I have worked on a website for a client in the past 2 months which was using the PennyAuctionSoft.com script for his website.
Based on my clients experiance with that company and my experiance with the script I have decided to investigate the company to determine it's ligitability.
In the following report I will outline the steps I undertook to determine that PAS (PennyAuctionSoft.com) is a Indian company masking as a Canadian company and ripping people off with a extremely poor quality product.
1. The Company:
a) Their Address: On the PAS site they display their address as being at 720 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario in Canada. However they do not specify which number or which floor. The building at 720 King Street is a 20 floor building which offices for large companies. Virgin Mobile and Workopolis.com have their offices in that building. I decided to investigate this further. I called CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) which is the company managing the leases for that building. For those of you who don't know, CBRE is one of the biggest commercial reator companies in the world. I called the local CBRE office in Toronto and spoke to the manager handling the 720 King Street building. He confirmed with me that there was no such company called Penny Auction Soft which had a office in that building. I proceeded to call the 2nd company which handles leases in that building and the lady who I spoke to also confirmed that no company with that name had offices at 720 King Street. She did mention that it could be possible that they had a mailing address with The UPS Store which has a location in that building. So I called up the UPS Store at 720 King Street West and they also confirmed that PAS does not have a mailbox with them.
Their Phone Number: My client always had a lot of trouble trying to reach them on the phone. When you call their toll-free number is it a automated attendant which answers, but not a regular one you usually hear when you call a company, it is a voice recording but with a robot. It was using a text-to-voice converter. This is highly unusual and most unprofessional. Only someone trying to conceal their voice (accent) would do this.c) Their Wesite & WHOIS Search: I then proceeded to do a WHOIS search on the domain name, Pennyauctionsoft - Buy the best Penny Auction software, Swoopo clone today. Upon doing the WHOIS is showed me that the domain was registered with "DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD.". Now to some people that may not mean anything but if you look closely at the company extension (PVT. LTD.) this is a Indian company. Only companies registered in India use the PVT. LTD extension. You can verify this by doing a Google search.
Now at this point alarm bells are ringing. Why would a Canadian based company, use an address which doesn't seem to have them listed, use a robot voice automated attendant phone system and register a domain name with a India based company? It would NEVER happen and if it did then there is cause for concern. How do I know this? Because I am Canadian and I know Canadians.
2. The Script:
The PAS script itself may look nice and functional once you first get it but once you start using it LOT's and LOT's of bugs appear. PAS does advertise that it is a clone, however it is not a working copy of a clone. Once you have a good amount of traffic on the site the script will expereince major issues. From our research (my client and I) we have not found one working copy of the PAS script. Meaning one operational working website which is actively selling products online through their site. There were so many bugs that I cannot list them all here. However one of the major ones was the timers. We had to get a expert PHP programmer to create a fix for this. In the end my client purchased another script because to take the time to fix the current bugs would cost more than buying a new one. Hoeever that is still to determine if the 2nd one he purchased is good quality as well. When navigating the PAS script site you will notice broken links or links to Swoopo.com??????? From what we determined, the people at PAS simply purchased a copy of a penny auction script and dropped their logo, created a new design and entered in different text and then package it up and sold it. No actual work or fixing was ever done on the script itself. So it's a knockoff of a knockoff. Basically to sum it all up, when you purchase the PAS script it's like buying a brand new Mercedes but when you get in and drive it you discover it's actually a old-beat up Hyundai with a bad engine.
3. The PAMA Seal:
This is quite funny in a sad sort of way. If you go to the PAS site, Pennyauctionsoft - Buy the best Penny Auction software, Swoopo clone today, you will see on the bottom right hand corner a yellow and blue seal certifying that PAS is 'PAMA Certified. PAMA stands for 'Penny Auction Merchants Association'.
Now just for the fun of it, go to the PAMA website, Penny Auction Merchants Association - Know who to trust, where to bid and save
I am going to go page by page and point out some things for you. Once that is done I will give you my opinion and then you can see for yourself.
a) Home page: In the proud members area at the bottom only two websites are actually members of PAMA. One which is PAS and the other is PennyAuctionListings.com. I did a WHOIS search on PennyAuctionListings.com and guess what? It's registered with the same India based company that PAS is registered with. Don't take my work for it, do a whois search yourself.
About Us page: Under 'Success Stories' on the right hand side, there are two success stories, but they are fake. Look at the text, it is latin gibberish. This is the text design template creators use to fill in the text on a web template. Would a reputable Association forget to change this on their site? Absolutely not.c) Forum page: There are no threads, no one has posted anything.
d) Contact Us page: They state two address, one in WA and another in Vancouver, BC. I called their toll-free number and I get the same robot activated automated attendant system. What a coincidence!
e) WHOIS Search: Now here is the really interesting part. I did a WHOIS search on Penny Auction Merchants Association - Know who to trust, where to bid and save. Guess what?! It is the same company that PAS is registered with (DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD).
4. Member "Buybidz" on PennyAuctionWatch.com:
I have been on the PAW forums and read many threads. I remember seeing the moderator make a comment about how the member 'BuyBidz' had the same IP address as that of PAS. If you read carefully you will see BuyBidz is the ONLY member which gives very positive comments about the PAS script. Has anyone seen the BuyBidz.com website? Nor have I. If you go to www.buybiz.com coming soon! you don't get a penny auction site but a domain parking page. I have been in online business for over 10 years and I have seen this type of thing MANY, MANY times. People go online and posty positive comments about their own product or service. My conclusion is simple, BUYBIDZ is the same guy (or a friend) of PAS. No question about it.
5. My Motives:
If anyone is questioning my motives or reputation I ask you simply to do the research on your own and come to your own conclusions. I do not sell penny auction software, I am not a competitor and I don't have a grudge against PAS. However, I have been screwed many times in the past and I have always taken action against the people who did. That is the law of business, eat or be eaten. I do not like to see others get screwed and if I can help someone avoid that, then i'll help. My motives in doing this investigation and posting this thread are simple: 1) Because my client said I should post my findings and 2) I though i'd save someone else the grief of dealing with PAS. Now, if anybody requires my services in un-installing the PAS script or doing research on another penny auction software company I will charge for that. Business is business and if you hire my time, I will have to charge. I have to earn a living also. If you require my assiatance have someone who is a member of this forum and can vouch for me. I will not display my email address here on this thread but you can PM me and I will respond.
My Conclusion: After I did all that research it was quite clear to me what PAS is a scam. It is a India based company or individual masking as a Canadian company ripping people off with a poor quality product and lying about their location, their affiliations and their own reputation.You can do your own research and come to your own conclusions but I think it's pretty clear.
If you have not bought a script from PAS - DO NOT BUY IT if you value your hard earned money.
If you have already purchased a PAS script here is what I recomment you do (this is a recommendation only, you can make your own decisions)
1) Initiate a chargeback with your bank/credit card company or ask for a refund from PAS (i doubt they will honor it). In brief GET YOUR MONEY BACK.
2) If you have it installed on your server, un-install it. I have discovered back doors in their script and they can infect your server with Malware. Once un-installed ask your hosting company to do a Malware scan on your server and scan your computer using your Antivirus software.
3) Before purchasing any new penny auction software do your research or contact me and I can offer that service. (send me a PM)
4) SPREAD THE WORD, tell anyone you know who has purchased their software or is thinking about it, NOT TO BUY IT!
My name is Hans, I am a web designer.
I have worked on a website for a client in the past 2 months which was using the PennyAuctionSoft.com script for his website.
Based on my clients experience with that company and my experience with the script I have decided to investigate the company to determine if it is legitimate.
In the following report I will outline the steps I undertook to determine that PAS (PennyAuctionSoft.com) is an Indian company masking as a Canadian company and ripping people off with an extremely poor quality product.
1. The Company:
a) Their Address: On the PAS site they display their address as being at 720 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario in Canada. However they do not specify which number or which floor. The building at 720 King Street is a 20 floor building which offices for large companies. Virgin Mobile and Workopolis.com have their offices in that building. I decided to investigate this further. I called CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) which is the company managing the leases for that building. For those of you who don't know, CBRE is one of the biggest commercial realtor companies in the world. I called the local CBRE office in Toronto and spoke to the manager handling the 720 King Street building. He confirmed with me that there was no such company called Penny Auction Soft which had an office in that building. I proceeded to call the 2nd company which handles leases in that building and the lady who I spoke to also confirmed that no company with that name had offices at 720 King Street. She did mention that it could be possible that they had a mailing address with The UPS Store which has a location in that building. So I called up the UPS Store at 720 King Street West and they also confirmed that PAS does not have a mailbox with them.
Their Phone Number: My client always had a lot of trouble trying to reach them on the phone. When you call their toll-free number is it an automated attendant which answers, but not a regular one you usually hear when you call a company, it is a voice recording but with a robot. It was using a text-to-voice converter. This is highly unusual and most unprofessional. Only someone trying to conceal their voice (accent) would do this.c) Their Website & WHOIS Search: I then proceeded to do a WHOIS search on the domain name, Pennyauctionsoft - Buy the best Penny Auction software, Swoopo clone today. Upon doing the WHOIS is showed me that the domain was registered with "DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD.". Now to some people that may not mean anything but if you look closely at the company extension (PVT. LTD.) this is an Indian company. Only companies registered in India use the PVT. LTD extension. You can verify this by doing a Google search.
Now at this point alarm bells are ringing. Why would a Canadian based company, use an address which doesn't seem to have them listed, use a robot voice automated attendant phone system and register a domain name with a India based company? It would NEVER happen and if it did then there is cause for concern. How do I know this? Because I am Canadian and I know Canadians.
2. The Script:
The PAS script itself may look nice and functional once you first get it but once you start using it LOT's and LOT's of bugs appear. PAS does advertise that it is a clone, however it is not a working copy of a clone. Once you have a good amount of traffic on the site the script will experience major issues. From our research (my client and I) we have not found one working copy of the PAS script. Meaning one operational working website which is actively selling products online through their site. There were so many bugs that I cannot list them all here. However one of the major ones was the timers. We had to get an expert PHP programmer to create a fix for this. In the end my client purchased another script because to take the time to fix the current bugs would cost more than buying a new one. However that is still to determine if the 2nd one he purchased is good quality as well. When navigating the PAS script site you will notice broken links or links to Swoopo.com??????? From what we determined, the people at PAS simply purchased a copy of a penny auction script and dropped their logo, created a new design and entered in different text and then package it up and sold it. No actual work or fixing was ever done on the script itself. So it's a knockoff of a knockoff. Basically to sum it all up, when you purchase the PAS script it's like buying a brand new Mercedes but when you get in and drive it you discover it's actually an old-beat up Hyundai with a bad engine.
3. The PAMA Seal:
This is quite funny in a sad sort of way. If you go to the PAS site, Pennyauctionsoft - Buy the best Penny Auction software, Swoopo clone today, you will see on the bottom right hand corner a yellow and blue seal certifying that PAS is 'PAMA Certified. PAMA stands for 'Penny Auction Merchants Association'.
Now just for the fun of it, go to the PAMA website, Penny Auction Merchants Association - Know who to trust, where to bid and save
I am going to go page by page and point out some things for you. Once that is done I will give you my opinion and then you can see for yourself.
a) Home page: In the proud members area at the bottom only two websites are actually members of PAMA. One which is PAS and the other is PennyAuctionListings.com. I did a WHOIS search on PennyAuctionListings.com and guess what? It's registered with the same India based company that PAS is registered with. Don't take my work for it, do a WHOIS search you.
About Us page: Under 'Success Stories' on the right hand side, there are two success stories, but they are fake. Look at the text, it is Latin gibberish. This is the text design template creators use to fill in the text on a web template. Would a reputable Association forget to change this on their site? Absolutely not.c) Forum page: There are no threads, no one has posted anything.
d) Contact Us page: They state two addresses, one in WA and another in Vancouver, BC. I called their toll-free number and I get the same robot activated automated attendant system. What a coincidence!
e) WHOIS Search: Now here is the really interesting part. I did a WHOIS search on Penny Auction Merchants Association - Know who to trust, where to bid and save. Guess what?! It is the same company that PAS is registered with (DIRECTI INTERNET SOLUTIONS PVT. LTD).
4. Member "Buybidz" on PennyAuctionWatch.com:
I have been on the PAW forums and read many threads. I remember seeing the moderator make a comment about how the member 'BuyBidz' had the same IP address as that of PAS. If you read carefully you will see BuyBidz is the ONLY member which gives very positive comments about the PAS script. Has anyone seen the BuyBidz.com website? Nor have I. If you go to www.buybiz.com coming soon! you don't get a penny auction site but a domain parking page. I have been in online business for over 10 years and I have seen this type of thing MANY, MANY times. People go online and paste positive comments about their own product or service. My conclusion is simple, BUYBIDZ is the same guy (or a friend) of PAS. No question about it.
5. My Motives:
If anyone is questioning my motives or reputation I ask you simply to do the research on your own and come to your own conclusions. I do not sell penny auction software, I am not a competitor and I don't have a grudge against PAS. However, I have been screwed many times in the past and I have always taken action against the people who did. That is the law of business, eat or be eaten. I do not like to see others get screwed and if I can help someone avoid that, then I’ll help. My motives in doing this investigation and posting this thread are simple: 1) Because my client said I should post my findings and 2) I though I’d save someone else the grief of dealing with PAS. Now, if anybody requires my services in un-installing the PAS script or doing research on another penny auction software company I will charge for that. Business is business and if you hire my time, I will have to charge. I have to earn a living also. If you require my assistance have someone who is a member of this forum and can vouch for me. I will not display my email address here on this thread but you can PM me and I will respond.
My Conclusion: After I did all that research it was quite clear to me what PAS is a scam. It is an India based company or individual masking as a Canadian company ripping people off with a poor quality product and lying about their location, their affiliations and their own reputation. You can do your own research and come to your own conclusions but I think it's pretty clear.
If you have not bought a script from PAS - DO NOT BUY IT if you value your hard earned money.
If you have already purchased a PAS script here is what I recommend you do (this is a recommendation only, you can make your own decisions)
1) Initiate a chargeback with your bank/credit card company or ask for a refund from PAS (I doubt they will honor it). In brief GET YOUR MONEY BACK.
2) If you have it installed on your server, un-install it. I have discovered back doors in their script and they can infect your server with Malware. Once un-installed ask your hosting company to do a Malware scan on your server and scan your computer using your Antivirus software.
3) Before purchasing any new penny auction software do your research or contact me and I can offer that service. (send me a PM)
4) SPREAD THE WORD, tell anyone you know who has purchased their software or is thinking about it, NOT TO BUY IT!
Edited by PennyAuctionWatch, 20 September 2010 - 12:27 AM.
merged threads
