V-Com FinalBid

Internet auctions are a great way of making money, particularly, it seems, if you use a software package that claims to make you more successful in the online auction house.

Final Bid promises the chance to save both the money and hassle associated with the traditional online auction. It does this in a couple of ways. The main selling point is that FinalBid will automatically place bids up to your maximum amount in the final seconds of an auction.

This has two advantages. Firstly, you don't need to be around to do this yourself. And secondly, bidding in the last seconds rather than minutes minimises the chances of a counter-bid from a rival buyer. Fewer bids equal lower costs, and potentially more chance of a bargain.

The other string to the FinalBid bow is the Group Bids. Bid on several identical items and Final Bid will cancel your interest in the others as soon as you have been successful in one.

All this seems great but aside from stripping the spirit out of the traditional auction, what are the problems with FinalBid? Well the biggest that we can see is the presence of Auction LotSnipe. This is a service provided online that does the same job of sneaking in at the last minute as FinalBid but it's free of charge.

True, it cannot manage Group Bidding and the free version of LotSnipe can't bid as late as FinalBid, but we still find the fact that you don't have to pay for it very attractive.

Another significant disadvantage of FinalBid is that your computer needs to be on and connected to the internet in order for it to work. LotSnipe is completely online, so your computer can be switched off but you will still be fighting it out to the finish.

While Group Bids sound good, once you've won an auction, FinalBid will stop any new bids for other identical lots but can't remove existing bids. That feasibly means you could end up winning all the auctions in the group if there are no other bidders.

All told, FinalBid is well presented, simple to use and effective at ensuring that you don't lose out in the last couple of minutes of an auction. At £35, though, we'd be tempted to rather save some money by using one of the free auction-stealing packages. That way, you're £35 up straight from the off.

Contact:
V-Com 01752 895100
www.v-com.com/uk

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