Continuing on from my last post regarding penny auction website software ….

I decided to continue my research to try and ascertain what organizations are using the software provided by Sonik Technologies (as featured in my last post). The first website we are going to feature in this series is GoCrazyBid.com.

If you check WHOIS data and search for gocrazybid you will find, by huge coincidence, that the registration service is provided by Sonik Technologies PVT. Contact: +91.9928988554” . This is the very same Indian company that we featured yesterday who sell software containing dummy bidders.

You may recall that from the chatroom transcriptions they stated that all of their penny auction software has Dummy Bidders(Robots). I think there is justification is stating that GoCrazyBid also have this Dummy Bidder option within their admin panel.

Whether GoCrazyBid use this function or not is difficult to prove we but we know for definite that they have the Dummy Bidder option contained within their software. So bidders beware, it may not be just Jon from Houston or Steve from London that you are bidding against but also Rob Ot from Sonik Technologies too. Do take a minute to check the following screenshots….

To discuss more about GoCrazyBids, join MAW Community.

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.