Home >

Posts tagged as:

fraud

Winners24.com Not Responding to Winner

by auctionwatcher on February 13, 2010

Winners24.com is an Estonian penny auction site that launched in August of 2008.

A reader just wrote to us to tell us about his poor experience with them.
He tells us that he won a Samsung HDTV back in June of last year, Winners24.com told him that the auction had been terminated but then e-mailed back [...]

Continue Reading 2 comments Legit or Not?

Pennybiddr.com Alleged Shill Bidders

by auctionwatcher on January 18, 2010

“613Bid,” one of our forum members, has just investigated penny auction site PennyBiddr.com and requested we post his findings here. It looks like he may be right about this one, thank you 613bid, we appreciate your diligence!!

We already know that the PHPPennyAuction.com penny auction script has bot bidders programmed in (more on this coming soon- [...]

Continue Reading 14 comments Legit or Not?

TdBids Requests User’s Tax Numbers on Registration

by auctionwatcher on January 3, 2010

TdBids.net is now requesting tax numbers (social security numbers?) from all registered users. The FBI warns about Internet auction fraud, they tell us that “There should be no reason to give out your social security number or drivers license number to the seller.”
If it is not necessary why then is TDBIDS.net requesting this sensitive [...]

Continue Reading 4 comments Legit or Not?

For10Cents Gets an F

by auctionwatcher on December 27, 2009

For10cents.com, the very same penny auction site that appeared to have left shill comments on the Penny Auction Watch forum,   resulting in our terminating their ability to advertise with us gets an F from the Better Business Bureau of Chicago.
From  BBB.org:

“BBB Rating for For10cents.com
Based on BBB files, For10cents.com has a BBB Rating of F on [...]

Continue Reading 3 comments Legit or Not?

When Will the Bots Stop?

by auctionwatcher on December 13, 2009

Today, The Dominion Post, New Zealand published the article  Penny Auctions Trouble Watchdogs, raising the question of legality and questioning whether penny auctions are akin to gambling.

A Consumer Affairs Victoria spokesman said that they had reservations about penny auctions,

“In a traditional online auction transaction, the losing bidder is not out of pocket.” According [...]

Continue Reading 4 comments Auction News, Penny Auction Strategies

Penny Auction Owner of TdBids.net Admits to Shill Bidding

by auctionwatcher on December 5, 2009

We recently exposed TdBids’ fraudulent shill bidding, now the owner admits to it. Read the posts in the forum here.

dtr777777 // < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
// < ![CDATA[
//
Member

Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 60
Reputation: 10

Quote:

Originally Posted by stewartfan
Why do you bid on your own [...]

Continue Reading 4 comments Legit or Not?

The New York Times on Losing Auctions

by auctionwatcher on October 24, 2009

In today’s The New York Times article Losing Out After Winning an Online Auction, Alina Tugend warns readers of auction fraud and even mentions penny auctions Swoopo and GoBid:
“There’s a lot of ways to lose money with online auctions,” said Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League, a nonprofit group. … To make [...]

Continue Reading 1 comment Auction News

iPennybid is Now BidVoo

by auctionwatcher on October 5, 2009

Remember iPennybid? We received a legal threat, many negative comments from unhappy iPennyBid bidders and found out that iPennyBid required scans of bidders driver’s licenses. Now iPennyBid is gone and the offline message reads:

“Due to licensing reasons, iPennyBid.com is no longer available in your country. We will post more information when available.”
Licensing reasons? Please look [...]

Continue Reading 8 comments Legit or Not?

The Psychology of Scams

by auctionwatcher on September 27, 2009

We already know that there are con artists at work utilizing the entertainment shopping phenomenon to profit. With this in mind, you may be interested in reading this fascinating study on the psychology of con games.”The psychology of scams: Provoking and committing errors of judgement” was prepared for the UK Office of Fair Trading by [...]

Continue Reading 0 comments Penny Auction Strategies

Pardoo Might Be Allegedly Shill Bidding Their Penny Auctions

by auctionwatcher on September 4, 2009

Penny Auction Pardoo just launched this week. The question was raised in the forum of odd bidding patterns and possibly shill bidding bots on Pardoo.
Curious as to what software Pardoo.com is using? Let’s take a  look at their sourcecode:
Pardoo’s software, Cactus CMS 3.8 comes from Estonia based software developer DigitalFruit.ee.
Does DigitalFruit.ee [...]

Continue Reading 11 comments Legit or Not?