Institutional disposals, on a record that holds up

Every bidder is verified before they can bid

A buyer cannot place a bid until three things are true: their email address is confirmed, a telephone number is on file, and a member of our staff has spoken to them on it. Each auction also has its own written terms, and a bidder must record their acceptance of those terms before their first bid on that lot.

These are enforced by the database itself, not by the website. A request that skips our pages entirely meets the same refusals.

• Only an administrator can approve a bidder — the staff who run lots and the staff who handle payments cannot.
• Our own staff accounts are barred from bidding on lots we administer.
• Public bid history shows amounts, times and a part-masked email address — never a full name, telephone number or address.

A complete and unalterable record

Every bid attempt is recorded, including the ones we refuse and why. Bids themselves cannot be edited or deleted by anybody, including us: they are written by a single database function and no account has permission to change them afterwards.

The same applies to the decisions around a sale. Approval decisions, lot deletions, handover steps and payment events are each append-only records with the staff member and the time attached.

• Bids carry the database's own clock, never the bidder's device.
• A lot closes at its published time and the highest valid bid wins. There is no reserve and no extension.
• Refused bid attempts are logged, so repeated attempts against a lot are visible rather than invisible.

No single member of staff controls an outcome

Staff duties are separated in the database, not merely on screen. An auction officer prepares and publishes lots but cannot approve bidders or record payments. A finance account records payments and deposits but cannot edit a lot. Approving who may bid is reserved to an administrator.

Every staff account must present an authenticator code. That requirement is enforced by the database, so a password alone reaches no staff data at all.

A read-only seat for you

We can give your organisation an observer account: a read-only view of your own lots and nothing else. It shows each lot's status, the current price, how many bids have been placed, the schedule and the outcome.

It deliberately does not show who is bidding. Bidder identity is unreachable from that account by design rather than by a filter, and an observer account scoped to no client sees nothing at all.

Payment is recorded, not taken

Online Auctions24 does not take payment on this website. Money moves directly, by bank transfer or mobile money, exactly as it would without us.

What we hold is the record of it: the amount owed and its deadline, any deposit and what became of it, the receipt against which payment was verified, and the moment collection was authorised. Collection cannot be authorised until a payment has been verified, and a submitted proof of payment cannot afterwards be replaced or removed by anyone.