Many online auction sites now create virtual spaces where punters can consider whats available and leave a bid
. Whether its a push chair you are after or a Play Station, you click into the auction that you are interested in and wait for the bidding to start.
When clicking into the item of your choice, you are told the date and time that the auction is due to start and are given a pricing guideline. As the auction progresses, the price of the item starts to rise. Some items only increase by a penny a bid and are called penny auctions, while the prices at other auctions go up by 7p a bid. Each bid can cost around 25p and you buy packages of bids from 20-500 with special bonuses for members buying 100 bids or more. The practice is to register first and then bid.
These sites also present an ended auction page where you can look at archived auctions to see what items went for and what savings were made. These are the pages that reel you into using the site as there seems to be good deals to be made here.
However, while there is an element of uncertainty with some online auction sites where goods are auctioned by private sellers, others like Redbread are well controlled: auctioned items come direct from manufacturers and quality is assured. The quality of the monitoring is quite an important consideration when choosing which online auction site to use.