WeBidz Reviewer's Comments

Stop paying a listing fee with WeBidz.com. This online auction provides a reliable, easy to use service with extensive search options and earns our “TopTenREVIEWS Bronze” award. What we like about this service is that you don’t pay anything until your item is sold.

WeBidz’s Auction Manager helps you manage your auction inventory and import auctions and feedback from other auction websites. Although WeBidz has excellent category selections and search features, we would have liked to have seen a message option and a more extensive help section.

Ease of Navigation/Layout:  

WeBidz is easy to navigate. All major categories and listings are located on the homepage including featured items, website news and updates, recently listed items and closing items. All information can be found using the tabs located in the upper right hand corner of WeBidz’s homepage.

Standard Categories:  

WeBidz includes all the standard categories for searching for your items. Additionally, after you’ve selected your general category you can further refine your search with specific items right down to brand names. We had no problem finding specific computer companies, HDTVs and iPod accessories by following the breadcrumbs.

Buying:  

Although membership is free, WeBidz does encourage all buyers be become “verified.” To become “verified,” WeBidz charges the buyer a one–time five dollar fee. You will have to become re–verified if you change any personal information such as your address or phone number.

WeBidz’s buying system is informative and easy to navigate. Every auction includes a bidding, description, payment/price and shipping section.

Many products on WeBidz can be auctioned or sold at a “buy out” price. By using the “buy out” button, you can buy the item and completely skip the auction process. WeBidz also includes an auto–bid feature called “proxy.” When using “proxy” you can set a maximum amount of money you would like to spend on an item. Every time you are out– bid the “proxy” will automatically put a bid in for you, up to your maximum price.

If you choose to watch for items, you can list a group of keywords and every time a keyword is used in a new listing, WeBidz emails you. For example, if you collect Elvis memorabilia and a seller lists something with Elvis in the title you will be emailed about the new item.

We found two flaws regarding WeBidz’s buying services. There is no way to contact the seller through a message system or email. In addition, the countdown clock, which indicates the time remaining to bid on an item, doesn’t reflect real time. You have to continually refresh the web page to find out if the deadline has passed.

Selling:  

Selling is excellent on WeBidz with several customizable options such as a subtitle for auction items and page counter. You can choose how you want your products presented using fonts, photos and color to customize your details page. WeBidz encourages opening your own WeBidz store and cross promotion of products.

All product listing on WeBidz is free; however, there are additional charges for extra photographs and listing a homepage or category feature. Unfortunately, we did not find how much commission WeBidz charges. This information was not available at the time of this review.

User Options:  

WeBidz provides several standard user account options including feedback and product buying, selling and watching.

WeBidz offers a free, Auction Manager download. This additional software assists you in managing your product inventory and sales. However, WeBidz does not have a favorites section that allows you to search for products or categories you frequently visit. They also do not provide communication or selling preferences.

Browsing/Searching:  

WeBids makes window–shopping easy. Browsing is one of WeBidz’ easiest to use features. You can search for products by keyword, category, user, location, store or bidder. We found WeBidz’ searches produced relevant and comprehensive results. Additionally searching by category can be as specific as brand name products.

Help/Support:  

Although WeBidz does have a large FAQ and knowledgebase we found the help section difficult to navigate. Most answers to the FAQs are short and although they do answer the question, they don’t explain the full process of buying, selling, ect. Our emails were answered several days after we contacted them and the answer was in the subject heading of the email, not the body.

Summary:  

WeBidz includes many useful features with your membership, including the Auction Managing software. The search and category features are its biggest asset; however, the missing communication features and smaller auction community is WeBidz’s largest liability.