Frequently Asked Questions
- What is BidRodeo?
- What does it mean when an auction is paused?
- Who are all these people that are bidding?
- How can I pay?
- Can I pay in cash, or with check or money order?
- Do you ship outside of the United States?
- How do I know you do not cheat?
- How much do BidRodeo bids cost?
- I clicked on "Bid" but the penny auction ended. What happened?
- I saw the time and price jump a bunch when there were only a few seconds left on an auction. What happened?
- Why do I see a charge from AMPP LLC on my credit card statement?
- I signed up for an account but have not received an authentication email. Where did it go?
- How do you calculate the savings? It does not seem to add up.
- Do you guys bid on your own auctions?
- I've spent some money and cannot win any penny auctions. What is going on?
- Why do sometimes purchased bids not appear immediately after paying with PayPal?
- How do I delete my account?
- I added a BidBuddy with 4 seconds left. Why did it not fire?
- How do I unsubscribe from your email list?
- I have invited my friend to BidRodeo and he has signed up, but I didn't get any free bids, what's going on?
- I like the idea of BidRodeo penny auctions, where can I learn more?
1. What is BidRodeo?
BidRodeo is a penny auction site.
Before you can bid, you must purchase some bids. You find a live penny auction you like, and bid. Each bid will increase the price by a penny and will add 15 seconds to the remaining time. If the auction ends and you are the top bidder, you get to buy the item.
You can sign up for free right now.
2. What does it mean when an auction is paused?
Sometimes, hackers bid on our auctions and then attack our servers. They do this so that other people's bids do not go through. Whenever we detect this happening, we will pause all auctions which are ending soon. After the attack goes away, we will automatically unpause the auctions and add 2 minutes to each auction time. No one can bid when the auctions are paused.
This is done to make sure that everyone has a fair chance at bidding.
We may also pause auctions if we need to bring the system down for maintenance. When this happens, all auctions will be paused.
3. Who are all these people that are bidding?
These are regular people, just like you.
On BidRodeo, we have people mostly from the United States and Canada. However, we do have users from Europe, Australia and all over the world.
If you want to find out some information about a user, just click on their username. It will show you some basic information about the user. If this user has won any auctions, it will show them. This way, you can smartly judge your competition.
4. How can I pay?
We accept payments by credit cards, debit cards, or PayPal.
Paying on BidRodeo is safe and secure.
5. Can I pay in cash, or with check or money order?
Unfortunately, we cannot accept payments in cash, checks, or money orders because of fraud concerns.
If you do not have a credit card or a PayPal account, one way to pay is with prepaid credit cards. You can use this like regular credit cards on BidRodeo. MasterCard, Visa, and American Express sell gift cards in certain gas stations and stores. Please see the links below for more information.
6. Do you ship outside of the United States?
Yes, we do ship won and purchased items outside of the United States. The shipping charge shown on the auction will apply. However, the recipient will be responsible for any import duties and taxes which their country may impose.
If there are any problems getting an item shipped, we will work with the winner and may choose to send payment in lieu of shipping the item.
7. How do I know you do not cheat?
We would never do anything to hurt our reputation. The best way to find out that BidRodeo is an honest penny auction site is to look around on the internet on websites such as the Penny Auction Watch.
View Video Testimonials to see some satisfied users.
8. How much do BidRodeo bids cost?
It depends on how many you buy. We offer bids in predefined bid packages. The smallest package is the Value 20 bids and each bid costs $0.80. If you are looking for some more savings, the Special bid package contains 50 bids and each bid costs $0.75. If you decide that the Mega Deal bid package is for you, each of the 100 bids will cost $0.72. The seconds largest Grand Bargain bid package contains 200 bids and each bid costs $0.70. The Deluxe package offers the most savings - each of the 500 bids costs only $0.68.
| Bid Package | Bids | Total Price | Per Bid | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Value | 20 | $16.00 | $0.80 | 20% |
| Special | 50 | $37.50 | $0.75 | 25% |
| Mega Deal | 100 | $72.00 | $0.72 | 28% |
| Grand Bargain | 200 | $140.00 | $0.70 | 30% |
| Deluxe | 500 | $340.00 | $0.68 | 32% |
Also remember, that if you sign up, you will receive a coupon for 5 free bids with your first bid purchase. This means that if you buy the Value 20 bid package, you will receive 25 bids in total and each bid will end up costing only 64 cents.
If you are interested in getting special coupons and hearing about limited time promotions, follow BidRodeo on Twitter.
9. I clicked on "Bid" but the penny auction ended. What happened?
When you click on the "Bid" button, your computer must send your bid to our servers. This sending takes some time. Most of the time, it only takes a small fraction of a second (<30ms), but sometimes, due to various reasons, it may take longer. Even though you click on "Bid" while it is showing 1 second left, by the time your bid reaches the server, the auction may be over.
To be sure that your bids are registered, avoid bidding when there is only one second left on the clock. Give enough time for the bid to make its way across the internet. If you click at the very last moment, you risk not having your bid register. There is nothing we can do about this, since the speed of the internet is outside of our control.
10. I saw the time and price jump a bunch when there were only a few seconds left on an auction. What happened?
Two or more BidBuddies were set up to place bids in the same interval. When this happens and the time is close to zero, the BidBuddies will begin to place bids one after another. This will go on until there is only one BidBuddy that can place a bid at a given price. This takes only a split second. When the BidBuddies are done overbidding each other, the time of the auction will increase by 15 seconds * # of bids bought. The price will also increase accordingly. Some auction have a maximum time jump cap. In this case the total amount by which the auction jumps is limited.
Be careful when placing BidBuddies. They can be a very powerful tool in winning auctions. However, they can also cause you to place a lot of bids in a row if they compete with another BidBuddy head-to-head. Please make sure you understand BidBuddies before creating them. If you want to limit the number of bids a BidBuddy will place, make sure you only give it a couple of bids at a time.
11. Why do I see a charge from AMPP LLC on my credit card statement?
Don't worry, this is OK. AMPP LLC is the company that runs BidRodeo.com. The only charges on your card from AMPP LLC will be for either bid pack purchases you have made or for payments for items you have won. If you have any questions or problems regarding these charges, please contact us or email support@bidrodeo.com and we will work to resolve them.
12. I signed up for an account but have not received an authentication email. Where did it go?
There are many reasons why you may not receive an email.
Most often, there was a typo and we cannot send it to you. If you suspect this may be the case, please send us a note to support@bidrodeo.com and we will try to see if there was a typo.
Some email providers, like Yahoo, sometimes delay delivery of new emails for four, and even eight hours. If your email address end with yahoo.com or you host your email domain on Yahoo and you are sure you typed your email address correctly, please wait up to 12 hours. This should not happen often.
Some people have anti-spam software which they use to keep out unwanted email. This software sometimes emails all new senders to have them verify that the email is legitimate. Sometimes, we are able to comply. Sometimes, your email anti-spam software requires us to re-send the same message with a different subject, and we are unable to comply. If you have such software, please make sure you add the "bidrodeo.com" domain name to your whitelist before you create your account.
13. How do you calculate the savings? It does not seem to add up.
The savings calculation is simple. We take the number of bids a user used. We multiply that times the average bid price. We add the final cost of the auction and the shipping and handling, if any. That is the total cost. Next, we subtract this cost from the retail price and we end up with the savings.
You might ask how we come up with the average bid price. It is the total number of bids purchased or received for free, divided by the cost of those bids. An example is the best way to show it. Let's say that you create an account and buy the 20 bid pack for $16.00. Your average bid price would be $16.00 / 20, or $0.80 per bid. However, we also give you five free bids with your first bid purchase. So you really paid $16.00 and received 25 bids. In the end, your average bid price is $16.00 / 25, or $0.64.
14. Do you guys bid on your own auctions?
Absolutely not! We do not bid on our auctions. That would be immoral and extremely unfair to all users. Because of the nature of BidRodeo, it is extremely important that we retain the trust of our users. If we were to bid on our own penny auctions, it would undermine that trust. We will do nothing to compromise our integrity.
Sometimes it seems like a single user is always overbidding you. We cannot help that. Some people buy a large number of bids and bid aggressively. We would, under no circumstances, place bids ourselves on auctions to compete with our users.
Some people draw conclusions from the usernames and assume we are cheating by bidding ourselves. We assure you that we are not. Any similarity between usernames and our names is purely coincidental.
15. I've spent some money and cannot win any penny auctions. What is going on?
Sometimes, it may seem frustrating that you cannot win an auction. Please keep in mind, that for any one auction there can only be one winner. As you can see, many people participate in each auction. In order to win, you have to bid intelligently at a time when no one else will decide to place a bid after you. This is not easy. Some people buy a large number of bids and bid aggressively.
Please make sure that you understand how penny auctions work before bidding. You can read the tutorial, browse the help, or contact us if you are unsure how something works. It is also a good idea to watch the penny auctions for a while to see how they work.
16. Why do sometimes purchased bids not appear immediately after paying with PayPal?
Normally, PayPal processes the purchase immediately and sends a notification to BidRodeo right away. After a PayPal bid purchase, you should be redirected to the bid purchase receipt on BidRodeo. If that does not happen, please go to "My Account" and click on "Bid Balance." It should display your purchase history. You can click on an entry to view the details.
Please bear in mind that sometimes PayPal takes some time before sending the payment authorization to BidRodeo. It should not take more than a minute. If you still do not see the transaction, please let us know and we will investigate.
Please go to your PayPal account and see if the transaction posted correctly.
17. How do I delete my account?
In order to delete your account, send an email message to support@bidrodeo.com.
Although we would prefer not to see you go, we would like to hear why you decided to close your account. Just include your reason in the email closing request. We will try to use your feedback to improve the service. Your account will be closed shortly.
If your account is in good standing, we will refund you any unused bids.
18. I added a BidBuddy with 4 seconds left. Why did it not fire?
The BidBuddy must be scheduled before there are 10 seconds left on a given auction. The system picks a time between 1 and 10 seconds to run bid buddies. If you add one with 5 seconds left, it may not fire, because for this run of BidBuddies, the time for processing may have been at 7 seconds.
To be sure that BidBuddies fire, please make sure that they are set up before there is 10 seconds left on the auction.
19. How do I unsubscribe from your email list?
Just go to the unsubscribe page and enter the email address to which we are sending the messages.
We occasionally send emails to all active users regarding changes to the terms and conditions, or regarding the status of your account. These are not marketing emails and it is important that all active users receive these. To stop receiving these emails, please close your account by sending an email to support@bidrodeo.com.
20. I have invited my friend to BidRodeo and he has signed up, but I didn't get any free bids, what's going on?
5 free bids will be credited when your friend(s) make first purchase to buy their first bid pack.
Invite a Friend and get 5 free bids when they buy a bid pack.
21. I like the idea of BidRodeo penny auctions, where can I learn more?
Have More Questions?
Do you have more questions? Please have a look at the help section. You can also contact us with your questions.
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