iBid4Storage now charging buyers a monthly fee

Up until recently, iBid4Storage (a Canadian online self-storage auction company owned by Yehuda Benglihiat) was free to buyers, whereas storage operators had to pay a monthly fee. It looks like iBid is now charging buyers a $19.95 monthly fee, whether they win a unit or not. Well, sort of. You don't have to pay the monthly fee, unless you want to bid or more than 3 lockers a month or be notified that you were outbid.  

So what do you guys & gals think about that? Smart move on their part or not so much?

i say not smart. Mainly because I don't think they are big enough to start raping everyone yet. Ebay is, and they do. I don't think this industry(online auctions) is old enough yet to start charging exorbitant fees.

What I don't get is why they would charge fees for such basic services? They don't even offer the same level of services that we give away for free. They're just now offering basic features which have been industry standards on other sites for years, yet they won the 2014 Inside Self Storage "Best Technology Innovation." How that happened, I'll never know. 

yet they won the 2014 Inside Self Storage "Best Technology Innovation." How that happened, I'll never know.

sweetie you're adorable but you can really be naive sometimes. They're one of inside self storage's regular advertisers.

iBid4Storage (a Canadian online self-storage auction company owned by Yehuda Benglihiat)

What kind of name is Yehuda? Where is he from Pakistan?

I was curious when I saw this post, so I went to the site to find out more. Right under "Register Today", I clicked on "Read More" and the site just took me to a blank page. Doesn't seem like they have their stuff together. No thanks.

Doesn't seem like they have their stuff together. No thanks.

They definitely have issues. A while back, they offered to buy our domain name. This peaked my curiosity. I mean, obviously the exact match domain for any industry is valuable, but why would they be interested in re-branding themselves?  So, I did some digging and it appears that they are struggling to rank well on Google for significant search terms. After looking at their backlink profile (and I'm only speculating) it appears that someone used outdated SEO methods which may have led to a Google penalty. Without significant search engine traffic, it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to sustain an online business. IMHO, they should move to a new domain and start from scratch. I've spoken with them about the possibility of a Google penalty, but they seem oblivious to the problem.

That picture is great. I'm not going to use iBid, but I heard that StorageBattles was guilty of really unsettling privacy and security compromises. Can anyone tell me more about that? I'm not going to risk my private information being given to a site that has no regard for how important that information is.

That picture is great. I'm not going to use iBid, but I heard that StorageBattles was guilty of really unsettling privacy and security compromises. Can anyone tell me more about that? I'm not going to risk my private information being given to a site that has no regard for how important that information is.

This should explain everything:

http://onlinestorageauctions.com/forum/online-storage-auctions/re-got-an-email-from-the-site-i-normally-bid-online-about-extending-ending-time/

Thanks Travis. I think the CEO was pretty flippant when it came to his company casually jeopardizing customers' private information. I'm really new to online storage auctions, and I'm really starting to get into them. For me, the security of my personal information is paramount. I've only won two auctions so far, but in the future I won't ever be bidding on that site. 

Thanks Travis. I think the CEO was pretty flippant when it came to his company casually jeopardizing customers' private information.

I didn't like the fact that he came on the forum trying to do damage control and lied. What really troubles me is that not one of the several storage industry news sites even mentioned the Storage Battles/Storage Treasures security blunder. If you believe what Storage Treasures says about them having nearly a million registered users (most of which are probably bots since they don't block spam registrations) then this is an enormous issue. It disgusts me that the industry has turned a blind eye. Furthermore, it was total negligence for Storage Battles/Storage Treasures not to notify their users that their accounts may have been compromised. Actually, negligence is too kind. This was arrogant contempt against their entire user base.

Sorry guys, I just needed to vent. 

I checked Inside Self Storage, which I was told was sort of the go-to site to find out about this sort of thing, and you're right. Maybe they didn't want to lose advertising revenue or something? Anyway, I need to find other sites to use. I'm not going to even think about going to a live auction with the weather we've been having in NY.