FastPennyCars has responded to our last post about all of the users who thought they won the car penny auction that they held over the weekend, but didn’t. One bidder in particular, adamscheck received the win confirmation e-mail. We’re curious whether or not this e-mail was sent out automatically when they had server issues or if it had been manually sent out. Now adamscheck tells us that he is unable to access his account and thinks he must have been banned.
I was wondering, since it said that adamscheck was a winner, and then said others were winners, just how many bidders got offline or went to bed after they thought the auction had been completed, yet wanted to continue bidding and perhaps spent thousands in bids? I just think that with all of the errors if no one indeed won until after 9 am, they should have refunded everyone and rescheduled the auction for a later time after they fixed server issues. Just my opinion.
Here’s Sandy from FastPennyCars’ response to the concerns that users voiced in our last post. Originally posted in our comments section here:
We have spent a great deal of time researching the answers below and hope they provide a better understanding of our Dodge/Jeep Winner’s Choice Auction which finished on Sunday, 8/28/11.
1.) We have long known that we have two sets of bidders. One set is our daily bidders who are interested in our daily gift card auctions. Another set is those individuals who are only there for the vehicles. These people will sometimes hold bids on our site only to be used when a vehicle is auctioned. There is of course some overlap in these groups. Additionally, we had 214 new bidders during the course of the weekend bringing our registered users to over 8,000. Google Analytics showed we had over 30% first time visitors during the weekend.
2.) See answer #1.
3.) See answer #1.
4.) See answer #1.
5.) Since we had never experienced this problem with our servers freezing before and in an attempt to quickly correct the situation, our generic “Maintenance page” was put up. These freezes were not planned. The errors occurred at 1:32 p.m., 7:31 p.m., 10:33 p.m., 2:04 a.m. & 8:21 a.m. An auction can only officially end and have a winner if no one has placed a bid prior to the time running out completely. With each freeze, there were multiple complaints from bidders who were attempting to bid, but the bid button was not responding and no one could refresh their connection. Therefore, we continued to operate under our Terms & Conditions which state:
“A system outage has occurred if no bids can be submitted for items due to an unforeseeable disruption in a system. In such a case, auctions will be temporarily paused and the remaining time for the auctions, the current bidding price and the current highest bidder will be recorded. After the disruption has been resolved, the auctions will be continued and 10 minutes will be added to the remaining times for the auctions.”
6.) There are several scenarios which could possibly explain why and when individuals decide to bid on an auction, all of which are purely speculation: maybe they were the first bidders to get to the site’s home page and realize the auction was going to continue, or possibly they may have decided to take advantage of the fact people who were bidding before were not, or yet another factor could be they were hoping everyone else had given up and this was their chance. We have no way of knowing. Every single bidder on our website is a real individual. The reasons why people chose to participate in the manner they do is unlimited and speculative.
7.) See answer 6. Smik90, mhack, bombert11, dshardie, were new users that day. Enzo was a new user since the day before. Sbghfan has been a bidder since 7/11/2011. 666 has been a bidder since 7/23/2011 and also bid on the Mustang auction. baruiz1234 has been a bidder since 08/06/2011.
8.) Shinjim placed 450 bids, Bbb86 placed 15 bids, ifamode placed 24, ulose placed 45. Not a single one of these bidders placed only one bid.
9.) See answer 6 or yet another speculation could be since we feature vehicles and market to automotive enthusiasts, many of our bidders are new to the penny auction model and have bidding behaviors which you do not see from seasoned penny auction bidders. Additionally, when the auction came back up with a reset timer, the only way a bidder could know for sure that the site was working again and their bids were registering correctly was to click on the bid button. Therefore, when they saw their bid was accepted then they waited for the 10 minute clock to run down and resumed bidding competitively.
10.) Our website designer recommended we take down as many auctions and graphics shown as possible in an attempt to reduce the load on our servers in an effort to prevent any more auction freezes. The bid pack auction was won by bb2001 for $0.04 because of the freeze. The other three bidders who each placed one bid were given 25 bids each.
11.) Knowledgeable bidders are known to sit back and watch other bidders fight with each other draining away bids before they will jump back in. It is possible they may have seen the auction restart as a good time to get back in. Once again, this is speculation. However, this was an opportunity to win a $33,000 vehicle and many may have been waiting for any advantage or opportunity to win.
12.) Jrodd has been a bidder since 8/6/2011 and has only bid on cars and bid packs. Gnobile has been a bidder on our site since 7/23/2011 and also bid on the Mustang. Justsayno has been bidding on our site since 7/20/2011. Grahambo14 has been a bidder on our site since 7/22/2011 and has bid on this vehicle and the Mustang auction. Bankrj, tompul77, bigc, and shayk11 were new bidders.
13.) Flawless007 was a bidder as of 8/20/2011 who has only bid on a bid pack and this auction. Hockeyhobo11, david38, stroker were new bidders. Tracytodd has been a bidder on our site since 8/19/2011.
14.) Ohiostate 711 and perg81 have been bidders on our site since 7/23/2011 and 7/24/11 respectively and only bid on bid packs and cars. Ponchibego was a new bidder only bidding on this auction. Plzletmewin was a new bidder on 8/26/2011 only bidding on bid packs and this auction.
15.) It is possible they had their cruise control on also. DirtPoor placed 48 bids on this auction. After 2 a.m., DirtPoor placed a total of 39 bids rather than one single bid as you claim.
16.) There was no darrell bidding on this auction. Darrell101 was a new bidder only bidding on bid packs and this auction.
17.) There were several bidders who were aggressively attempting to win this auction.
18.) Flawless007 spent 36 bids on this auction rather than the 3-6 bids you claim. We have no idea why or how individuals choose their user names.
19.) See Answer 11. You were bidding relentlessly. In a big auction like this one, many bidders will hang back and wait for aggressive bidders to exhaust all their bids. Typically, they will only place a bid when needed to keep the auction going while waiting for their opportunity after the aggressive bidders have run out of bids.
20.) Our servers froze a total of 5 times resulting in 5 illegitimate winners. The auction froze the fifth time at 8:22am. We then forced the auction to a 5 second timer in an effort to bring the auction to an official end. In order to keep it fair for everyone, we had to keep the auction running until it ended per our Terms & Conditions. That took place at 9:21 am. The official winner is curzpal who lives in Arizona. We will ask the winner whether they will agree to be interviewed by you.
21.) See answer 1. With each vehicle auction, we have seen a significant increase in new bidders the day of the vehicle auction.
We hope it is apparent from the amount of data we needed to review to prepare a thorough answer in conjunction with the immense amount of time we have been spending to provide the best customer support to our bidders possible, while also working tirelessly to correct these problems explains why we were unable to provide our response within the 4hours from the time we received your email on Sunday, 8/28 at 12:03 p.m. to the time of your post on the same day at 4:00 p.m.
In closing, we have not experienced these server issues with any of our other auctions. We are working diligently with our website designer and server hosting company to make sure these problems do not occur again. We followed our Terms & Conditions to continue the auction to its natural completion. To have granted a win because our servers froze and no one else was able to bid even though they were trying is not fair or right.
FASTpennycars.com has completed and awarded four beautiful brand new vehicles. We are excited that we have been able to provide an amazing, thrilling and knuckle whitening experience for us and our bidders. We look forward to providing another amazing opportunity with our Ford Winner’s Choice Auction on September 10.thWe also want to extend our thanks to our loyal and supportive bidders. We greatly appreciate your patronage at FASTpennycars.com!
Sincerely,
Sandy Daenzer
Vice President
Innovative Internet Enterprises, LLC
FASTpennycars.com”
Discuss this and all penny auction issues in our free forum.
Photos used thanks to Creative Commons. Credits: crystaljingsr – banned sign, wingedwolf – questions/, fast toy car
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realbidtowin August 31, 2011, 2:30 pm
In your most recent repot regarding thier response #10 says
“Our website designer recommended we take down as many auctions and graphics shown as possible in an attempt to reduce the load on our servers in an effort to prevent any more auction freezes. The bid pack auction was won by bb2001 for $0.04 because of the freeze. The other three bidders who each placed one bid were given 25 bids each.”
So why was this auction not reset with the 10 minute timer, clearly it was exempt for thier terms and conditions. Regardless of how many bids are placed in the auctions all auctions should be treated by the same set of rules. Clearly this exemplifies they integrity or in this case lack thereof. With 5 freezes that would clearly alter the outcome of the auction.
They also mentioned that they sped up the timer, so they also altered the auctions and a fast time can have a singnificant impact on the auction. Try and buy more bids wioth a 5 second timer it is nearly imposible. This was clearly a corrupt auction and they are picking and choosing which auction will follow the rules or not. This is a serious amount of $$$ and to screw with the outcome and not run a clean auction regardless of the issue is deplorable. In know by experience if I thnk an auction has ended i do not stick around to watch a static screen, clearly bidders left the auction and thier investments because of this. Maybe this practice should be investigated by the authorites considering the amout of $$$ that was lost by bidders.
ProtoProtoss September 8, 2011, 10:39 pm
I had warned everyone to stay away from this site. As I explained in my post, when I first started on the site I would mark an auction fast and fight it all the way to the end no matter what the cost and eventually was getting GREAT deals. One day though, I got into a serious battle with 3 other powerbidders all of whom jumped me one after another, but I still won. From that point forward, I was a target and EVERY single auction I touched from that point I was run up 2x to 3x to even 5x retail on items ranging from $100+ by NEW names or people whom were never seen unless it was against an already known bidder that was going high.
Now ordinarily if people see you will not back down they will leave you alone if you are already on something so they don’t waste money, but 97% of the time, they will NOT constantly attack you on EVERY single item you touch, which was a bit odd to me. Some of them I would almost never ever see bid UNLESS I was about to win something. What was even weirder than this is that I would be 1v1 with someone, and not one outside bid was thrown, even if the timer was let to run down by them, then a new name pops up does an auto for 100 + bids, then the next person comes in on auto EXACTLY when the first ends and does the same. It would be back to back with autobids then single bids enough for the other person to take over. The timing was so perfect on each and every auction that it was virtually impossible to be coincidental, as it happened on every and i do mean EVERY auction starting from the point where I first paid about 3x or more retail.
When I called them on it, they told me that there was a huge set of new bidders that are just joining because of the commercial and press news about the camaro going so cheap. A commercial in which i’d NEVER seen until a link was provided, but wait… they stated it was a LOCAL commercial. O_o. The list goes on, but I pulled out of the site and never looked back. I was going to charge everything back, but I had already pulled out with more profit than loss so by me receiving goods, it would’ve been harder to fight as it was in their favor with no true proof. This is why they allow you to win when you first join. I have lately seen a LOT of familiar names on the site, ALL of whom won extremely cheap on their first items, but now most are complaining about shills, etc. and how they can’t win. It’s 100% bait-and-switch, but nobody seems to listen to that.
Oh, and as a side note. Another bidder I know felt as if she was shilled as well, and when she demanded to see verification that all those bidders were real, she can no longer get a response, when previously they responded to everything swiftly.