Bidding Owl Reviews - What Is It?
WARNING: DO NOT USE Bidding Owl Until You Read This Review!
Is it a Scam? Does It Really Work?
If you have a non-profit or charitable company, you may benefit from Bidding Owl, a cloud-based auction management system that can be very helpful in setting up your auction's website fast, as well as in managing all of its aspects. This includes managing items, donors, and solicitors, tracking your fundraising, printing bid sheets, and much more. Is Bidding Owl a worthy system? Let's check the facts to clear this up. It is claimed to be an all-in-one auction management solution that unlike traditional auctions can be completely customized online to help you get donations 24 hours per day and raise more money for your cause. Actually, Bidding Owl promises to help you with all aspects and stages of your auction. Prior to the auction the system will help you to create your auction website in just a few minutes, sell tickets, accept donations (checks, credit cards, and even cash), and promote your sponsors online. As they build a fully customizable website, this will enable you to add your logo, change background colors and fonts, and manage a great number of users. Bidding Owl promises to include even a radio auction interface.
The system claims to provide you with mobile bidding options (tablets, smartphones, and laptops), alert bidders, and record events via text messages during the auction. Finally, it will process payments, process invoices, and print gift certificates after the auction. After you have set up your auction, it can be viewed for as long as you wish before its start date. This will help you as a prospective bidder to better understand the items you are going to auction. Once your auction starts, it will stay live for as long as you wish. Bidding Owl promises to give you the ability to browse all online and live auctions across such categories as Travel and Entertainment, Music, Food and Fun, Services, and more. All you will need to do to be taken to its home page is to click on an auction's listing. There you will find a detailed description (what you will get if you are the high bidder), currency, current bid, the end date, and bid increments (e.g. $25). In order to place a bid, you will need to enter your amount and press the Bid!
Customer Reviews - Does Bidding Owl Really Work?
The company is based out of Gaylord, MI, and holds an A- rating with the Better Business Bureau. There have been no complaints within the last several years. Beside the Better Business Bureau, Bidding Owl boasts a mostly positive online reputation with its customers, who are pleased with the ease of its use and reasonable cost. Actually, we failed to find a single negative review during our research. Thus, most users report good results at reasonable rates. One customer says that he used this system as a fundraiser for a dog club National Specialty. The company helped him to set up the website and faced all challenges. Everything was nicely done and worth the 5% fee. Bidding Owl prepares invoices and email reminders to send out, tracks all bids, so the man was glad with the administrative work. The bidders need to go back and forth to the website as there is no MAX bid. This makes life easier but in the end, it was accomplished very well. Support staff was great, according to the customer's words.
Another user of the service says that the website seemed very easy to use, but there were several limitations which made his experience less than perfect. The man emphasized the following advantages: easy to engage, online and offline capability, reasonable fee, as well as responsive customer service. The negatives features included not very flexible online and offline aspect of the service to accommodate their specific auction set-up. The user faced difficulties with disconnect. In addition, the service didn't offer "max" or "automatic" bidding, where a bidder can enter the maximum they want to bid. The customer had to keep coming back to the website if he had been outbid and wished to bid higher, so he lost some of bids. The man was pleased with the fact that the website interface was adjustable. To summarize everything, the man said that he got what he paid for. It could be better, but it was still functional. He would recommend this to usage. It is high time to read the testimonials of actual customers left online.
"Bidding Owl is an excellent company with perfect customer service. We planned to hold our event on a Saturday night, so we contacted tech support and asked them for help with ending auction, checking out, etc. We liked that they were very polite, helpful, and professional and walked us right through the whole process. I would highly recommend this company and will use them again next year. Thanks for everything!"
"I am completely pleased with the Bidding Owl. I bid on item and I was happy to win. It was very easy to bid and they have a great website. I also bid on a trip and won it. We went on the weekend trip together with my wife and we had a nice time. I would certainly recommend this company to everyone! Try it and you won't regret!"
"Bidding Owl brought us good results. We used it to raise funds for my daughter's middle school group to go on a learning trip to Peru. We succeeded and what is more important is that it was pretty easy to use. It was straightforward and we were charged only 5% of our auction winnings. These are quite reasonable rates. The company offers good support, so you are free to ask your questions whenever they come up. In general, we had a good experience, and we are going to use them again for raising funds to go to Costa Rica."
My Final Summary
It is not a secret that it may be rather hard to beat saving money. This is especially vital for charitable non-profit organizations. But the Bidding Owl offers a number of advantages. It is extremely easy to use and really effective. Besides, it is associated with low rates. There are numerous positive customer reviews about the company online and almost each of them reports how straightforward and simple the website is. The customers describe how the company's representatives covered the online auction process from A-Z.
According to the users' testimonials, the Bidding Owl staff is pleasant to work with. With this in mind, whether you are a non-profit, charity, or an individual who wants to start an online auction, this company should be at the top of your list. Taking into account all advantages and disadvantages it has, I can still recommend it. There is no need to go anywhere else.
Bidding Owl Pricing and Rates
If you want to start an auction or to be a bidder, Bidding Owl can be a great option for you. You can sign up for it completely free of charge. As an auction holder, the company will charge you 5% of the highest bid. For instance, if you auctioned a one-hour massage, while the highest bid is $150, you will be charged $7.50 when your auction has ended. It should be remembered that if you check out through PayPal, you may need to pay their 2.9% fee. It is not that much, though.