The Dubli Auction MLM Program Critical Overview

It appears the Dubli and the Dubli Network domains were both registered in Germany, although I’m not able to find out from whois data exactly when they were registered. The founder is Michael Hansen. When I visited their website I noticed that only 240 or so products total were available for aucton here so this isn’t ebay.

A post I read from a forum as of the time of writing this is that the company only made an average of one sale per day. The company claimes that new products are added to their website on a daily basis. In order to bid on any product on their website you have to get an account with them. Getting an account with them is free but if you want to place a bid you will be required to purchase credits with them. The company offers single credits as well as credit packages.

If you happen to win an auction on the Dubli site you are allowed to pay by credit card but they won’t let you use credits as these credits are only used to make bids. So basically what they are saying is you have to pay just to bid on an item. You can purchase anywhere from 10 Credits for $8.00 or 500 Credits for $400.00.

You won’t be able to see the real price of a product on the Dubli Auction Site until you place a credit. The company claims that when you place a bid on one of their products, the price will decrease and sometimes by a lot. They have two different auction methods from what I can see on their site. I see they link to hundreds of retailers and charge for coupons and gift cards. They added an shopping mall in April of 2009.

Under the Xpress method each time you place a credit the price will decrease by 25 cents. Then you’ll get to see how much the product is at that time. If you like the price you can go ahead and buy it then. Under the ZerO method each time you place a bid the price of the product also decreases by 25 cents. This goes for each time you or a competitive bidder place a bid. Whoever spends the credits to help the price of the product reach zero wins that particular auction. Under both methods you’ll still be responsible for paying shipping fees to have the product delivered to you.

In the last 5 minutes before the auction ends they will only accept single bids. Once of the things that I think is strange about the Dubli system is that in contrast to ebay where the highest bidder is awarded the product, with this system the lowest single bidder wins the auction. I can’t seem to wrap my standard auction thinking brain around why this company would do this. I don’t think this system makes it easy at all for an average person to find what they want, bid and get out of there with a product.

The other thing I thought was strange was that Dubli offered a “Mystery Car” someone purchased for about $8,900 that retailed at $26,000. Sure it’s great to get a bargain on a car, but who would buy a car they haven’t seen for almost 9k? Next I went to the Dubli Network site to read about the business opportunity.

Other than quoting the statistics on how well eBay is doing, all I saw on there was that customers you referred to the Dubli Network were linked for life and that you make commissions each time they purchase something at Dubli. They also say this goes on multiple levels, but couldn’t find details anywhere on the exact amounts paid. This is something else that concerns me is the information is so vague.

The site seems like more of a lottery than an auction site. There are some skeptical sites and forums out there probably because they don’t totally understand the system. But Dubli has a listing in Wikipedia which mentioned they donated money to charities. But I can’t find any direct evidence that MLM Distributors haven’t received commissions or that product purchasers haven’t received products.