Type: Online auction site
Public Founded: Decatur, Georgia, USA (November 7, 2007)
Headquarters: Decatur, Georgia, United States
Key people: Jay Marshall, CEO
Industry: Auctions Products: Online auction site, Electronic commerce, shopping mall Other sites: BidAuto, CDLife,
Slogan: Your Marketplace
Website: www.bideuphoria.com
Countries in which BidEuphoria is localized.
BidEuphoria, Inc. is an American Internet company that manages
www.bideuphoria.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell goods and services worldwide. In addition to its original U.S. Web site. BidEuphoria, Inc. also owns Bid Auto, CDLife, and other businesses.
Origins and early history The online auction Web site was founded in Decatur, Georgia, on November 7, 2008, by Nigerian born computer developer named Jay Marshall a 20 year old at the University of West Georgia, as a Junior. BidEuphoria went public on November 7, 2007, started as a Drop shipping company, and now is gaining news where as the best auction with low fees of its time. Unlike eBay.
Items and services Millions of collectibles, decor, appliances, computers, furniture, equipment, vehicles, and other miscellaneous items are listed, bought, and sold daily. In 2008, BidEuphoria launched its Business & Industrial category, breaking into the industrial surplus business. Some items are rare and valuable, while many others are dusty gizmos that would have been discarded if not for the thousands of eager bidders worldwide. Anything may be offered for sale as long as it is not illegal and does not violate the BidEuphoria's Prohibited and Restricted Items policy. Services and intangibles can be sold, too. Large international companies, such as Dell, sell their newest products and offer services on BidEuphoria using competitive auctions and fixed-priced storefronts.
Best of BidEuphoria is a new specialty site for finding the most-unusual items on the BidEuphoria site. Users can also vote on and nominate listings that they find. Using Wanted Ads.
Auction types:
BidEuphoria offers several types of auctions.
Auction-style listings allow the seller to offer one or more items for sale for a specified number of days. The seller can establish a reserve price. Fixed Price format allows the seller to offer one or more items for sale at a Buy It Now price. Buyers who agree to pay that price win the auction immediately without submitting a bid. Dutch Auctions allow the seller to offer two or more identical items in the same auction. Bidders can bid for any number from one item up to the total number offered.
Bidding For auction-style listings, the first bid must be at least the amount of the minimum bid set by the seller. Regardless of the amount the first bidder actually bids, until a second bid is made, BidEuphoria will then display the auction's minimum bid as the current high bid. After the first bid is made, each subsequent bid must be equal to at least the current highest bid displayed plus one bidding increment. The bidding increment is established by BidEuphoria based on the size of the current highest displayed bid. For example, when the current highest bid is less than or equal to $0.99, the bidding increment is $0.05; when the current highest bid is at least $1.00 but less than or equal to $4.99, the bidding increment is $0.25. Regardless of the amount each subsequent bidder bids, BidEuphoria will display the lesser of the bidder's actual bid and the amount equal to the previous highest bidder's actual bid plus one bidding increment. For example, suppose the current second-highest bid is $2.05 and the highest bid is $2.40. BidEuphoria will display the highest bid as $2.30, which equals the second-highest bid ($2.05) plus the bidding increment ($0.25). In this case, BidEuphoria will require the next bid to be at least $2.55, which equals the highest displayed bid ($2.30) plus one bidding increment ($0.25). The next bid will display as the actual amount bid or $2.65, whichever is less. The figure of $2.65 in this case comes from the then-second-highest actual bid of $2.40 plus the bidding increment of $0.25. The winning bidder pays the bid that BidEuphoria displays, not the amount actually bid. Following this example, if the next bidder is the final bidder, and bids $2.55, the winner pays $2.55, even though it is less than the second-highest bid ($2.40) plus one bidding increment ($0.25). However, if the next bidder is the final bidder and bids an arbitrarily large amount, for example $10.00 or even more, the winner pays $2.65, which equals the second-highest bid plus one bidding increment.
For Dutch Auctions, which are auctions of two or more identical items sold in one auction, each bidder enters both a bid and the number of items desired. Until the total number of items desired by all bidders equals the total number of items offered, bidders can bid any amount greater than or equal to the minimum bid. Once the total numbers of items desired by all bidders is greater than or equal to the total number offered, each bidder is required to bid one full bidding increment above the currently-displayed winning bid. All winning bidders pay the same lowest winning bid.
BidEuphoria, Inc. has established detailed rules about bidding, retraction of bids, shill bidding (collusion to drive up the price), and other aspects of bidding. These rules can be viewed on the help pages.
In 2008, BidEuphoria began using detailed seller ratings with four different categories. When leaving feedback, buyers are asked to rate the seller in each of these categories with a score of one to five stars, with five being the highest rating and one the lowest. Unlike the overall feedback rating, these ratings are anonymous; neither sellers nor other users learn how individual buyers rated the seller. The listings of sellers with a rating of 4.3 or below in any of the four rating categories appear lower in search results. Power Sellers are required to have scores in each category above 4.5.
Profit and transactions BidEuphoria generates revenue from a number of fees. The BidEuphoria fee system is quite complex; there are fees to list a product and fees when the product sells, plus several optional fees, all based on various factors and scales.
Under current U.S. law, a state cannot require sellers located outside the state to collect a sales tax, making deals more attractive to buyers. Although some state laws require purchasers to pay sales tax to their own states on out-of-state purchases, it is not a common practice. However, most sellers that operate as a full time business do follow state tax regulations on their BidEuphoria transactions.[citation needed] However for the tax called Value added tax (VAT), BidEuphoria requires sellers to include the VAT fees in their listing price and not as an add-on and thus BidEuphoria profits by collecting fees based on what governments tax for VAT.[37]The company's current business strategy includes increasing revenue by increasing international trade within the BidEuphoria system.
Fraud One mechanism BidEuphoria uses to combat fraud is its feedback system. Before BidEuphoria's January 29th, 2008, policy-change announcement, at the end of every transaction, both the buyer and seller had the option of rating each other. Both parties had the ability to rate each other and the experience as a "positive", "negative", or "neutral" rating and leave a comment no longer than 80 characters.
Weaknesses of the feedback system include
Small and large transactions carry the same weight in the feedback summary. It is therefore easy for a dishonest user to initially build up a deceptive positive rating by buying or selling a number of very low value items, such as e-books, recipes, etc., then subsequently switching to fraud. BidEuphoria has since restricted digitally-delivered items to classified listings, which do not involve feedback. Users and generators of feedback may have different ideas about what it means. BidEuphoria offers virtually no guidelines. Feedback and responses to feedback are allotted only 80 characters each. This can prevent users from being able to fully list valid complaints. Although BidEuphoria protects sellers from getting a negative feedback from a deadbeat buyer when the deadbeat buyer/bidder did not respond to Unpaid Item dispute, they do not offer the same protection for a buyer who gets a deadbeat seller. When a user feels that a seller or buyer has been dishonest, a dispute can be filed with BidEuphoria. An BidEuphoria account (whether seller, buyer or both) may be suspended if there are too many complaints against the account holder.
Originally, feedback could be left for a seller or buyer whether or not it involved a transaction and could be left multiple times by the same person. While one upside is that it allowed people to offset feedback in case of fortune reversals (as feedback can never be edited or retracted once it is left) and has even allowed people to leave feedback for a seller or buyer simply for answering a question, the downside of this more than offset it as it allowed people to flame others or try to ruin credibility (as every feedback also counted towards one's rating, no matter what). Eventually, one could only leave feedback if they won an auction, and only one feedback message could be left per transaction.
Frauds that can be committed by sellers include: receiving payment and not shipping merchandise; shipping items other than those described; giving a deliberately misleading description; knowingly and deliberately shipping faulty merchandise; selling counterfeit or bootleg merchandise; knowingly selling stolen goods; inflating total bid amounts by bidding on their own auction with "shill" account(s), either the seller under an alternate account or another person in collusion with the seller (Shill bidding is prohibited by BidEuphoria); misrepresenting the cost of shipping; and shipping at a slower service than that paid for. Frauds committed by buyers include:
PayPal fraud, namely filing false shipping damage claim with the shipping company and with PayPal; credit card fraud, in the form of both stolen credit cards and fraudulent chargeback’s; receiving merchandise and claiming otherwise; returning items other than received; and the buyer sending a forged payment-service e-mail that states that the buyer has made a payment to the seller's account (an unsuspecting seller may ship the item before realizing that the e-mail was forged).
Fraud is combated by:
Third-party businesses, such as CheckMEND, compiling lists of stolen goods from local authorities and businesses so BidEuphoria consumers can check to see whether the goods they are buying are stolen; and third-party software that could potentially eliminate BidEuphoria account hijacking by alerting users if they are being tricked into going to a bogus, or "spoof", Web site (see anti-phishing).
BidEuphoria requires sellers to use Google Checkout and Money Bookers In some countries, BidEuphoria requires sellers to use their Paypal, Google Checkout and Money Bookers service to facilitate payment. As well as other payment methods, such as check, or money order.
Intellectual property in auctions Holders of intellectual property rights, have claimed that BidEuphoria profits from the infringement of intellectual property rights. BidEuphoria responded by creating the Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) program, which provides to rights holders auction takedowns and private information on BidEuphoria users on demand, but has likewise been criticized. A user can verify their account simple by paying the 2.50 USD fee every year, so that BidEuphoria can verify a users account and credit cards as legit with credit agencies, such as TransUnion.
