Ridiculous Reviews for BidStick.com Seem to Point to the Penny Auction – Yet Again

BidStick.com is just one of a few penny auction sites that have been open well over 2 years now. However, it’s definitely a penny auction site that leaves us asking questions.

Reserves & Children in Africa

1. First, way back in August of 2009, we posted about how BidStick stated that they had reserve penny auctions on their site, and that they sponsored children in Africa. This post yielded comments from disappointed bidders who had told us they had been waiting weeks for items from the penny auction site.

Millions from Diamonds?

2. Then, there was that time in October, when we found the press release claiming that BidStick was in the final stages of acquiring $5 million private equity financing from the Diamond Institute of America. I just sent them an e-mail now – though it’s been two years, the DIA should’ve been contacted back in ’09 to confirm this information.

“Reserve System”

3. Later, in January of last year, we found out from a past bidder of BidStick, that BidStick allegedly admitted to using bidding bots, as a “reserve system.”

We also found two positive comments that were from users who claimed to have good experiences with BidStick’s penny auctions. These comments were left by two different usernames, yet both posters shared the same IP address.

questionable penny auction reviews

Shared IP Addresses

4.  Also, there were 4 others who shared the same IP address when they posted about Bidstick.com and talked about their experiences in our forum:

bidstick penny auctions comments seem shilled

5. It wasn’t even a week later until we found out that they were allegedly “blackmailing” a Penny Auction Watch forum member, the user told us that the owner of BidStick would not ship any of the user’s won items until we would remove the comments that this user posted in the forum. The comments left by the bidder merely told of the bidder’s experience on the penny auction site.

We also found what looked to have been BidStick video testimonials starring minors. The videos have since been removed from YouTube.

A Penny Auction “Investigator?”

6. Then came Penny Auction Investigator in June of ’10.

This investigator  has all sorts of good things to say about BidStick and of course, bashes us. I definitely believe that PennyAuctionInvestigator.com is ran by the same folks, or guy, that runs BidStick.com. *Click on the URL to read what I found out which leads me to believe this.* In short:’

Monkey Business

7. Bet you didn’t even see this one coming. BidStick began selling real live mammals and it wasn’t even April 1st. At least they advertised that they did, we observed users bidding:  “BidStick.com – Selling Marmoset at huge discounts.”

Did BidStick ever sell a real, live, breathing Marmoset to anyone? Did they even hold a license with the USDA to do so?

20110603-084107.jpg

This now brings us to recent comments from a few? (seemingly) movie casting aficionados. 

1. Take a look – these are from the backend of our comments section:

bidstick reviews
Click to enlarge to view entire screenshot image with comments.

 

So, the bottom two comments come from users posting from the same ISP, (11/2/2010: 67.205.202.50 & 5/17/2010: 67.205.203.113) and all three “reviewers” use a first and last name. But what about the e-mail addresses they use? The two with the same ISP pointing to Florida, as you can see, share the same e-mail address: moviecasting2004@yahoo.com.

Sarah Johnson, on the other hand, posts from an IP originating out of Medellin, Columbia. (190.71.148.36) Look at her e-mail address. MovieCasting2003@yahoo.com. Her comment came in last night after a comment from a user who claims to have been waiting 7 weeks for her won items with lack of response from the penny auction site.

What does movie casting & Super Mario have to do with BidStick – a penny auction site?

2. MovieCasting2003 + Google =

A comment was left on the website http://www.online-game-walkthrough.com/2008/06/sony-announces-in-game-advertising.html by a user named moviecasting2003, the comment linked Super Mario to the website GameJokers.com.

 

 Check out Super Mario games!

Posted on June 5, 2008 5:05 PM

 

penny auction bidstick and gamejokers
So, on a hunch…

A brief whois check of both GameJokers.com & BidStick.com shows that both sites are hosted with the same web host. Plus – both domains were purchased from the same registrar. But there wasn’t enough information… yet.

3. GameJokers’ source code

gamejokers penny auction bidstickTells us that GameJokers.com’s Google Analytics account ID is  UA-10088100.

4. Coincidentally?

BidStick’s source code tells us that BidStick.com’s (the penny auction site) Google Analytics account ID is also UA-10088100.

bidstick penny auction

Now, just in case you’re unfamiliar with Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free program for webmasters that lets site owners do all sorts of cool stuff. They can see how many people visited their website, how they found it, where they came from, as well as a site’s bounce rate – what percent of users closed the site as soon as they came to it. It also shows how many clicks went to a certain targeted “campaign” URL to see how effective advertising is, and a few other things.

The code right after the UA-xxxxxx- in this case 10088100, is for a particular Google Analytics user. The trailing number is a site specific identifier. Based on this information I think it’s safe to suggest that both websites, the penny auction site and the game site, are using the same Google Analytics account.

But there’s more…

5. Let’s go back and take a look at who owns the GameJokers.com domain name:

creahq@gmail.com

The domain is registered to someone with the email address creahq@gmail.com.

A search of that e-mail address points to BidStick.com as well:

creahq google bidstick

Also see this Google cached entry for the full whois info on Bidstick, (expand/show whois on the bottom).

Back to the investigator. The Penny Auction Investigator = BidStick?

When we search the Google Analytics code for BidStick it brings us to a page with info on other sites that are also in the same Analytics account. Guess what? PennyAuctionInvestigator.com shares accounts with BidStick:penny auction investigator

 

From Penny Auction Investigator’s description:

“Penny Auction Investigator – Penny Auction Scam – Penny Auction Sites
Trusted Auction Researchers Providing Consumers With An Unbiased Report On All Online Auctions Industry. Call US 24 / 7 to report incident now. Auction fraud protection and research service. Auction reviews, information and news. List of top rated sites and a penny auction directory. We write about online auction scams, shill bidding, fraud, and other online auction industry news”

What do you think is going on here?

Looking for more info & a place to discuss penny auctions?

Feel free to subscribe to our free e-mail updates and join our forum.

 

Photo Credits: Stephen Pof – Shocked guy – The rest are screenshots.

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 along know about the matter. Sexual disfunction can be a result of a physical condition. Even when it has a physical cause, psychological problems can make the disorder worse. Sex drive problems are so commonly a product of how you feel that there is some to that “headache” saying after all.

Related Posts with Thumbnails
About the author: Connect with me on Google+
7 comments… add one
  • Tim July 28, 2011, 9:35 am

    Wow people go a long way to cover up their tracks, but if you cover up crap with crap, its still crap

    Reply
  • Andrew July 28, 2011, 5:13 pm

    I totally believe that they’re not 100% on the level, but I’ve spent less than $50 on that site [including the purchasing of the items + the $5 shipping] and won about 10 things. Nothing big ticket. A couple mini-cams, an RC spider, a blu-ray player [most expensive thing I’ve won], and yeah, it took almost exactly 8 weeks from the time I won till I received them, but I did get them [might’ve helped that I politely pestered them via email a bit]. But all the free bids they give away on facebook makes it a lot easier to just go for things.

    Reply
    • Amanda July 28, 2011, 5:43 pm

      Hey Andrew, thanks for telling us. I am glad to hear this!

      Reply
  • nobody July 29, 2011, 2:31 pm

    i gave everyone all they needed to know about bidstick years ago on the digg, my name was hoklin, i exposed his robots, showed you all about the robots used numbers in their names and more,i am amazed that this place is even still around and the people running it ain’t dead or in jail

    Reply
  • nobody July 29, 2011, 2:32 pm

    also go look at bid66 to me it looks like a complete clone

    Reply
  • pennyauctionwatch August 2, 2011, 4:30 pm

    Hi Nobody, thanks for letting us know/ I’ll track down your Digg post & see what else you found. Thank you

    Reply
  • pennyauctionwatch August 2, 2011, 4:30 pm

    Hi Nobody, thanks for letting us know/ I’ll track down your Digg post & see what else you found. Thank you

    Reply

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.