’s listed as the admin contact for the domain.
The only entry mentioning Bidplaza on LinkedIn is for Sadok Kohen. Sadok has a blog and if he keeps an eye on his incoming links and notices this one, he is welcome to visit and leave a comment.
By the way, where do these guys come from, since their names are obviously not of Italian origin?
Turns out they’re apparently Turkish. Just to be clear, this is a fact I have no problems with.
Who are all those smiling Scandinavians driving Porsches and Ferraris show on the website?
I have no idea. Various articles on the Italian Web hint at Bidplaza being an emanation of some nordic entity, but I could find no trace of this. One article references bidplaza.co.uk but that website is just a page with an address and some phone numbers. The bidplaza.com domain is registered to the same people who registered bidplaza.it and indeed www.bidplaza.com redirects to the Italian version.
My educated guess is that their business just started, but they wanted to show some history to make it look more legitimate. Unfortunately, you just can’t hide anything in the era of Google and it’s not true that on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog. If you’re a dog, somebody will find out sooner or later and this kind of strategy risks backfiring. Of course it’s entirely possible that those Swedes are real and I welcome Sadok or Sami or any other representative from the company to come here and tell us more about them.
Would you play on Bidplaza?
Matter of fact, I already did. I registered on the site and gave my mobile phone number, so I could get the 2€ bonus, which I used to place one bet. Unfortunately I bet on an amount which was not unique, so I lost. I guess that if it cost much less than 2€ per bet, I’d be tempted to try playing some more. I would feel relatively safe in doing so, since I could simply budget 10€ via PayPal and not risk anything more, but I’m not a gambler.
Update: I found where the happy Scandinavians come from: bidster.com. The graphics of bidster.com and bidplaza.it are obviously the same, so I wonder what exactly the relationship between bidster.com and bidplaza.it is. A bit more transparency would be appreciated.
