It goes without saying that the Penny Auction industry is one that is growing at an alarming rate with websites seemingly appearing on the scene on a daily basis. To maintain transparency it is surely time now that an official global regulatory body is set up to set the parameters on which all penny auction websites should operate with transparency, diligence and morality the key words that spring to mind.
We have carried out independent reviews on some websites the findings of which can be found here. In addition we have been digging a little deeper into where some penny auction websites emanate from and the functionalities of each.
My findings were both horrifying and if I am honest very worrying indeed.
My research concentrated on how penny auction websites are developed, the software used and what it takes for a successful penny auction website to be developed.
My first and only port of call to date was to a software development company based in India called Sonik Technologies who amongst other things claim to be specialists in Web Development, Web Design, Internet Marketing and Games Development, please note the last offering as this has relevance to this article. Many pundits have claimed that penny auction websites are a lottery, a gamble, a game, where there are winners but a bucket load of losers too. There are certain penny auction websites that have been attracting bad press after bad press mainly by disillusioned ‘players’ who can never seem to win anything no matter how much they spend. You see not only has MyAuctionWebsite copied the online conversation with Sonik Technologies regarding their penny auction websites but we have also kindly been given access to the Administration Panel of their auction websites, the very same applications developed for a number of US and UK penny auction websites. If you look closely at their templates http://www.soniktechnologies.in/auction.html you may notice one or two familiar names.
Click here to look at our online conversation with soniktechnologies
Mmmmm. Disturbing I am sure you will agree. Moving on, I mentioned earlier that we were also given access to the admin panel used by so many penny auction websites. I will leave it to your own imagination what “Dummy Bids” mean and Dummy End Price. Take a look for yourself I think you will find it quite interesting.
In summary, I do believe there are penny auction websites out there who have worked very hard to get where they are today and in this list I would include the likes of Swoopo, Redbread and Madbid but hasten to add there are also a lot scrupulous website owners who are cheating their customers out of hard earned cash with these fraudulent autobid systems where it is impossible for bidders to actually win unless of course the site owners want them to win. These are scandalous findings and the websites responsible for running their business in this manner should be brought to justice immediately to save the integrity and names of all the honest and ethically run penny auction websites out there.
I will list all the websites using that software in my next blogs.
Your comments would be welcomed.
December 12th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Hi thanks for the very interesting information.I saw a tv advert today for a “penny auction” site and thought that I would dig a little to see how my 5 free bids(given on registration) could be used to best effect.Now I know about the “dummy bidders” I realise that I have no chance unless they want me to win.One thing that I did notice was that the revenue from these auctions is astronomical as each penny increase in the auction price is more like an extra pound coming in to the site operators pocket-so a laptop worth £450 which sold for £55.45 in the auction actually brought in aroung £5,500-an amount over 11 times the full retail price!Nice marketing,getting so much more than the normal sale price.From reading your article and now understanding how things work I can clearly see that with a “Dummy Bidder” in place the auction company can just keep it going until they have raised the price to a level that they want and providing it looks like the winner has got it for a fraction of the retail price.I also noticed that auctions run from 09.00 until 00.00 and then restart the next day at 09.00 unless the auction has ended.This makes the auction endless and they can just use a dummy bid to keep them going forever if they so wish.It is a con and I won’t be participating now that my eyes have been opened by your article!Thanks for writing it.Kind Regards Michael from London
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
January 5th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
I WOULD LIKE EVEYONE TO KNOW THAT BIDINPENCE IS A A SCAM I PAID AROUND 400 FOR BIDS AND WON NOTHING TRYING TO WIN 1,000 POUNDS IT WASNT GOOD
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
April 4th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
complete fraudsters! i’ve wasted quite some money there-( is there any genuine popular penny auction site that i could go to? any affiliations with any monitoring company that might help?
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
April 8th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Almost all Penny Auction Site scripts come with some capability to have “dummy/bot” bidders. The main purpose for these being put in place was to use for stress testing the systems timing mechanisms and server response time. It is up to the owners to turn them off when the system goes live, and reset the auctions products to not use them. Unfortunately not all owners are honest enough to perform these tasks.
With that said, you can find a good handful of honest sites who are free of bots and shill bidders. The first place to start is PennyAuctionWatch.com. They list many sites which have been exposed to this issue, and many site which are deemed legitimate. There is a lot of useful information on how to detect site with this back-end bots turned on. 1) Lots of user names with numerics at the end 2)Many Usernames with similar themes, animals, movies characters, etc 3) Number of users bidding and winning vs Traffic Ranking.
Some of the Trusted sites which you can win on, are sites with low traffic numbers. Unlike high volume sites such as Swoopo, BidRodeo.com, QuiBids.com, BidCactus.com; some of the smaller sites can get you very good deals and fast shipping. Give auctions such as ABCpennyauctions.com; Live2Bid.com; Bid-Save.com, PennyGeek.com; Bidoction.com; BidPigs.com and BargainsandFun.com a try.
There are no guarantee that you will win, but some of the sites mentioned even offer you the option to buy the item at MSRP minus the cost of bids you placed on the option. This makes it an almost no-lose situation.
Entertainment Shopping is just that, a fun way to shop for items. Do some homework as all sites work differently. Cost of Bids vary between sites, and beware of the PowerBidders, who will bid at any cost to win. You need to study bidder strategies before jumping in. Watch a few auctions!!
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
May 26th, 2011 at 10:58 pm
it’s called a “reserve bid” – although they should disclose it.. reserve bidding is not illegal. just immoral without notice.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0