Update: Read comments section for a response from ChooChooKazoo.com, thank you. Once again, we are not accusing anyone of anything only showing you that this seemed odd if this was only a misunderstanding on our part then we apologize.
Just two days ago we posted the e-mail interview that we received from someone with ChooChooKazoo.com.
Well now ChooChooKazoo.com may have some explaining to do, we’d like to think everything is on the up-and-up with them and all penny auction sites, but as previously noted the bid-fee scheme industry is rife with liars and cheaters.
Take a look at some of the observations we have made on ChooChooKazoo.com and their forum posting behavior.
A forum user posted the following in the thread Does this look suspicious to anyone else?
“Just checking out the new website of www.choochookazoo.com and looking at the bid history on the acer laptop. This sure does look rigged to me. If you look on the bid history the bids are placed exactly at a particular time between two bidders. Are they in some kind of testing? If not, this is a red flag for sure.”
This was in reference to a bidder that won a netbook auction, Sylvia613:
ChooChooKazoo.com’s owner or representative that posts on PAW, it looks like they have two representatives that post, jmcollough & ChooChooKazoo, the user ChooChooKazoo tells us he lives in Atlanta, GA.
Well maybe the following is only mere coincidence, but something seems off here.
Pay close attention to the time of these two forum posts:
03-24-2010, 02:39 AM: Posted by user ChooChooKazoo
“I am one of the owners of www.ChooChooKazoo.com I understand the concern about it looking like there are bots. However I can assure you that we are 100% legit. We have all payment verifications and information on every customer. We have encouraged all users to post on here that they are real and offered 2 free bids to any user that posts on here. The auto bids are back up and running we do apologize for the inconvenience.
Happy Bidding,
ChooChooKazoo”
03-24-2010, 04:11 AM: Posted by user Sylvia613
“Hi all. I am the winner of the laptop. I am not a bot, I used autobid. Whenthe autobid crashed, I sat for an hour clicking “bid” until I won. I must admit I nearly gave up when I saw badmedicine pop in a few bids… they play a tough game. I am also cautious of sodaman and now sandmfish. I never once felt they were bots because they were not consistant with bids once the autobidder went down. I am a wife, mother to 3 small kids, and work nights in a medical lab. I hope this post has helped! Btw, I have never done penny auction before, and its obvious when u watch my haphazard strategy! Good luck and happy bidding!”
- A few of ChooChooKazoo’s forum posting IP addresses happen to be located in Bedminister, NJ.
- Bedminister, NJ is also where user Sylvia613 has been posting and registered to our forum from.
User ChooChooKazoo user’s PennyAuctionWatch forum registration
- IP address Location Bedminister, NJ, on Verizon Wireless
User Sylvia613
- IP address location:Bedminister, NJ, also on Verizon Wireless
Yes, Verizon is located in Bedminster, NJ but it’s a bit odd that both users were posting within a short time period in the middle of the morning from a Verizon wireless connection.
User Jmcollough has been posting from a number of IP addresses, a few of which have been found on many blocking/spam lists, could he be using a proxy server? A few of his IP addresses are in Atlanta, as well as a few other states. ChooChooKazoo user also has a few different IP addresses from different states.
The registration IP address for ChooChooKazoo shows that there have been two other registered users with the same IP address as ChooChooKazoo,Chumphries21 & qtpie:) both registered on March 27th, but neither have posted anything to the forum yet.
Also, users Chocolate, pymeister & thepianomaster, all three “real users” have IP addresses listed in the spam and open-relay blocking system, SORBS. Could this mean their IP addresses are on proxies?
Now, take a look at what user ChooChooKazoo posted and then edited 10 minutes later:
” – My name is Ashely Brown and I’m a real bidder on ChooChooKazoo”
and the edit:
+We have a charity auction for autism right now that I appreciate any and all of you participating in.”
ChooChooKazoo’s explanation:
“Originally Posted by ChooChooKazooI am one of the co-owners and i was letting a friend use my computer and they did not sign out of my name before posting on the forms. I am very sorry about all of this and can assure you that it is just a misunderstanding. I will no longer be letting friends use my computer lesson learned. I am sorry to have concerned you.thank you–choochookazoo”
ChooChooKazoo.com is a service of Arrch Reality, Inc. whose corporate status is active/noncompliance.
Why would ChooChooKazoo.com’s corporation be listed as noncompliant? And why would there be numerous users & multiple winners using the same IP address as ChooChooKazoo?
Once again, we’re requesting an explanation.
That’s why online pharmacies is becoming more popular over the last years. Well-known are remedies which are used to reduce inflammation caused by inflammation of the skeletal muscle etc. There were only few examples. Did somebody tell you about canadian generic Viagra? Maybe you yet know about the matter. Sexual malfunction can be a result of a physical condition. Even when it has a physical why, psychological problems can make the disorder worse. Sex drive problems are so commonly a product of how you feel that there is something to that “headache” saying after all.
E-Shopper March 29, 2010, 3:55 am
Interesting. And they're one of the highest rated sites in the review section. I think they're 5 reviews are the most for any site so far.
thepenmaster/thepian March 29, 2010, 6:16 am
I believe you were referring to me when you said thepianomaster. My nickname is, in fact, thepenmaster. I am not a bot on KKC, although serveral KKC members though that I was. I've not won that many auctions and I am not in NJ. I joined KKC yesterday after reading the article that you guys published about it. I've been fortunate enough to win a few auctions and now I anxiously await for the prizes to arrive. So far the staff at KKC has been helpful in responding to my requests–if you check the auction boards under the KKC section you will notice that I've posted several times about various issues at KKC–some glitches during bidding. Overall, I do like the site and have no major complaints…but i am a real person not affiliated with KKC in any way. I certainly hope there are no bots on the site as I feel as though I've encountered them before on other PA sites.
Happy bidding.
Joey McCollough March 29, 2010, 9:42 am
As far as my IP address goes, I use several computers in the various different areas of the country that I am in. I have been traveling a bit here the last few weeks. From Florida to Texas and back to Georgia. I have used the WiFi at a hotel, my bright house account in Fl, were I am now, and my at&t wireless card in Georgia.
I feel that we have been up front and honest with you guys, and I would like to remind you that we are not required to be a member of PAW to have a penny auction site. We did this to get help, advise, a few members (whom we appriciate) and some exposure.
We continue to answer your questions and respond to your posts to provide a good service. We are shipping items and sending emails out to users as their items are shipped. We are roughly on a seven to eight day shipping calender, that is still within our fourteen day terms and conditions. Everyone will get their items, rest assured.
If anyone has anymore questions feel free to ask, my email is j.a.mccollough@gmail.com. This is my personal email, last time I checked scammers to not give this out.
Thanks
Joey
Shenanigans March 29, 2010, 9:52 am
I've played on this site, and looked at each bid very carefully. They seem good, as far as the lack of shilling or bots from my experience.
I found an issue with their site, and was refunded within an hour or so of emailing them.
I, too, check their Corporate status as I saw that was the corporation they used for their PayPal (which is not a problem, but they should get a separate corporation for the PA company if the Realty company has any assets, just for asset protection). The non-compliance is NOT an issue. As he pointed out, it's a formality. Had there been an issue his status would have been "SUSPENDED/REVOKED".
With the explanation of "Ashley Brown", I feel this site should be removed from the red flag section. Someone NOT affiliated with the company made a mistake, which led to complete circumstantial evidence getting linked together to make this PA site look bad.
Norman D. Agan II March 29, 2010, 11:31 am
As you stated we have some explaining to do. Let me start off not with an explanation but a fact that anything, no matter how legit, if scrutinized can look suspicious. With that being said again I will state again, my name is Norman D. Agan II, born and raised in Douglasville GA. I currently reside in GA as well. At this point I will go through each of the accusations, state the truth and only the truth, I will not try to speculate on the actions of any of our users I will just state facts as they are.
1.) The user who started the speculations on the thread “Does this look suspicious to anyone else?” is a current penny auction owner. Not only this but every time a comment was placed about our site by this user they also attempted to convince others to come to their site. Seems like free advertising to me. I will also say that the majority of our users by far had a good things to say about us.
2.) About Sylvia613 – I work 4pm-12am at my current job. When I got home and read the post I responded and promptly e-mailed Sylvia to ask for her help in posting on here as well (as I have with many users now). I now would like to draw the line, I am no longer offering the 2 free bids to any users who post on here because frankly I feel it will never be enough, there will always be a new user and you can doubt them every time if you’d like. Now as far as the ip addresses, I have a verizon wireless card. This card is the “mifi card” and allows up to 5 users to use my internet connection. Sylvia also has a Verizon wireless card. Coincidence? I think not, all Verizon Wireless cards show up with a NJ ip as far as I’m aware. I would also like admin to please let us know, those 2 ip addresses, were they the same, or 2 different ip’s? I do not see why there is a concern here.
3.) Jmccollough (Joey) is currently still working for that mascot that he mentioned earlier. However for this business he has gone to part time. This means that atleast once a month he must drive to Fl, work for the weekend and then come back. Recently they moved from Fl back to Ga, while doing this they also took a trip to Tx. Of course no matter where we are we need and want to check up on the business as I’m sure he did. Again I do not see why there would be concern here.
4.) My own IP address…. As stated before I use the Verizon wireless card which I now know has a Nj IP. HOWEVER as any of you who have verizon cards know the max data usage plan you can get is 5Gb. For this reason anytime there is free wifi I use it. If you’d like I can list most places where i use wifi if you’d like to check…. Buffalow Wild Wings in Douglasville Ga, My mothers house when I go to visit in Douglasville Ga, Taco Mac in Douglasville Ga, My friends house in Macon Ga, and lets be honest anywhere else I can.
5.) Chumphries is my partner and yes he used the same ip because he was at my house using the mifi device I have.
6.) “My name is Ashley Brown and I’m a real bidder” What a dumb mistake, but with good intentions. So much good intentions that I did not even chastise her for what she did. I asked her not to “help me” anymore however she is a good friend and I appreciate the thought behind what she was trying to do. If you can’t understand that well I don’t know what to say to you.
7.) Noncompliance….. For those of you who don’t know it means you haven’t filed 1 form. It was a dumb error on our part due to a miscomunication between us partners however it was so easy to fix that I did so in 10 min. this morning and you can see it is now updated at http://corp.sos.state.ga.us/corp/soskb/CSearch.asp type in “Arrch” it’s the only company that comes up. We are now fully in compliance, thanks for pointing that out for us so we could realize our mistake.
8.) For the last comment on the post I would like to strongly appose what is being said there ….. First of all just because there are multiple users on this site under the same ip does not mean that there are multiple users on ours. Secondly it MOST DEFINITELY does not mean there are multiple winners from the same ip. the users on this site (from us) our owners who are here to answer any questions or concerns you may have. The users on our site are customers, people who pay money for entertainment and prizes. We provide the site they can play on and win things while knowing they can trust the company that provides it. We are that company, we stand here today to be judged by those who have done this for quite some time.
I know that at this point you can either make or break us and quite frankly it’s your decision. But I ask you, 1. if we were scamming you why have we not made lots of money. (and if you think we have please by all means find this money and bring it to me because I would like to know where it’s been hid) 2. why are we working so hard to provide such great customer service and responding as quickly as possible to e-mails and glitches? 3. Why have people received their items? I mean I want an Xbox, but I didn’t ship it to myself, I shipped it to our customers. and lastly 4. did I mention the free shipping…… why would we offer this if were just trying to hit that bottom line any way we could.
That is all I have. Feel free to judge as you will, but if you want a company that actually cares about it’s customers and works hard to make things right we’ll be here.
Thank you,
ChooChooKazoo
auctionwatcher March 29, 2010, 7:14 am
Well thanks for your responses but as you can see it seemed pretty odd for you to have three user accounts under the same IP address as your own the 3rd registered last night after this post, and the post by ashley, if you are not shill posting I hope you can understand why we thought you could have been, also we did not accuse you of anything just presented what we found odd. We hope to see you succeed if you are telling the truth for sure.
auctionwatcher March 29, 2010, 1:40 pm
Alright, sorry for the misunderstanding glad we were able to clear this up as many members had concerns. Thank you
Online penny auction March 30, 2010, 2:17 am
Hello,
Thanks for sharing this nice time i like to read you post.
Auction is a pretty good place to bid on products and acquire them easily.
Just bid on choosing products and 80% chances to win the product.
keep it up.
Amynys April 8, 2010, 8:02 am
I just joined this site and must tell you, the bidder names are real. I know because I am a bidder from different sites and saw their names on a few of the Penny Auction sites. Recently, I won a TV and cookware set. This is a wonderful site. I can tell you a few of these bidders are from BidOnCash and they don't give up bidding. I was bidding like crazy with a bidder whom I couldn't win on BidOnCash and then I used the autobidder and then again I manually bid and won! You need a strategy to win. Plus their bid packages are way better than BidOnCash. Unlike BidOnCash, they have excellent customer service. And for the record, I am located in New York State.