bidpax scam

A reader and customer of BidPax.com (which was iPennybid) recently wrote us to tell us about their experiences with them and tells us he thinks BidPax has their own fake testimonial website: BidPaxScam.com, which interestingly enough pays for Google Adwords.

“Hi PAW,
Plimus is useless. They force resolve our dispute so i’m not able to get a refund. Anyway, I think you must warn the public again. Bidpax is upping its game of deception by coming up with bogus testimonial website. The following can be a bit long, but please read through.

From BidPax.com to a PAW reader: On 7 November, bidpax said:
“No, we do not want to see the screenshots from a website that accepts paid advertisements from other penny auction websites while claiming they are impartial. As far as we are concerned, pennyauctionwatch.com is not a reliable source of information because of the way it conducts business. And the fact it has no listed address, phone number or the information behind who is running the website. We are a new website, and winners have absolutely no reason to write about their wins. Why? Because winners do not want to share their experiences most of the time. Many of our winners have strategies that they use to outbid the competition and it serves them no advantage writing reviews about us because it will increase the postivity about our site meaning we grow and their chances of winning decrease. We are in the process of gathering video testimonials from users that we will be displaying on YouTube by December. But, the losers on the website, one being you, out of the thousands of registered users we have feel it’s appropriate to write about us because you feel you’ve lost money. Which is quite understanable, but also the pitfalls of penny auctions. Would you be writing about us if you were successful at any of the auctions? We are a rapidly growing website and we anticipate there are going to be people who lose and will call us a scam, it’s the nature of the penny auction business. Take a look at “Swoopo”, the other main competitor of ours. Have a look at how many bad reviews they have and the amount of websites they have dedicated to calling them a scam. Here’s one: www.swooposcam.ca Why isn’t pennyauctionwatch.com writing about them? Once again, refund request denied.”

This reader wrote to us to tell us that iPennyBid/BidPax insists the numerous negative comments about BidPax that have been left on this site are all shilled comments. They are definitely not shilled by us, they are real comments from unique IP addresses.  We showed him screenshots of the backend as proof.

We find it interesting that the only two comments from people claiming to have received items come from a proxied IP address, BidPax also commented under a proxy.

PAW reader to BidPax: I replied on 8 Nov:
“Now that I have proofs that the comments are not shilled, you’re giving another excuse that it is not reliable etc. How about me asking – how do I know if your site is not shilled? PROVE it. there is such a thing as a private DNS. you can contact pennyauctionwatch.com if you want and I don’t think they ever claimed to be impartial. Who’s running bidpax by the way? At least i know chris bauman is senior manager of Swoopo and he’s a real face. Let’s hear bidpax come out and defend yourself. You are shooting yourself in the foot by saying users do not wish to write about you guys so that they can increased their chances of winning BUT yet you would show VIDEO testimonies of them. Thanks for contradicting yourself. By the way, real winners DO write about their wins. A Swoopo winner even writes about his strategies. That’s a REAL site, not a scam like yours which no one would speak up for. And to use Swoopo as a further example since you have cited it, there’s even a community site for Swoopo winners. And in other sites and forums, there are many winners who stood up for Swoopo as well as there are complaints. Bidpax? let me repeat again – THERE is STILL no authenticated proofs that anyone has won anything in the WORLD WIDE WEB from bidpax. You have MANY auctions that have been closed and ALL you have are COMPLAINTS. NO ONE has ever claimed they have won anything nor STOOD UP for you. The onus is for you to prove yourself which you have not.”
(Me: and of course, Plimus do not read all these. they’re just in for the transaction money. thumbs down)

“After this dispute in Nov, bidpax set up a website to “authenticate” winners and even ADVERTISE on google!!! The website?http://www.bidpaxscam.com/ (do a search on bidpax scam and the advert comes up)

1. The website is set up on 4 Nov. I believe shortly i claimed that Swoopo has winners backing them up in the above dispute msg. (they can change the date a message is posted)

2. Bidpax is an idiot. Look at the user comments. http://www.bidpaxscam.com/bidpax-is-not-a-scam#respond
The timing of the 3 winning comments are 10.17pm, 10.20pm and 10.22pm – all on the SAME day. AND they attempt to discredit PAW again

3. Who in the right frame of mind will spend money to advertise a site to support an auction site that he has won in? Not only that. The site creator calls himself BidPax.

Please warn users of www.bidpaxscam.com

One more thing, the previous bogus site http://bidpax.wordpress.com/ became active in NOV again.

These rogues are dangerous!!! Must get rid of such scums!”-PAW Reader

We have never once made claims that BidPax/iPennyBid.com was a scam, we only told you that it in our opinion it looked like iPennyBid MIGHT have shill bidders and opened it up for discussion. We even told iPennyBid by e-mail that they are welcome to prove themselves and the number of unsatisfied customers who  have commented here and all over the Internet wrong.

Is it a mere coincidence that BidPax, in their e-mail to their customer, and a commentator on BidPaxScam.com/winner from Australia both make mention of the website swooposcam.ca and why we have not talked about that on PennyAuctionWatch.

Why have we not talked about Swooposcam.ca? Simple, Swoopo was the first (as far as we know) penny auction in the world and has a significant amount of traffic, they have told many media outlets including the BBC that they do not shill their auctions. Swooposcam.ca is not saying Swoopo MIGHT have bots, they are making a claim as a matter of fact that they use bots:

“Similar to the above example, Swoopo sold ’300 bids’, which at the time were worth $.75 each, for $700.80. Buying them directly through the site would only cost you $225, so why the hell would someone pay over $700 for them? It’s simple, those damn bots are at it again!”-Swooposcam.ca

How does Swooposcam.ca have proof of this? No one has proof without seeing  the scripts & financial records.

In closing, since we are located in the USA and BidPax is not open to the US market we have not actually seen BidPax.com in action, but we have seen their two previous auctions iPennyBid and BidVoo.com, readers have sent in screenshots and left many comments on previous posts. Here are screenshots of both BidPaxScam.com and of the comments left on BidPaxScam.com.

Now the question we should all ask BidPax is this:

1. why are they anonymous?
2. why is their server located offshore with Zentek-International? The same hosting used by them when they ran iPennyBid (Canada based?) and  BidVoo (California based?)
   
3. and finally, why were the only positive comments (2) and their own comment left on this site posted from a proxied IP’s? (not to mention our blog software automatically detected it as spam)

Have you tried BidPax? Please tell us about your experiences with them and feel free to join our forum.  Thanks!

Disclaimer: Comments and views submitted to this website are not necessarily the same views held by PennyAuctionWatch.com.

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