South Africa May Deem Penny Auctions Illegal Gambling

south africa penny auctions February 14, 2011

According to an article posted today by Jan Vermeulen for MyBroadband.co.za News, Smokoo may become illegal gambling: DTI, South Africa may soon put all penny auctions operating in the country under gambling regulations and ban their operation. “Earlier this year one of South Africa’s top information and communications technology (ICT) lawyers said that penny-auction sites [...]

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Updated BidWat Responds: BidWat Allegedly Posted Shill Reviews in the Penny Auction Watch Forum

bidwat January 14, 2011

2nd Update 2/7: It appears BidWat has pulled the YouTube videos. Update: Bidwat’s owner has posted videos responding to this post and apologizes for “shill” reviews, he requested that we post the videos here: : Recently penny auction site Bidwat.com inquired about advertising on this site, however, due diligence had to first be done before [...]

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Investigation Into All Penny Auction Sites is Imperative

walle December 5, 2010

With developers making bot scripts readily available and even packaged into their software they sell, it’s easy for penny auction sites to siphon money from hundreds if not thousands of customers, who’s to say that they even have to ship ANY items? In a previous post we published “Requesting An Explanation,” in it was presented [...]

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Enough is Enough!

lies November 20, 2010

Where else can someone make so much money and not even really have to work for it? Ok, maybe that’s just a stupid question, but really think about it:  Anyone can go into the penny auction business and make a huge amount of money, it’s harder to make it when you have low traffic and [...]

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Spoow: Will I Get My 24k Gold iPod?

Gold Ipod Touch Spoo November 14, 2010

UPDATE 12/22/10: After this post was seen by Spoow I did get a refund of my money, they told me they only had a small number of customers. I still found it odd that they say this yet they seemed to have tons of bidders bidding on their site. You’d think I would’ve learned by [...]

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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Penny Auctions

good bad ugly September 29, 2010

Some rights reserved by Cayusa The Good The ability to get stuff cheap – computers, gift cards, games, iPods, housewares, etc. Thrilling – “entertainment shopping” can be fun Buy it Now – Even better = minimal loss to consumer The Bad – (Downsides of Legit Penny Auctions) Lose money -Watch what you spend, pay your [...]

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Oversight is Necessary

oversight approval September 17, 2010

Over the course of the last 19 months we’ve found many penny auction sites that have done the following dishonest and/or fraudulent acts: Shill bid (bid against their paying bidders, either with software to do this, or manually). Failed to ship items out, some have even relished in this. A violation of the Consumer Protection [...]

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You’re Invited to Be a Guest Blogger!

Thumbnail image for You’re Invited to Be a Guest Blogger! September 1, 2010

Some rights reserved by Kristina B Maybe you’re a penny auction bidder and you can’t get enough, or maybe you’ve spent a lot of money and walked away empty handed. While anyone can join our forum and post comments we’d like to invite you to post your penny auction story here to the frontpage of [...]

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Bidders with No E-mail Addresses BigFootBids.com

shill bidding July 29, 2010

Well, we ran Firebug on yet another site running on the PHPpennyauction script BigFootBids.com. We found that the bidders that are currently bidding have no e-mail addresses associated with their accounts (there’s a bug in the script that allows for us to see the e-mail addresse). Since we know that this script has been known [...]

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Alleged Shill Bidders on FractionWholesale.com

shill bidding July 29, 2010

Is this a real e-mail address:”ataaaaaaaaa@s33fsgg7s8d.com?” How about “1t4arahabaaraa3aakw5zgaljannfgf3@s33fsg9s8d.com,” “a1aaaa1a1aa@s33fsag9s8d.com?” Have you tried the penny auction site FractionWholesale.com? We did last night, as soon as we placed a bid we were outbid instantly by an autobidder when the timer still had many minutes left to countdown to the last few seconds. We ran firebug on [...]

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Is MainBids Living Up to Their Fair Auction Guarantee?

mainbids July 18, 2010

Penny auction MainBids.com displays 11,600 ended auctions, and 9 items are actively being bid on with countdowns nearing zero, 5 more are queued to end within the next 20 minutes. The items that are currently ending are not cheap either, take a look :

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Joxed.com 18,826 Penny Auctions, Really?

February 21, 2010

According to penny auction site Joxed.com, they show 18,626 ended auctions since December 30th, 2009. But were the items on Joxed auctioned off to real people or bots? It is in our opinion that it appears they have autobidders (bots) shill bidding on their auctions. Joxed.com has a very low Alexa traffic ranking of 1,874,360 [...]

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Looks Like Bots on CrayZbidZ.com

February 16, 2010

It is in our opinion that the penny auction site CrayZbidZ.com has the autobidder (shill bot bidder) function switched on in their phpPennyauction.com script. If they are trying to make money doing this they truly are crazy. Be careful!

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Penny Auction Scripts for Sale with Shill Bots

February 16, 2010

There are currently two penny auction sites for sale on the website marketplace Flippa.com that have autobidding shill bidders, the first is blatantly promoting the use of autobidding bots as a surefire way to make an easy profit. 1. BidStation.net The seller of BidStation.net seems to be quite proud of the fact that the site [...]

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Pennybiddr.com Alleged Shill Bidders

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 [...]

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TdBids Requests User’s Tax Numbers on Registration

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 [...]

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For10Cents Gets an F

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 [...]

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Did YottaBid Shill Bid Their Penny Auctions?

December 21, 2009

Just yesterday the owner of the late penny auction Yottabid.com came on the PAW forum and posted this message: “Hello Everyone, I watched the creation of this site as I ran Yottabid.com. You may remember us and there seems be some people willing to bash our name with no proof. It was unfortunate that we [...]

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Concerns Surrounding New Penny Auction AnnieUp

December 18, 2009

Have you tried the new penny auction site AnnieUp.com? AnnieUp auctions items such as Bowflex Home Gyms (Valued at $1299), HDTV’s and pool tables. However, many users have posted in the forum telling us that they have won items with a very small amount of bids, but have not heard from AnnieUp. Users are concerned [...]

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BidTent’s Owner Allegedly Shill Bidding Against PowerBidders

December 15, 2009

We have reason to believe that the owner of penny auction Bidtent.com, Ian Robinson, may have just been bidding against powerbidders on two auctions tonight under the username “comoestas.”  He may have even won his own auction on December 13th: http://www.bidtent.com/auctions/view/126 Tonight’s auctions: $50 American Express Card http://www.bidtent.com/auctions/view/148 and  a $50 Target Gift Card http://www.bidtent.com/auctions/view/146 [...]

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