Penny Auctions Scam?
80Can you really win at penny auctions?
I read an article recently criticizing the new craze of Penny Auctions. Penny Auctions are where bidders can only bid an item up by one penny at a time. The catch is that they have to purchase their bids in advance.
The article complained that Penny Auctions are in fact gambling because a bidder is not guaranteed to win an item even though they may have used bids in the effort. To this I have to disagree
Gambling means a game of chance, like roulette. The ball lands either on red or black, and is not influenced by any outside sources (although some may argue that the person tossing the ball on the wheel may have undue influence, this is a topic for another blog).
Penny Auctions on the other hand are much more involved than merely chance. Of course chance comes into play. Chance comes into play in many aspects of our lives, even crossing the street. If by chance there a truck gets a flat tire and loses control the moment you are crossing the street, then chance just played a role in your life. In a Penny Auction you may find that there are many bidders going after an item, or only a few...this may be a result of chance.
However chance is not the only factor that determines the winner of a Penny Auction. As I mentioned there are other factors that come into play. For example, most Penny Auction sites will have a timer that counts down until the auction is over. If a new bid is placed, that timer restarts and counts down all over again. Monitoring the clock, or as I like to call it, Clock Management plays an integral role in winning a Penny Auction. When the clock is high, and has a long way to go, a person usually shouldn't place a bid. When the clock is nearing zero however, a person may want to consider using one of their bids.
Watching how many people are bidding on an item is also critical. If there are only a few people going after an item then the bidding strategy must change as opposed to if many people are bidding.
Unfortunately there can only be one winner with any auction, whether it's an online auction, live auction, penny auction, or standard auction, is irrelevant. While Penny Auctions may be a little riskier, because in essence you are using bids that you've payed for with no guarantee of success, the reward is also much greater.
For example, let's say you are bidding on a flat screen television, with a retail price of $2500. If a bidder uses 500 bids, at say, $1 a bid to win that item, then they win that television for $500. A deal like this can't be found anywhere else!!
Penny Auctions are also much more exciting and inclusive to the user. Unlike the standard ebay auction where a user places a bid, and either wins or not, a penny auction keeps the user actively engaged, with numerous opportunities to win their item of choice for a great bargain. The key is good bid management, and making sure to set a limit for the number of bids that you are willing to expend on a certain item. Sometimes you may not get the item you were after, and other times you will. The savings from the times that you do win however will usually greatly outweigh the amount you used on the auctions you didn't.
Finding a good penny auction site is important as well. Some will have better price points for their bids, others will offer a larger variety of items. Finding a site that has a low price point per bid, with a great selection of items is the key. Check out 5050auctions.com which has one of the lowest price points out there, and where winners actually recieve 50% of the bids they used back to their account
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I would agree with BUZZ. We have to buy products, locate suppliers, spend hours in front of the computer to post products etc. etc. and then if someone can buy the product that retails for £1000 for £500 then they are still getting a bargain.
Yes not everyone wins, but then nothing in life is free. We at BD Auctions charge only for bids and not for the acutal auction price and also give customers free delivery. So customers get as much as they can.
At the end of the day, the penny auction sites are giving people the chance to buy products that would otherwise cost them a fortune in the first place.
Excellent article! I agree that it's not totally gambling, there is strategy, skill and reputation involved. If you are a known "bulldog" bidder, it scares other regular bidders away from the auction. Likewise, if you become known to just bid casually and not put down many bids, you can be an easy target to the major players. Some people are very serious about their penny auctions, they jot down notes and statistics from their auctions. I would compare it to poker, which is actually considered a sport in some contries (seriously! Russia considers it a sport..)
One thing the article doesn't point out, but is mentioned in the comments, is that a lot of sites are scam outfits that deploy fake bids (ie. "bots") so that auctions cannot end without posting a guaranteed profit. This is a straight up fraud. PennyAuctionWatch.com is a good resource to check to find out who's legit in this emerging industry.
I co-founded Zoozle.com to serve the penny auction community with a high quality of service and an honest, fair environment. Lots of auctions end at a loss for us, but that is the name of the game. There is risk for the auction house and bidders. One thing is right though, you have to be in it to win it! Happy bidding!
i only trust the founding fathers
I love love love this site!! I've won a bunch of stuff, and almost always I get it within a week. Love that. I also love getting half the bids I used back, as this allows me to win more without buying more bids. And I love that any item I win never costs more than 50 cents! I did have an issue with an auction one time that seemed to end prematurely, and their support department handled it quickly and with no hassles. All in all, one of the best penny auction sites I've been to. A few heavy hitting bidders on there, so you need to know what you're getting into before you committ to an item, but otherwise great odds of winning. And not just small items either. I've won a wii, a laptop, and a blu-ray player from this site. And I keep coming back for more
I completely agree with Buzzing Bob..
if it were so easy to be running an penny auction website, one would see atleast a gazillion similar sites popping up ..
Many Penny Auctions out there are failing. They look at successful ones and think that this is a great get rich quick scheme. The fact is, it isn't. It takes a lot of hard work and unless you are prepared and able to work hard (just like any business) you'll ultimately fail. For all those would-be bidders, there is no fee to watch the auctions. You can gain valuable information and make a decision on if the site is right for you without spending a dime. Also, make sure to read the TOS before signing up as well. This will save you a lot of headaches.
Please see these links:
http://bidcactusisascam.blogspot.com/2009/08/penny
http://bidcactusisascam.blogspot.com/2009/08/bidca
http://bidcactusisascam.blogspot.com/2009/09/penny
Do not believe anymore in pennyauctionwatch.com! SCAM SCAM SCAM!!!
I just became aware of the "penny auction" phenomenon. I stumbled onto Swoopo recently and thought I'd give it a shot for $20 to see if I could actually win some truly amazing bargains.
It became immediately clear that I was way out of my area of expertise. I couldn't understand what the deal was with the countdown timer and I sure didn't understand the "Bid Butler" well enough to risk anymore 6 cent bids.
It looked like a real suck hole with no comprehensible pattern to who was winning these things. I poured over the "Help" section... which was massively vague (to me) and I wrote to Customer Service to see what I was missing. (Customer Service referred me back to the "Help" section.
I just started the account on a lark, for entertainment...
with a modest chance of at least getting $20 worth of "something" at a good price. I figured that I could be patient and check into it once and a while, placing a bid here or there, with a least some confidence I'd end up with something other than a series of 6 cent misadventures.
I did not want a second job and I darn sure wasn't looking for another project.
I gotta tell you that I still don't understand why the timer clock does what it does. It seems to have a life of its own. (Customer Service will not go deep into explanations and their search engine and "topic list" is pretty inadequate... at least for someone as uninformed as I am.)
I'll give it a few more attempts before I ask if there's a way to cash in my "bid reserve" money.
I still find Craigslist far more "bargain abundant" and straight forward.
There is one more conduit for the true bargain seeker.
The most reliable, cheapest, and adventure predictable I have found to date is...
dumpster diving.
True, electronics don't fair well after they've been left out in the rain overnight... however you just can't beat FREE.
I'll keep trying the penny auction "game" for a bit longer, but I'm beginning to think my time is more valuable than a 6 cent donation to bid against someone with a degree in statistics and permutations... who clearly hasn't seen the light of day in some time.
If I were me...
I'd probably hop in my car and cruise the streets on the nights before garbage pickup. Soap is cheap and the stuff people throw out is flabbergasting sometimes.
Before you put a lot of money into penny auctions
I think this is a fairer opinion on whether penny auctions are a scam. The author also includes some legal opinion:
Stev01: HTTP://WWW.PENNYAUCTIONWATCH.COM is not a scam, nor am I-the owner and editor a convicted felon. What is your problem? Can't scam anymore because Penny Auction Watch has collected dozens of comments re: your identity fraud scam penny auction site? It's pitiful what you're doing get a real job please.
I'm unclear as to why BUZZINBOB would be in the penny auction business if he's so unhappy with it.
Why? Because it can be a hugely successful business model if done right. I've never participated in one, owned one, ran one, bid on one, anything like that, but I can tell you that they are making a decent profit on everything. It looks like a scam on the outside because people are not only buying bids, but also paying for each of their bids before they are placed. But think about this, and I read this somewhere else. Say you are in a race, all of the competitors put down 25.00 on the race, and the winner gets the pot. It's really the same thing if you think about it, the only difference is that some of the money goes to the race facilitator (site owner) and the rest goes for the trophy (The product you bid on)
I can't see how they are a scam yet, besides what I've read. But there is always a way to avoid it.. DON'T BID! Caveat Emptur (sp?) Buyer Beware. Do your homework before you blindly jump in and start bidding.
Many Penny Auctions sites out there are failing. Whether it's poor planning, lack of tech skills to run an efficient site, or all the above, the rate in which old ones die and new ones start is staggering. It is a good idea to research these sites and see which ones have been up the longest. A good way to find out if the penny auctions are good are to contact the customer service and see how fast you get a reply. If it's within a few hours you're probably on your way to finding a great penny auction site!
Regards,
Cathy Saar
www.PennyAuctionSite.com
Penny Auction
Well.. buzzerbidz.com is gone.. Just another scam..
Agree with many points there. Sometimes people just do not bother to find out how penny auctions really work and learn properly terms of service. Winning should be not easy money for winners, and believe me, building sustainable business is not easy auction owners either. It seems a bit difficult to understand that the goal of legit auction companies is to provide a fair chance, not just giveaways for everyone for 99% discount... Happy New Year and good luck to all from http://www.bidfella.com/
There are literally dozens of penny auction sites out there, some are definitely worth it, some you should avoid at all cost. You can check out review sites like http://www.pennyauctionguide.com to find the right one for you.
Pennyauctionguide.com is owned by a marketing firm in California. Unbiased?
As an owner of Bid2WinOnline.com totally agree that a lot of time and energy is spent running these sites. But with that being said, the consumers get great deal and we make a buck or two. I have 2 other people helping me out with it. I couldn't do it by myself..
folks...I have played at about 3 of these sites and have done nothing but spend money. I do not own one and therefore hold no bias at this point either way. What I will say is this, if it were gambling and or a scam then guess what....So is trading on the stock market. You would have to shut down Wall Street folks. Here is the scenario...you pay a company $7 per transaction, you then pay a fee for any gain and in the end there id no gaurantee you will have anything to show for your money or efforts. Sound familar? It should, its called Day Trading...all to close to what you do on a penny auction. Just sayin.
we have to pay to bid? this is gambling....
All these types of auctions are nothing more then gambling.
Hi
ANY FEEDBACK ON WWW.BIDS4PENNY.COM
ARE THEY A REAL COMPAGNY OR NOT.
THANKS
DO NOT USE THIS SITE, SWIPEBIDS.COM, they are a scam penny auction site. They use bots to bid against you to push up the price and to use up your bids that you have to pay for. You can not win the high priced items and if you do they tell you there was a tech problem and your win is invalid put will offer you free bids in compensation for the inconvenience. The only items you can win retail for $10 to $25 and they charge $4.95 to $9.50 for shipping. They have a winners page listing recent winners with the persons users name ,city and state, and a shipping tracking number of the item won. I check on all the tracking numbers and they are all bogus. The numbers are ether invalid numbers or the numbers are for things ship to a different city and state then the so called winner. One example was a winner of a macbook laptop and the tracking number showed the item shipped to a different city and state and the items wieght was 80 pounds. Do not use this site it is a scam. There are hundreds of complaints about this site on Penny Auction Watch .com and other web sites
There are four penny auctions that I am a member of and they are legit. madbid, bids4penny.com, planet bids & bidfella. I have tried them all and they are quite good so far.
ya i also agree with BUZZINBOB.
He say right theese sites are not scam.
I found smart1bids.com and so far had some success hey besides tell them I sent u and i get 30 free bids my username is beathis
well..well..well..we've heard lots of explaination from both sides..i think many site may be a scam and many may not scam too. Sometime your bid will win and most of the time will not win. Losers will say that it's a scam but the winner say the otherwise. The same things that happend between a seller and the buyers. Anyway..i just don't really enjoy online auction becouse i never win. But i do agree with Walt. Even life is a gambling too...huh..just enjoy yourself gambling..peace!!
Penny auction has been the new concept among the online auction sites. But it doesn't mean that are scam. There are some site which do but some are not. Unless we haven't bid it or win it we can't say anything.
I recommend bidders to read about details about the each site on http://www.pennyauctionwatch.us to get more info about the penny auction site.
Swipebids.com is definately a Fraudulent Auction Scam: I was charged the $150.00 'membership' fee. The only warning I had was 'transaction processing' when I had supposedly only entered my personal information. The web pages are carefully laid out to distract you and misdirect your attention away from the fine print disclaimers which they will then point out as evidence that you were warned. The customer service number 1st said Monday thru Friday. When I called a second time I got a completely different menu & talked to 'Tammi' who told me that the $150.00 membership fee had already been charged & she was not authorized to do anything about it but, "how else could she help me?" I told her I would be reporting them to the FTC & the BBB.
This is not an auction site. It is more like a lottery – and a fraudulent lottery at that. They charge you just to look. They charge you by the bid! The ‘winners’ seem to repeat and may be bots. Real winners are usually prevented from actually receiving their product due to some ‘technical error’. The customer service reps on the ‘live chat’ all seem to be bots. And the live chat is the only official means of legal communication.
Tell everyone you can about this scam because there is no warning before that first $150.00 transaction!
These sites may or may not technically be a scam but anyone with an ounce of common sense should stay far far away!
These sites are making an absolute killing and making suckers out of everyone who uses the site. What other business can earn profit margins of in many cases over 1,000% without providing any real added value.
Yes, whoever wins any one particular auction comes out with a good deal in many cases however for everyone who winns there are many who just end up handing over large sums of money to the auction holder for nothing.
And of course you are not going to win all of the auctions you enter unless you are committed to spending more in bids than the actual item is worth.
I think they don't fit one category. There is certainly the feeling of risk like when you gamble, the winning urge. There is also a level of control that the user has. Mind you the rules of the game must be understood before playing. I tried out http://www.bidarrific.com a few months ago, a penny auction site, and I don't think it was gambling for their particular set of rules. They do something most other sites don't, they let me put my bids, after I lost, into buying the item from them at retail. It was a decent price actually and I was satisfied since it was something I was planning on getting anyway. Even though I lost I still got the camcorder I wanted, that seems like a win to me and you wouldn't get that in a lottery, raffle, or card table.
How can you deny the ideal of these sites being a scam?
You know why paypal isn't a scam?, because they don't charge you a unexpected 150$ on registration...
And god i love how the bots are constantly raising the price, they are given names that are believable, not even labeled "Bot"
- just some twisted bastard's creation out of, i suppose html, who knows.
When you try to fool someone out of their money it's a scam. Penny Pinching for nothing. Negative plubicity doesn't come to penny auctions for no reason, and i love how they try to counter it with these types of blogs and fool some more who then get pissed off when they find 150$ missing from THERE BANK ACCOUNT.
Get a Job all you penny auction scoundrels.
Citizens who view these blogs and wonder whether a scam or not. Don't Take the risk, Just go to craigslist or ebay. Or for absolute security, a store.
I disagree. I strongly feel that it is gambling business. Take an example, if you go to a casino, you need to exchange your money for chips before you can actually place your bet on the gambling table. Penny auction is exactly the same concept as a casino. You buy bids and then you bid for the item that you desire. Don't you see the resemblance ? And the best part is that u might end up losing all your bids without getting anything in return. Lets return to the previous example that I've mentioned. You place ur chips on the table and you bet in a game of poker, there is no guaranteed you can win the more chips, on the contrary you may go home empty handed. Now, think for a moment, don't you think penny auction is gambling ?
One more thing. PEnny auction is a situation where there is one winner and tonnes of losers out there who are crying over split milk...so now, think again...is penny auction a gambling business or an ethical business ?
Nice blog!! i also know a very good site for penny auction Bidzillion.com !!!!
Save up to 99% off retail at Bidzillion.com online auctions
These comments are filled with penny auction owners trying to promote their sites as legitimate. The internet has 2 sources that keep an eye out on fake penny auction sites. One of the is pennyaucitonscam.com, and the other pennyauctionwatch.com
End of story, go there, read and decide for yourself.
Good Article! Keep up the great work!
If anyone feels negative about penny auctions then maybe its time to look at something new. How about a penny auction with a compensation plan. Your bidpack purchase enables you to participate in a lucrative payplan that rewards members for sharing this biz. How much would you like to earn, $10,000.00, $20,000.00, 1 Mil per month? Now how does bidding at a penny auction makes you feel ? http://bid2retire.com
Wow. I dont know what to think about these penny auctions. I just looked at BidonCash.com and looked over the bid history on one of the closed auctions and I checked on one specific bidder so I chose apbid. The auction was for $100. The auction ended at $3.05, so that means that they were 305 different bids on this auction. That is all good as long as you have alot of people bidding on this specific auction. What gets me is that the specific user by the name of apbid bid 147 different times on this item. That means that he spent $147 to win $100. LOL there is no way that is logical. Some say its strategy to keep people from bidding against them on the next auction but if that is true how long can a business go on after realizing that they have bullies that try to scare people from bidding against them because they know apbid is willing to pay more then what he is winning. By using BOTS against the bullies that’s how.
Eddie, there are other factors to consider. Let's say apbid is 99 bids inot the auction. He's now down $99 if he doesn't win. *BUT* he could spend $1 and possibly win, which would mean he breaks even, no win, no loss. Someone else bids up another penny, so now he's either going to lose $100, or spend $1 and only lose $1. He's got to take the proposition where he loses less money. So he bids another $1. And so on and so on and so on. He gets into a situation where the only financially sensible option is to bulldog his way to winning the auction. He'll always lose $100 less than he would have if he didn't win.
And that's not taking into account that he may have won a bid pack and is using severely discounted bids to win the auctions, or one of the sites +% deals on buying bids.
good point but I've seen it happen way more times then I am comfortable with. But very good point.
Andrew,
You couldn't be more accurate. Thanks for clarifying.
I hate these kind of sites and their owners. They only think about their pocket, do not think about others pockets.
Or how about this. Penny auctions where only the winner loses their bids? Or where they are done like ebay and bids don't require purchasing before hand and are bids where $1.00 bids mean just that. $1.00 charge to your CC. Fancy that.
It's not hard to figure out, the people screaming "SCAM!!!" the loudest didn't win. I lose more than I win, but no one's putting a gun to my head making me bid either.
I've noticed more and more referring to Penny Auctions as entertainment shopping. I think that says it well, it's fun & somewhat like gambling yes. If you have a problem with gambling, quit griping and don't do it. If you don't look the site over and learn what you're getting into you have no one to blame but yourself. But oh how you want to blame someone else, don't you? I admit, I jumped in without enough preparation, and didn't do well at first. Nearly all the sites offer tips and strategies, a help and FAQ section, and closed auctions to look over. I spend hours learning and I enjoy it. I don't think much of Swipebids $150 "membership fee". But when someone asks for my credit card info before I attempt to buy something, it's time to read the fine print folks! A little reading stopped my registration before any harm was done. Why was Buzzin Bob in the business if he thought it was so much work? Everybody's gotta make a living and they don't always love the way they do it. And because it closed, someone automatically assumes "scam", could have been one of many reasons. PennyAuctionGuide being owned by a marketing firm makes it biased? Sorry, I'm still trying to figure out the connection. I kept hearing about bots-exactly how do you all spot them? At first I was suspicious of many of the same names turning up so often. The more sites I became familiar with I realized they were just as likely to be there as I was. Yes they were winning more, but likely they had more funding to work with than I do, or they've been at it longer and gotten better at it. Preparation, timing, luck, many factors involved. After seeing those same names appear on so many sights I began to wonder if anyone ever thought deenie61 was a bot! LOL As for spending more bidding than the prize is worth, I've seen that many times. I know it seems crazy, but a true gambler understands, and Andrew explained that well. When it comes to gambling (which is yes something like Penny auctions) there's little gray area. You're a true gambler or you're not. I come by it honestly, my dad's a true gambler, mom isn't. She plays only on the free money for Seniors at the casino, one quarter at a time. When she gets ahead she feels like she's getting one over on them, using their money and keeping hers(& some of theirs too). Dad- well he plays harder, when she isn't looking, he loses bigger, but when he wins he wins BIG.I humor mom and keep dad's secrets, try not to judge either and keep an open mind. you know- it takes all kinds, to each his own, live and let live. And if it bothers you shut up and don't do it.
I've played on these sites for the last couple of years, and have definitely developed a system to cut my losses if I don't foresee being the winner. Sites that allow you to "buy it now" if you don't win, like swoopo, are great and definitely help, but I really like 5050auctions bonus of giving you half your bids back if you win, because at the end of the day, I'm bidding to win. The point is, it takes a commitment to an item and setting limits. The old adage, you win some, you lose some, never holds more true than on these sites.
Have anyone tried mainbids.com?
This article is as fraudulent as penny auctions.
hdhghdhg- what exactly do you think is fraudulent about that article? It lists pros and cons, it's not exactly urging you to participate. The article admits you're taking a chance. No I don't know the author, but I thought it gave a decent unbiased opinion. All you can come up with is one general inconclusive sentence, big whoop. Like most anything else, there are good ones and bad. And there are even some really, really bad. I'm surprised not to see more about Powerhousebids.com.
When I first started with them I actually won a few auctions for bidpacks, enough to keep me bidding. They were credited promptly, no issues. Then the technical problems started. They were down forever, I kept checking because I had 150 bids there. Finally they start up again. I noticed the clocks weren't running smoothly, but they kept going all day. After losing several I figured out that you didn't stand a chance if you didn't bet hard, had to keep your name up there. It was acting like a screwball auction. Like I said, they ran all day, then just as I won a PS3, they decided to shut down. Announcement said bids/wins would be refunded to accounts within 24 hours. Oh no, I had won 100 bids, a $250.00 Visa card and the PS3, I was on cloud 9, didn't think I could wait til his birthday to surprise my son with a PS3. I had already paid s/h on each auction, they still showed under my "won" auctions. I checked back daily, nothing changed for a couple weeks or more. Suddenly they refunded my s/h fees. OK guess they aren't honoring the wins, also no bids returned. I kept checking and finally they were running again but the 135 bids I'd used for the wins I wasn't getting never got returned. I had 15 bids left, tried to bid some against all these new people. All new screen names I'd never seen before, something seemed fishy. I have done searches on 30+ of the screen names. Guess what? They don't show a link to anything Penny Auction related. Could it be that all these people are new to PA's and chose Powerhousebids to get their feet wet? My own screen name fills up a few pages, the names I checked have no history. I have written sooo many times, no reply, no bids, nothing. After searching the fishy names I expressed a preference to have cash value of my lost bids returned, I really don't think there's any chance of winning on there now. Doesn't matter- no response to anything. To add insult to injury, they suddenly wanted Liqpay for payment and nothing else. I opened an account, put 35.00 in it for smaller fees like s/h. I was never able to use money in the LiqPay acct. Everytime it made me draw more from my card through Liqpay. Liqpay sucks?!!! Every use required going through chat, which was very slow, they seldom understood my requests as their English wasn't the best. Still today I have funds in Liqpay I can't get out, they can take funds off my US card, but claim they cannot return funds to the US. I've about giving up on ever getting my money back. No other merchants I've dealt with use Liqpay, and I will never get involved with anyone that uses them exclusively again. So yes I've been rip offed, double whammy from Poweerhousebids and Liqpay. But that doesn't make everyone wrong.
It is a fair article. There are many good auction-sites. I think one of the most important point is to be realistic as a bidder. If you only purchase a small bid-pack it is better to try to win a rookie auction or a small value item. once you feel you have a hang of things go for the big one. Again only if you have enough bids. In my opinion the most successful bidders are the ones who are aggressive in there bidding style. Penny auction have evolved and now offer buy it now which effectively is like buying from any online store with high street prices for the losers and great deal for the winners.
Try to create a username on Swoopo that contains any uppercase characters, the registration creates the username in all lowercase characters. Be suspicious of usernames on Swoopo that contain uppercase characters as they did not go through the normal registration process. Try it yourself, your usersname will only contain lowercase characters. Be suspicious.
I have found the perfect penny auction (UK only) if you use this link you will get £2 free credit when sign up :)enjoy ( you wont get the credit unless you do so from this link)
For any of your readers that want more info, they should have a look at www.bestpennyauctions.com - as they appear to give an unbiased overview of most of the popular 'penny' and 'unique bid' auctions around.
I found it an interesting read, but I have not played on any of the auctions yet :o)
Wow. What a scam. I would NEVER do this and never buy into this. As a web developer I just got a job offer to fix one of these, as it has several bugs and security problems. I'll really have to look at it to see if it's even worth fixing.
For the penny auction world, there are few websites who are doing good work to expose the scams. One of them I saw was pennyauctioninfo.com . It is good. ALso, there are many who expose the scams.
Exposing scammers is an obligation for the future of the PA business. I dont beleive that big PA sites are scamming in any way, they are making a lot of money providing a good service, scamming their clients would be just plain stupid.
anyway feel free to submit your penny auction site on http://pennyauctiondirectory.net
please do a calculation for a LCD TV $2500 with 500 bids to win. and 10 person bids for the items. Your guys are spend 500 bids x 10= 5000 bids x $1 =$5000. Is over value product. Auction shall be cheaper product. Loser shall refund fully. This is call auction.
I've used an penny auction site and I will not use one again. It appears that there are bots that are used to inflate prices as well auctions taking hours to end - Its laughable when these sites try to compare themselves to ebay. Someone somewhere is making a lot of money.
Not that I don't like my uncle, but I just want to breathe reality into people who think these places actually "offer" awesome prices and give all these "great deals" to everyone. Your chances of winning.... SLIM. Sorry guys... keep bidding away...
You will see his ads running on places like Google and many other sites all the time. I cannot tell you his auction site, but I will tell you what he's told me.
He says, "Mike, when someone wins a product, for example, for $25.00, this means that 2500 individual "penny" bids were made to bring it up to $25.00. We charge the actual bidders 75 cents, for each bid."
He then says, "This results in a total of $1875, minus $500, for example, for us to buy the product to begin with. We just made $1375 on one auction."
I was amazed to say the least.
He goes on and says, "In the beginning, myself, some friends and investors borrowed $500,000 to start the site. Out of the $500,000, 95% of this was spent running ads on Google and other similar sites to "take it off".
I was like WOW that's a lot of money!
He then says, "Why do you think we can afford to RUN ADS on Google 24/7 resulting in $1,000s of dollars in bills every month, if not $10,000s on certain months?"
I asked, "I don't know, how?"
He replies, "Even if a product goes for $2.00 once the auction ends and the winner gets it at 95% off the full retail price, that by the way, we get it for a lot less, it's only because it's a "cheap" product that no one is willing to bid a lot on. But, we still need to offer these "cheaper" products. Maybe the product costs us $20 at most. With those 200 penny bids, we still made $150 profit."
My uncle, his friends and investors made their money back within 6 months after spending over $450,000 running ads to take it off.
I asked him, "But how did you not lose a ton of money in the beginning when only one or two people were making ONE bid to win a product"?
He answers, "Of course that was an issue for us." We just made accounts and bid ourselves using computers from other sources located from different locations. This made it look like there were "more" people on the site bidding. After a few months, there were so many people coming to the site, we didn't have to invest 99% of our time placing bids that were going back into our bank account. The people were doing this for us. And BAMMM (he actually said BAMMMM), instant rich."
He currently lives in a gated community in a house that is ridiculously huge. He has nice everything... all from the money he makes from his Penny Auction site.
Continued...
I almost forgot.
He also said, "People go "crazy" when we offer Bid Tokens. We'll offer a 100 Bid Token auction, for example, that retails for $75. Because everyone thinks they can get a chance to win them for a few dollars worth of bidding, everyone bids on these. We usually make $1000 to $10,000 one these individual auctions alone. These types of auctions easily bring in $30,000 - $100,000 per day."
I just went on his site and will give you a PERFECT and REAL example.... PLEASE READ THIS. It WILL BLOW YOUR MIND...
Bidders made 43,816 (it ended at $438.16 )individual bids on a 300 Bid Token auction worth $225 retail. Total cost from bids placed at 75 cents per bid equals $32,862 from that ONE auction! WOOOOOOOOOW! That's a lot of profit for ONE of MANY auctions for the day!
There are so many penny auction sites out there now. Just into the mix comes another one, itsybid.com. What a way to throw away your money. As with most auction systems, the whole "penny" is really just a unit value that means nothing. Every "penny" is really more like a credit and credits go for $0.75 each. Between all the bidders, the amount could be huge. And keep in mind every time you bid,at .75 cents a click, this does not promise a win. So you could be out hundreds of dollars and not win anything.
Best advise, stay away from penny auction sites like itsybid.com and go with vendors that offer real discounts for real products and services.
we can surely agree that a penny auction site is a business, and every business has been build to earn money, occupying employees, and lastly to give a chance to customers to buy something really cheap. Furthermore, it depends on the professionalism of the owner if the business is a total fraud for the customers. All I'm saying that penny-auctions are not scam, but probably the owner's will is (if there is any).
This is the same as playing the slots. You click the bid, the timer starts to count down and once in a great while it hits zero and you win. If the timer resets then you have the chance to play again. It's OK if people like this. They just shouldn't call it an auction.
PennyBurners.com is an excellent place to get all the information relating to the penny auctions you want to research. We work with others in the community to consolidate information to make finding what you need easy.
Go to http://PennyBurners.com to find all the information you need about penny auction sites.
Yes, it is purely gambling business, easily innocent people were got up and loss their money.
Very rarely people won before that the company got enough money through bid chance
It is advised not to go for that
rajan
Why are these sites constantly disappearing and re-emerging as something else? SCAM SCAM SCAM that's why.
Get in, clean up, get out before you get caught.
The only person that looses is the stupid sap (ie me) that threw away a lot of money yet was always "just beaten" by another bidder.
Save yourself some money and just buy it retail.
There is no way that "Penny Auctions" can be called auctions. These are all gambling sites, no more, no less. In a true auction you place a bid and if you lose it hasn't cost you a penny. However, with Penny Auctions you have to "buy" you bids up front then spend those bids. If you lose an item you've lost whatever you've invested in buying those bids. And those "look what I paid for this item..." come-ons are downright untruths. What you're actually seeing is the number of bids it took to "win" the item because each penny increase in the "price" represents one bid, not one penny. So, if an item "sells" for $5.95 that represents 595 bids that were placed to "win" that item. If you bid, say, 50 times within those 595 bids and you didn't "win", you're out of pocket by 50 times whatever each bid cost you.
So, beware and be prepared to lose money gambling on these sites. You'll hear the odd heartbreak story from site owners about how they lose money on some items, but do you think they'd still be in business if they're not making good money? Yes folks, they're making very good money, but if you like the odd gamble go ahead and try it.
Well, I never knew these sites were around until a random thought came into my head.
Low and behold....
Man this web thing is getting out of control.....LOL
I just love the web, there is never a shortage of ideas to make money!!
Keep them coming yall
To "scam tisk tisk tisk" and the rest of the negative folks who seem to think that they are authorities on penny auctions. I am sick and tired of hearing these complaining whiners screaming scam!!! these auctions are fun to play and fun to watch. Like everything else, some are scams, Eventually the scammers will be rooted out and held accountable. most, however, are not and for For someone to sit on their computer and proclaim that ALL are scams because of the actions of the few that are, is absolutly ridiculous. Also, like everything, buyer beware. READ the terms of service, know what you're getting into before you get into it. As we are all aware, there are unscrupulous folks out there who make it their business to scam people. That's how they make their living. and it is one of the oldest professions out their. This occurs in every facett of every type of business you will ever encounter in your life, not just penny auctions. Thats just the way things are. It's unfortunate but it exsists, and it always will. If you can't afford,or just plain dont like "penny auctions" then DONT TAKE PART. Its as simple as that. I noticed that alot of the "penny auction" patrol, these gate keepers of the penny auction make mention of the $$ the auction owners are taking or "raking" in "hand over fist"? I believe I read in several of the comments... Yes, hand over fist. Well good for them to find a creative workable way to make a living i this ecconomy. Can it be that this may be where the REAL problem lies with the majority of these nay sayers. Can it be that someone is actually bothered by the success of another? Hmmmmmm. Naaaaaa. Well, anyway "tisk tisk" on YOU. Find something else to do with your time, unless you're just a chronic complainer that cant cope without SOMETHING to b**ch about. Find something else... ie GET A LIFE... AND LET EVERYONE ELSE LIVE THEIRS.
Owners of penny auction sites are struggling to make money? I don't think so. Take a $25 gift card. At 60c a bid and 1c bid increments, if the card goes for, say, $6.53, that equals $391.80 paid to the site! Pretty clever....
Read it again sweetheart, that's not what I said. I understand how they work, and, Yes, it's extreemly clever, like I DID say in my previous post which you apparently didn't actually read,and if you did, you clearly didn't understand it, I said "a creative and workable" way to make a living. Which in this dismal ecconomy is a beautiful thing, is it not? and what does it matter to you anyway? I'm just saying, if people aren't happy with their life situation then they should do something about it.. not sit there and gripe about the fact that these pao's are making money, alot of people are making money. They are also helping to fuel our ecconomy. you dont know what they make, you dont know what they spend.. It's a business, no more, no less. Do you REALLY think that they are a raging success because people are getting NOTHING from them? and more then a few of them fail so obviously it's not always a sudden riches success story. and for the ones that succeed, well then good! they make money, they spend money, just as their members do. so you dont think anyone should make $$? maybe we should all live hand to mouth? That'll keep us in the black! yeah. I hope they ALL make millions, as long as they're on the up n up. they not only spend a good chunk of that million + that they're all apparently scooping in, but they also pay a pretty penny (pardon the pun) in taxes, which pays for public assistance, education, public services, medicare, social security, and the list goes on. They, like the rest of the working public are what is keeping this country in play, So what's the problem? Or are you just put off by someone elses success...Hey, it happens, quite obviously you're not alone. It's called envy and it's an unfortunate part of human nature and one we should all strive to shed. Hey, here's a novel idea, If you all are sooo impressed with the easy $$ that they are bringing in, instead of sitting around lamenting over those "staggering" figures in our pointy little heads, lets say we do somrthing a bit more constructive with our time. why not start a damn penny auction? Sounds like a pretty sure bet to me!
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bunch of people working to simply outbid you ... as part of their program.
Being involved in a penny auction requires a lot of learning because you don't get into the process just like that. You need to develop your own strategy in order to win on every bid that you are going to invest with and though it says penny auction you still need to a lot of money if you seriously want to have the item you bid on. Some of the best penny auctions can be found in almost all sites and the best site can be identified with the number of bidders that bids on it.
The only reason why these sites stay up and running at all is because of the morons who continue to waste their $ in search of a deal. Congratulations on milking the dumb for all they are worth. You will save much more money shopping on EBay or CL.
@shammi666
So let me get your economics straight here: businesses who milk their uninformed clients out of their hard earned money and reduce their consumer spending power are improving the economy?! You are aware that 2/3 of the economy is driven by consumer spending and when we reduce consumer spending power we hurt the economy. It is like saying that casinos are great in a recession because they are still raking in money. Never mind the fact that most people leaving the casino will have less money in their pockets to pump into the economy. Sure a poor person never offered me a job, but nobody ever became rich without customers, and customers require spending power. It's called greed and it's an unfortunate part of human nature and one we should all try to shed. Greed is never good for the economy because once one person has all the poker chips, the game is over. Complete and total nonsense!
At http://www.bidyell.com, you will find an array of branded products and an opportunity to win the auction or buy directly with our safe and secure shopping system. Our website is based on a unique software solution and business model for online auction.
As one of the leading websites for online auctions, we offer penny auctions, knockout auctions and speed auctions on factory sealed products ranging from mobile phones, digital cameras, video games, laptops and computers, books etc. Just browse through the category or search for products you wish to bid for. All these products are available at affordable prices. So why pay entire amount when you can get them at a lower price!
Please consider all of the bidders who pay for bids and receive nothing. Don't let these "business owners" compare themselves to a legitimate business where a consumer receives goods and/or services in exchange for legal tender. The business model here is much more closely related to a slot machine than a retail store. However, if you like slot machines, knock yourself out.
I do agree with the people saying its not gambling but the chance is very hard to win especially on BIG TICKET items like TV's, Laptops, Computers, Game Systems, Smart Phones and of course Gift cards. The trick that most users aim for the big package like BID PACKS because they will run into those people bidding maybe 100-200 times especially if the item is over: $1,000+. The timer is really key but you also have to look on the other side, there must be people over the US even trying to get a Gift Card to sell on Ebay. Gambling is a game of chance, you win or lose. I only do sports gambling because of my true knowledge of sports. You have to do a lot of research. Same thing with Penny Auctions, if you win 1 item, it will get addictive, kind of like a drug where you are sitting in front of your PC or Laptop and waiting until it goes to zero so either you bid or another person bids. I tried it once because I wanted to see the fuss. The company is called: www.bidsauce.com, I only won like 5 packs and like 3 gift cards. I only signed up because they were going to give me: 50 bids for $30.00 + 50 extra bids, so why not try. If you are aiming for BIG TICKET, don't bother until you got like 1,000 bids, and get some coffee and a snack because it can take a long time. I am luckily I broke even because I sold the gift cards online like: $50.00 gift card for like $35.00 since I bought it for: $.32 cents + $7.00 shipping = $7.32, but it took half of my free bids to do it, so like 20 bids. If you are looking to try it go ahead but check out which site: swoopo.com, bidsauce.com first and take a look. If you see what you like, maybe take down the average price it goes for and then wait until your bid. For my part on sports gambling, there are certain amount of games, matchups, and odds. If you think its too good to be true, pass on it. I usually bet like 4 teams on the morning 2 in the second and each night, sunday and monday, so I had to put a deposit of at least $100, but I spread it around. After everything, after the $100 I put in the account, I have $60 profit. Same with Poker, maybe check out some ESPN to see the WS of Poker, Read Books, play online but with free chips, but if you are ready, go for real money. When money is involved, there will be a chance of losing and a chance of winning. If you don't know how to do it, don't try it because it will eat your money/bids and even can eat it all in one day if you do it wrong and come out empty handed.
Why are there so many Penny Auction sites out there anyways? Its people aka the owners meaning easy money, sometimes I feel that there is no easy way too make money. Just to let some know that, I tried to use some of my bids to get a Peyton Manning signed UDA Jersey and framed. Why would Upperdeck sell it for anyone for cheap and retails for $1,700.00. It ended at $18.00, if you were the lucky winner, kudos for you but for every loser $1 each bid, the company will always make money on you no matter what. The best thing to do is find a job but if you did, file for unemployment and not use you say $1,000.00 on bids which you might lose. I am not going to try the penny auction thing anymore. The thing about gambling is that if you win, they will immediately credit the money to your account. The hard part is the pay-outs, they will need copy or credit card and state or government id or passport. I won in the past and the winnings the legit and they do have funs. Just sign it put it in bank account and your set.
Let me tell you, that anyone claiming these are legitimate auction sites with absolutely all human people bidding other than employee/staff of said company are telling lies and perpetrating one of the largest Internet Frauds!!!
ANYONE can easily operate one of these and take peoples hard-earned money. Obviously, a few auctions will be won at less than the actual MSRP, but if you just think about it, a company would not be in business for very long if the auctions were continually won for under the MSRP as then they would make NO MONEY!!!
I have, foolishly, lost more than $15,000.00 to one of these so-called "penny" auction sites, but now the FBI, the FTC, news media, politicians are involved, and there will be a class-action litigation. There needs to be legislation to ban ANY of these so-called "penny" auction sites!!!
Anyone who has lost money, whether or not you have actually won an auction, please notify me via this post and/or E-mail at ijusthuman@yahoo.com IF you have had similar incident(s) and/or want to partake in the litigation against companies such as pennyauction.com, bidcactus.com, quibids.com, etc.
Hope the holiday and new year will bring good things to all except those that have no heart, conscience or soul for running these schemes and taking peoples money under such false pretenses!!!!
//Steve
Great article! Anyone who wants to bid on a penny auction just have to do a lot of research on how your opponents play and more importantly, about the company that you will be investing your money on. Those who have mastered the skill of bidding and have developed their own strategy can really get the items at just a fraction of the actual cost. While it's true that a PA company can earn a profit of 50% or even more of the actual cost, it's not true that PA companies get profit from every single item that they put on auction. A macbook or hdtv could close at less than a dollar. We see lots of budding PAs and they keep on coming. Despite the many complaints that PA companies get, other sites are still existing coz they never run out of bidders/users who have actually won at their site and saved hundreds of dollars. You can't be a pro bidder overnight. Over time, you'll be able to develop your own skills and strategy to outbid your opponents. However, penny auction is not for everybody. It takes a lot of patience and skill to win a penny auction.
If you speak Dutch then try http://www.biedsnel.com/
Nice blog!! i also know a very good site for penny auction
Penny auctions are awesome as someone uses a penny auction site the will develop their own skill or technique sinces all sites have the same basic format but operate slightly different. I have tried several my favorite site is http://www.cra-zee.com they have great products not over crowded and great customer service. I won and item and received my items fast.
Do not waste your time or money on Powerhouse bids. They are a complete scam and will not respond.
Go here to get full details:
I am writing Congress to help take down these sites. They are ripoffs. My encounter with www.bidsauce.com taught me to take proactive steps to let my Congress people know of these scams. Maybe i'll be on Fox or CNN soon about these. American people, join in with me to get these crooks offline!
PA are Scam, Its only money in PA owners pakcets
I have experience on “penny sites” and consider myself fairly good. There are a few of them that I frequent and the one that stands out as not above board is ViaZiz.
The reason for my saying this is because I have spent a long time watching the site and the various auctions. As soon as I, a bid buyer and paying client, start to bid on an item then all of the sudden the whole bidding picture changes.
Example, The item shows various times it is “going” and as soon as you start the current bidders (not only the last which had the “going bid” start bidding furiously. That could be a norm yes but I think there are Bots (inside bidders to push up the price and ensure you never win).
Example, whilst bidding on an item you sometimes have to re-load your “Bid Buddy” and whilst doing this and you set it WITHOUT any indication to the other bidders, as soon as you have then the picture changes from the others going from single bid to a new party using the “Bid Buddy” option. – Bots again.
Example, bidding on an item with “Bid Buddy” against single bidders, but as soon as you buy more bids then on comes another “auto bidder” – Bots again.
Example, whenever I bid on an item it always goes way over the top and you just throw everything at it and it just carries on and on not like other items which finish a lot sooner. This to me indicates that there is something fishy (Bots) when it comes to real paying bidders.
BUSTED: - I use two browsers ie8 and Firefox, Whilst signed in with Firefox and bidding on an item all seems perfect and smooth, but then I go into the site on ie8 and the item I am bidding on doesn’t even appear on the LIVE AUCTIONS page??? As soon as I sign in on ie8 then it all of the sudden appears. (is this possible fraud?)
Some time ago I went in on the “contact us” page and requested twice, information such as Company Registration number and the name of their auditors but to no avail.
I have also contacted them on the “contact us” page and asked about the item not appearing on the Live Auctions page but as yet I have no response.
Like I said I frequent other sites as this one and have a good record of “winnings” and but thus far nothing on ViaZiz.com.
BEWARE PEOPLE this site seems that it could be a fraud and you are throwing your money down a big black hole.
This Penny Auction Watch site is Major scam(pennyauctionwatch.com). Also known as "PAW".
PAW is a front for these dishonest penny auction owners to make their sites look legit. Penny Auction Owners plant positive experiences on here(Complaints Board) and on the Penny Auction Watch forums(PAW) to bait people into playing and buying bid packs. Buying bid packs to bid on items? What a joke and scam!
Go to Flippa[dot]com and search "penny auctions for sale"
There you can see how these operates by the use of controlled bots on autobid to scam any real people into buying more and more bid packs until the reserve price has at least been met for that item that's bid on. They aren't in the business to LOSE money and will never ACTUALLY sell an item below value. If not enough real people are bidding on a particular item for a while, they will end the auction to a bot name. They will then list the bots name in the "Auction History" section to make it look as if REAL people actually win and auction is honest+fair.
You can buy your own Penny Auction from Flippa.com and start scamming also. So easy to do.
Also. Google, "penny auction website script" and see how these scams operate. The scripts are cheap to buy.
To build up traffic to your scam penny auction you must plant positive experiences on forums such as PAW(PAW is a front). You must also dispute ANY negativity or complaints on forums such as this.
For EX, tell the angry complainer that he must be crazy, use stupid bidding techniques and unlucky because you win all the time and just won a 52inch Plasma for 2 bucks. People WILL start believing you if you plant enough fake postitive experiences/reviews. JUST make sure to use different names each time you fake post. If you use same name over and over again telling everyone you win all the time, people will begin to catch on and realize it's just a fake post planted by the Penny Site operator/owner.
They cheat you and make a killing from people like you that bought into it. Some will even go as far as to advertise on social networking sites such as "FACEBOOK" and write stories of winning items for $4 and so on to get people to join the site.
I call it their, "Fake Social Environment" where they ask and answer their own questions attempting to be perceived as an honest and fair auction. For EX they will say, "I just won 12 Lap Tops for $40 and they all arrived today in factory sealed boxes! I love this site!"
Anyone can do this... so easy to make money. MAKE sure that the server that hosts your scam auction is located outside of the USA so you can get around federal gambling regulated laws. If heat gets to much, then shut scam auction down and create a new one. Repeat process.
Happy scammin'!!
I tried to post that on PAW(pennyauctionwatch[.]com) to warn good honest people BUT they wouldn't allow it to post.. I wonder why? ;)
So i'll just post away on websites such as this.
You use to could post on PAW right away but now they have a Moderator that must approve your post first.. I wonder why that is? ;)
I think we ALL know why that is :)
I am Milt Murphy and I run the penny auction www.bigggle.com .
There are honest penny auctions with transparent ownership and that are based in the USA. Bigggle is one of them.
Penny Auctions are a form of entertainment enjoyed by millions. They are growing because people are looking for new ways to spend their entertainment money.
Penny Auctions are like any auction are a competition. They are different than traditional auctions because the loser and winner each pay a fee each time they bid, which is fully disclosed. They are designed for people that enjoy competition. We are a site that markets to people that love competition, win or lose. We do not market promising $15 laptops. If you win you may get items below retail.
When I go to a basketball game…I go hoping my team will win. If they lose, I have fun. If they win…I am very excited. Either way I paid for the ticket. If I don’t like basketball, I don’t buy a ticket.
Penny auctions, movie tickets, basketball tickets, ballet and theater tickets, etc…should never be paid for with grocery money. Nor should you pay for basketball tickets if you like the ballet. Spend your entertainment money in a manner that makes you smile.
Have questions, send me an email support@bigggle.com. I will answer your questions.
Milt Murphy
President & Co-Founder
Rainmaker Auctions, Inc.
Proud to Bring you
www.BIGGGLE.com
Office: 1-800-792-3041
Visit www.facebook.com/bigggle
I don't get why people think Penny auctions are a scam? You have to pay to bid at a regular auction ITS called a buyers premium! Its no different than paying for single bids you are still paying to bid. Penny auctions are no more of a rip off than big box stores when you pay $1000.00 for a tv they paid 200.00 for! so if you want to complain about penny auctions you better complain about the whole shopping world!!!
I just wanted to see if this would actually let me post
These sites are making money hand over fist. An iPad retails for $699 on average. If the winner of the auction wins one for $152.17, the site makes $9,282.30 ($152.17 x .60 (cost per bid) x 100 (number of bids/dollar) + $152.17 (amount winner has to pay)). There is no better income model. Imagine selling $25 gift cards for $2 and making $97 profit. If you have even a stitch of entrepreneurial spirit and a few thousand bucks, then you should definitely start a site of your own. If you want to join the elite, Cards4pennies.com is a domain name that is currently for sale with proven traffic flow.
I've read a few of the comments, and they say if you spend 15.00 in bids, you get an item worth X for 15 bucks. That isn't true. You spend 15 bucks in bids and the price of the item. So if the item was 125.00 when you placed the final bid, you spend 15.00 + 125.00 (and probably a shipping fee but you'll pay that anywhere) = 140.00.
Thank you for this inquiry, I used to feel the same way about penny auctions but, then I stumbled upon an ipad auction and won it! It takes a lot of patience to sit through penny auctions! Just keep trying you don't win every one but, every once in a while... http://www.bidkwik2win.com
Bid and Win, Online, Live Penny Auctions
Please check out our website
Kodazon.com is penny auction site that is located in Bay Area CA, USA, We have buy now option for all auctions, so if you did not win the auction , You are given the option to buy the product at retail listed price minus the cost of bids you have used. We look forward to serving you soon.
We would like to make this website win win experience for both sides. We will never intentionally do anything, which can translate in cheat to our members and this is in writing on this page. We fear the creator. We value doing the business with ethics and we do believe "what goes around,same comes around". Please let us know if we can do anything better on this web site to make your experience more pleasurable. May God bless you all and enjoy your stay.
SCAM!!!!!!!!http://www.zuzubid.com
The big difference between the PA sites and anywhere else is you don't see your competitors, but still lose your bids. How can any thinking person fall for that? "There are legit ones!" Really? How do you know? The only person that knows for certain is the site owner. Why would anyone PAY to compete on such an uneven playing field?
i am wondering if these penny auction sites are scams...i joined a site (i won't mention any names) and bought quite a few bids...i then sat down to "play the game" trying to outbid the other people...a number of times, i found that even though the countdown timer says that there are still 2-3 seconds remaining and i place my bid - my bid is too late and a person that i had not seen entering bids previously all of a sudden wins the auction...yet when i am at the final bid stage of "going" low and behold there are other bidders that jump in...this to me is a downright scam...i can say this for a fact because it happened to me more than once on the one site i used...how can i be too late to enter a bid when there is still time on the timer?...i still have bids remaining and am not able to refund my money...so i am hooped....beware unless you just want to throw your money away...sorry for sounding so bitter...but i just lost another *&%$ auction this way a few minutes ago.
You guys are nuts, I have lost and i have won at penny auctions, but to claim they are a fraud is ridiculous. Question: Is a slot machine a fraud? Here's the reality: If nobody bids, they probably are not stupid and won't let it go from 10 cents, but even if 3 people bid on an item, one will get it for as little as a 1/3rd the price. It's not gamgling, its brinkmanship, click-accuracy timing, and a lot of psychology similar to paper/scissors/rock.. which there are tournaments for.
Search "Quibids are Scammers" on facebook and like me please!
There's sheep out there who love this stuff. You can find plenty of them at Vegas and Atlantic City. Always some sort of scam or scheme to take money from people without being honest.
stupid people of america. stop calling everything a scam. your flocking job is a scam, marriage is a scam, good behavior is a scam. you see how that works? when you overuse the word, you deplete it's relevance.
so let's discuss this without the over-intelligent debate-it's not damn quantum physics, OK?
A SCAM is the exchange of money for absolutely NOTHING. NOT EVEN A CHANCE TO WIN. The outcome of a SCAM is the intention to NEVER EVER give a return on investment.
CAN YOU READ? DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?
The nigerian check scam: get your account info, get nothing in return.
A Ponzi/Investment scam: get your money with no intentions to give a return on your investment.
GAMES OF CHANCE
Casinos, lottery, card games, sweepstakes, fantasy sports, investments...if a person gets involved in these things...there is EVIDENCE that a return EXISTS. people don't Focking play the slots if no one in the history of slots didn't win something-you idiots.
IF a person decides to play a game of chance, knowing the risks...not a got damn scam. There is a CHANCE of return. If you win at poker, you gonna call that game a scam? SMDH, go ahead...win the lotto and return the money and say, "this is not right, this is a scam".
you fools.
PENNY AUCTIONS
If there are bots that's wrong.
If you don't have time to watch a clock, you may not have a great chance to win the flat screen TV. Dammit! Everyone wants the TV! If you understand the risk of not winning a damn thing and understand that you MAY WIN=not a damn scam.
I agree there shouldn't be a crazy member fee though.
In the end...don't come here and yell 'fire' at people who want the chance to win something.
These aren't a scam, they are a great way to get bargains!! Happy bidding from a1pennybid.com
I don't care if penny auctions are a scam or not-if you look at the amount of bids, they usually exceed the retail cost of an item by 50 to 100% or more, and who determines when its time for someone to "win' a bid. If you are stupid or extremely lucky then bid otherwise be wise and stay away from these scams.
I found this site doing a google search. They are trying to expose penny scams and other internet scams. It's like a forum for people to leave there comments. I found it useful!!
Im seeing alot of people complaining about these kind of sites. I really want to find a legit website where i can really win products at a great price. But after googling many of these companies I am seeing more and more people complaining about them. Look how many people have already submitted complaints!
I have been on koodeal.com for a month 1/2 now. I have lost over $12000.00 since then, I have found many problems on this site from auto bidder not working fairly to catching cheaters ganging up on new members to stealing the items being bid on. I have proof of every thing Im saying and will post them one at a time. After I caught the members cheating they got a 24 hour supention and were back at it the next day. The owner or man I talked to at koodeal was Mitchel. I had a problem yesterday when the auto bidder screwed up and bid twice to every bid made by two other bidders, one was called lovetobid and the other was asaliah how I think were working together or for koodeal. The item was a gremin worth $160.00 and I spent over 250 bids valued at 70 cents each. I reported the problem to Mitchel from koodeal and asked him to look at the auto bidder that screwed up or was maybe made to screw up. He said he would look into it. i waited all day to find my account with koodeal was suspended. STAY off this SITE or you will loss your shirt. There are several things I found crooked from being charged shipping when it never said so on the item I was bidding on. Right now I will be seeing a lawyer and calling bbb plus internet fraud along with Paypal about hidden charges. This place is as crooked as they get. BE WARNED
I was on Facebook a week ago deleting old freinds and I saw a post about Koodeal.com, it seams they are sending out 1000s of emails to get people to join their penny auction, they are advertizing everywhere even on TV, the problem is people join then find out its crooked and a scam, lose all their money and then quit. That must be why them have to advertize so much, no one stays long. On the posting they told about three people complaining they open the link and got a bad virus. I don't understand why koodeal would be spreading a virus or its been attached some where down the line, but I know one thing I will never open an email from koodeal until they say its safe.
I only want to say that penny auctions is not scam. There are many scam site but you will also find a heap of trusted site out there. Let just find them from review sites.
A lot of sore losers here. I wonder if they would be so upset if they had been the ones to walk away with the item at a huge discount. I think not. Did they bother to read how the auction works prior to bidding? All the sites quite clearly explain how the process works. If you cant figure out what is going to happen from there and yet buy a bid pack... dont cry that you lose your money. A fool and his money are soon parted.
I thought I could spot a scam when I saw one being as expolice officer and aware of how schemes work but let me tell you I was completely taken in by a penny auction. Let me explain how they make money: first you do not get to use your own money,only when you must pay do you get to do that. So what do you use? Bid points. Yep, their own money of which you use your hard earned cash to buy at about $1.80 a bid point. And each of these "bid points" counts as a ` penny bid of which you lose if someone bids another penny (1.80). Now if it is a bidding frenzy and the one penny bids go back and forth until someone messes up at the auction house and let's the item go for your bid, of which then you must cough up the cash and shipping to receive it. Sounds great to let's say win a winning bid of $110.00 for an IPAD 2 that retails for over 4699. BUT WAIT A MINUTE...THAT MEANS AT LEAST 11,000 PENNY BIDS WERE MADE TO GET THAT WINNING BID...hmmm using my handy computer calculator that comes to 11000 times $1.80 comes to $19,800 for the auction house and he gets to advertise you won it for 11,000 pennys. Now I am not sure the items sponsor gets the lowly $110 or the $699 retail as we are talking someone got almost $20,000 to sell it. I read the owner of one of the bidding houses claim how hard it was to get products to be put on the bidding platform....BULL ROAR...you give me $20,000 for a $699 item and I will ship them all day, even pay the mailing for you. Aren't U a nice auctioneer? Now you can see how they can advertise on national television (5 million a minute on prime time) and still keep those items coming to sell. You have to tell yourself why are these penny auction houses popping up like weeds in your newly planted lawn, well look at the numbers again. Some auction houses have the gall to offer you bidding points at a discount, like 200 for under a $100 real time dollars, but remember this ain't like bidding on Ebay, every time you press that one penny key to bid you are giving them 59 cents that is not refundable. So what you say, I still got a bargain, hell I won a $500 gift card to Walmart for only $90.00. Hmmmm does that include the total 50 cent bids you had to make to get the card? How many times did you go to the "BID TELLER" and buy some more bid points at 50 cents per penny bid? But let's say you are that one in 200 million that got the item for only one bid and paid only $90? Well then you can thank the losers 8999 penny bidders that spent $4500 to the auction house so you could get your $500 gift card. You smelling the fish yet? Myself I am not betting on my chances of winning anything unless I bay for a bunch of bid points in advance. Now here is the good part, having been on the site for almost ten minutes ( I am a slow learner) I had used up my free ten bids that were given to me at the initial signing up process and I still had 90 plus bid points for giving them my banking information for if I won something I would have no delays in getting the item billed and delivered ( I also stupidly gave them my address for that. Thank god I didn't go for the added fifty bid points by giving them my personal phone number. It seems there is a secret way of winning a prized item. I signed off the site and found an email telling me about the $60 charge to my bank account for a whopping 100 bid points. Since I did not give permission to charge myself for more bid points I immediately called the 888 number in Miami, Florida ( starting to get the strong odor of fish again) and a quick talking representative who called himself "Fernando" explained he would be happy to handle my complaint. When I told him my name, the transaction number of their taking my funds and my name used on the auction house (my real name by the wsy) he had a hard time finding it and then after I repeated the spelling of my name he had a hard time writing it down, now I find out he was stalling until he could get the money out of my account. I was talking to Fernando less than four minutes after giving my personal information ( which should to be be the same secure place as Ebay's ) He did everything in his power to assure me that it would be no problem while speaking out of the other side of his mouth telling me why their auction house was so fantastic and how stupid it was to ask for a refund when I could win some great items. Now you will love this: "Fernando informed me that because I was an unhappy member he would crerdit me with another 25 penny bids and even told me that if I went to a site on their auction house that had a small 'b' in the corner after leaving him on the phone he would guarantee I would win what ever I bid for with the free 25 penny bid points. I asked him if he was sure I would win and he again said he would stake him job on it, especially if I use my moniker on the bidding. That means boys and girls that the fix was in...which tells me no one gets something without the comptroller insuring you get it. You can afford to give away a car every hour for a penny if y9u are taking in a million dollars an hour. So there it is, if you want to give the auction houses (penny auctions) you bid points and take your place on the Great Mandela then go for it, but remember do not let anyone from these houses tell you they are losing money or that they work hard to find items to put on their auctions and most importantly, you never get to bid one penny of your own money, you only get to buy a penny for $1.80 which by the way I shall be opening a bank soon where I will be accepting *1.79 for every penny you want to buy.
To make it short and simple, if you pay out money but get nothing for it is either gambling or a scam.
Quibids.com is a scam. Nothing is open to the buyers. I purchased $60 for 100 bids, and end up with nothing. I didn't count how many times I pressed the bid button, but the history said I used 60 bids at the end. I was a careful bidder; I couldn't believe I used that many bids. I was very upset not because I didn't win anything; I was upset because I spent all my bids just in a few minutes. We may call this gamble, but it is hidden gamble. If we go to Casino, we will see and know who the winner is, but with this website, you never know those names showing on the production window is real or not. And this game has no rule to follow, don't believe the timer, it is misleading. So, like my husband said, this is efficient market, you won't be the one getting the best benefits. I deactivated my account already and just want remind all the people who are still throwing their money to this website. We are not stupid, are we?
A person would have to be an absolute idiot to use penny auctions. It is a system guaranteed to lose 99% of bidders money.
These penny auctions are no more legit than Ponzi schemes.
Penny auctions are for suckerbob's. Sure, you may win a big screen TV for $500, but chances are good you won't. What's with showing retail pricing anyway? Really, does anyone in this day and age pay anything remotely close to MSRP or suggested retail? If you eventually win a "penny" auction, tally in all that you've lost to get to that win. I think you'll find that you would have been far better off just finding a sale at Best Buy or Walmart. I realize that many of you are biased being in the business and all, and Lord knows that there is no end to the uninformed suckers out there. This is the only way you can operate. Once someone comes to their senses and apply the slightest amount of common sense, it's game over. All you suckerbob's need to wake the hell up. It's obvious that you have more money to waste than you have critical thinking skills.
i think this entire game of penny auctions is crap. I have lost thousands of dollars trying to bid and never won a single item. Imagine I bought 1000 bids for $500. I started bidding on an apple ipad2. The bidding ended with the item price reaching &110.55 with three bidders and numerous bidders entering and exiting the auction. Now imagine the moolah these penny auction guys make. 110.55 is equivalent to (11055*500/1000)=$5527.5 that the entire group of bidders have spend on the auction. The cost of the ipad2 = $500. Net profit of the auction portal = $5027.5 and is one tenth the cost of the product. So these guys telling you a load of hardwork that goes into creation of the website is a crock of shit. Yes there are programming costs but BELIEVE ME this is only for gamblers. Added to the complications are the automatic bids that you can place using the MY BUDDY option as in what Viaziz.com offers. If it was a genuine auction then automated bids should not be allowed. Thats gambling and you can't tire out a computer algorithm.
BEWARE STAY AWAY FROM THESE ONLINE PENNY AUCTION. GOOGLE SHOULD DO A SERVICE TO MANKIND AND DROP THESE FROM THEIR SEARCH AS WELL.
Penny auctions are legal scams. They are for suckers and fools. You have a better chance of winning at some casino games.
And anyone who says they are hard to set up and get running is a liar. You can simply by a software package to run one and then use a drop shipper as a supplier.
Many states do not have oversight legislation.
Like auctions...stick to ebay or ubid.
I agree with the above comment about VIAZIZ, I too spent a thousand dollars not to win even a blender, can you imagine. I have won many items on other sites, I agree it is difficult, but remember, when you put a dollar in the slot machine at the casino or buy a lottery ticket from our Government there are no guarantees. I intend to file a legal action against VIAZIZ, I had some concerns about their site freezing, this happened just when I was about to win. The first time, I thought OK, but the second and third, give me a break. So when I complained you know what they did? They denied me access to their site, I had 1,000 credits, can you beleive it they had my money and I was denied using the bids I paid for. I tried nicely to resolve the matter but they could care less. Should anyone out there want to join in a legal action against these websites, you can contact me at clymara@msn.com I am a legal proffessional.
Bigger penny auctions sites are definitely serious and legit. I would never believe that Madbid or Quibids are scam sites. Also this Bigger penny auctions sites are definitely serious and legit. I would never believe that Madbid.com or Quibids.com are scam sites. Also http://www.bidhere.com has been lucky for me
These guy`s that tell you they are honest are lier`s!These are scams done by computeres and I have tried to find someone that has won anything and there isn`t any.They want you to give them mponey up front,then bid.When you do they have your card number and give it out.I had Life lock catch them and stop all the card holders from tapping into my bank Acct.BEWARE!
If penny auctions are a legitimate, above board, honest business model then WHY are all the comsumer protection watchdogs in the States, Canada, Australia and the U.K exposing the scam and why are hundreds participating in blog posts exposing the scam? Everyone on this planet knows what the word AUCTION means. Highest bidder wins, no cost to bid, absolutely no loss to losing bidders and like Ebay and every real estate company an INDEPENDENT 3rd party conducting the auction between seller and buyer. .... and just as importantly genuine auctions to not fill the first 15 pages of a Google search with glowing positive reports obviously written by the auction sites themselves. Common sense folks!
I ran into this site called duelingbids.com and made the dumb, idiotic decision to purchase 3 bid packs at a little over $5 each without studying the site and doing my homework and I got deservedly burned. After making the expenditure, I realized that I never encountered any opposition when bidding for the bid packs. I then (after the fact) decided to observe the site and I realized that the same user names were"winning" auctions for high-end electronics such as Apple iPads and iPods, Kindles etc. with 1 or 2 bids. I then checked the hard to find "ended auctions" and I saw more of the same: the same user names "winning" auctions with 1 or 2 bids over and over and over again. By the time I had taken all this in, I knew for a fact that I had stupidly allowed myself to be scammed of $15 dollars. Needless to say, I didn't win the iPod I went for as two shills who kept bidding against me--and never against each other--made sure of that. I forgot to mention that the site gives you 100 free bids to join and I think that is what blinded and stupefied me. Greed. But then again, one hundred free bids without any catch is too good to be true. I should have seen that.
While there are many penny auction sites that are not designed well and have terrible customer support, there are some who are legitimate business operations. For example, I like BidCactus. It has delivered on over 350,000 winners since it was founded in 2009 and they even have auctions to raise funds for charities. It is definitely a "buyer-beware" industry. Best advise is to spend some time looking through review sites like http://www.onecentshopper.com before you go out and signup for something. Always best to make an informed decision. :o)
Great SCAM...it sounds to good to be true but some win...
The site owner gets rich BECAUSE THEY KEEP ALL OF THE LOSERS MONEY...If you dont win you forfeit you bid pack money....it may be $20 bucks to the bid site owner that is
times 100 a 1000..
normal auctions the losers keep their money...
You know...
Why do you pay so much money for gas?
The actual price of the gas is a fraction of the cost.
:-) Stay away for the pump station...
Stay away from any store, most of them making huge markups.
So the story is, this is the life, and stups comments are for other stups.
can you really win at penny auctions?
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BUZZINBOB 2 years ago
I am not here to hide who I am. I am the owner of buzzerbidz.com. I have read lots of comments saying that these penny auction sites are making money hand over fist. Let me tell you it is no walk in the park to get one of these sites up and running. These take countless hours to set up and run. We have to find suppliers, ship out items won, search for new items to list, answer e-mails, help people with accounts, Learn how to read scripts and the list go on and on. I don’t think that most people realize what goes into these auction websites. Read the example above from anonymous: If a person bids $15.00 on a $299 product and is the successful bidder the penny auction pockets $1,500. But, would if the product sells for 34 cents? Then the penny auction would make a whopping $34 losing $265. And take into consideration that buzzerbidz give bonus picks at the end of each auction to the successful bidder to receive additional bids and no one counts the free bids that were placed on certain items. This also takes away from profit. These auction’s are a lot of work to run and it is like any other business. (to make a profit) Take your average fast food burger joint. Do you really think that it cost $1.20 for them to make a large soft drink? Think again! It only costs about 5 cents netting them $1.15 per soft drink. If they sold 500 of them a day, they would make $209,875.00 per year! And thats just on soft drinks. Granted some people will not always win, but if you are fast enough to be successful even if you put in $12.00 on bids and won a playstation for $15.00 it would cost you $28.00 for a brand new playstation valued at $350.00. We all have been at a carnival and tried to knock the bottles down to win a prize. Some of us won a huge stuffed teddy bear and some of us won a plastic spider ring. Some spent a $1.00 to win the bear and some spent $20.00 to win the ring. We as humans love entertainment and this is what buzzerbidz is all about. Meeting new friends while obtaining heart pounding excitement while shopping for things you want. I am just tiered of hearing all of the negative comments about these penny auctions. If you like them, then play. If you don’t then don’t play. It’s that simple! I just felt that I had to throw in my 2 cents worth! ( no pun intended)President Of Buzzer Bidz Inc.