How Bid Budi works, and who is responsible for what
Bid Budi is the auction house. The storage facility is the seller. Almost every question here turns on that one line: we run the sale and keep the record of it, and the facility is the party that holds the goods, decides to sell them and answers for the right to.
The seller’s half: what it costs, what is checked first, and what this platform does not do on your behalf.
Who can sell on Bid Budi?
Registered South African storage facilities selling the contents of their own defaulted units. This is not a general marketplace and there are no private sellers: every seller is a verified company with a storage agreement we have read.
What does it cost to sell?
The commission is agreed with you when Bid Budi verifies your facility, and the rate you are on is stated in your approval email and on every listing screen. Most facilities are on the standard rate.
You are paid 0 days after the buyer’s payment clears, and the payment includes the cleaning deposit the buyer paid.
You set the cleaning deposit on each listing: leave it blank for the standard R30, or set your own amount, or zero for none. Bid Budi refunds no deposit. Whether the buyer gets it back, in full or in part, is your decision once the unit is cleared: you refund the buyer directly and record what you decided on the clearance screen, and the buyer is emailed.
What do you check before I can list?
Registering does not put you live. Bid Budi verifies the company, the storage agreement you intend to sell under, and the person signing it. You can create and submit auctions while that happens; they simply do not reach buyers until the check is done. That check is the reason buyers trust what they see here. What it is not is a ruling on whether you may sell any given unit — that stays with you, and you confirm it per unit. How selling works.
What is Bid Budi not doing for me?
This is the important one, and it is better read before a tenant disputes a sale than after. Bid Budi does not establish your authority to sell: you confirm it per unit, you indemnify the platform for it, and nothing here verifies it or holds the paperwork behind it. It does not review your photographs for personal information. It does not run a restricted-items process on your behalf. It does not pay a surplus onwards to your former tenant. And it does not stand between you and the buyer on the goods themselves: a unit that is not what it was photographed as is logged at the joint opening as evidence, and settled between you and the buyer. Bid Budi does not refund it or take it out of your payment. Nor does it refund the cleaning deposit — that is yours to decide and yours to pay back.
What happens if nobody bids?
The unit is relisted automatically at an opening bid 0% lower, up to 3 times, and then withdrawn. Each relist is a new auction with its own reference and its own frozen terms rather than an edit of the old one.
The figures here are the platform’s current defaults. Each auction is sold on the rule set snapshotted onto it when it was released, published as that auction’s own Rules of Auction — so where a number here and a number on a listing differ, the listing is the one that governs your sale.