Hello,
I am here to save some people a lot of potential money and financial heartache. If you are thinking of "wasting" some money on penny auction sites such as Biduh (and a few others I am writing reports of) PLEASE. SAVE YOUR MONEY
I was referred to Biduh by a couple of friends who "had" won old Ipod mini's on their penny auction site. Note: this was months ago. I was looking to buy an Ipod, or IPad anyways, and with the claim that people can "win" items for less money that retail, I thought I would try it out.
Now, I always do my due diligence and did not see any bad information when I google'd the website name, just that it's a penny auction site so I felt comfortable in spending some money.
How a penny auction site works is you buy "bids" for about $. 60 on the dollar and each "penny bid" is actually costing the member $. 60-$. 75 each bid. Once someone bids the clock increases by 20 seconds. The last person to bid when the timer runs out "wins!" OR NOT.
I used $75 paypal funds and bought 160 bids. First off, I noticed when I was bidding on an item the price of that particular item was going for higher than any auction I had watched. That was a bit suspicious but I kept watching/bidding on occasion. The other "suspicious" thing happening is that the site would freeze every once in a while whilst you are bidding on a item, causing you to lose that item. (Someone else would win). After this happened to me three times, of course I knew something wasn't right.
I am bedridden, so I have PLENTY of time to waste watching the site. I watched it for a couple of days - first I noticed the names these other "bidders" use are the same ones over and over again.
Most likely they are using bots to 'BID' and win for them especially when the site "freezes".
One night I was awake at 3-4AM and I hopped on their site. I couldn't help but to laugh out loud. The "bidders" on that night would not let the counter hit anywhere close to the 20 second mark.
Now, if this were real bidders, you would want the counter to drop so that you have a chance of winning right? Who would bid at the 30-40 second mark just to lose and waste your bids???!!?
NO ONE! Because it wasn't people bidding. SHILL BIDDING PEOPLE!
I have emailed them MULTIPLE times asking for my money back and letting them know what I found out. I have recordings of their website and screenshots of what I have just talked about - for any news agencies interested. I also warned that I would be contacting the Better Business Bureau and the Federal trade Administration with no avail. The site says they are located in Nevada, with no mailing address, however their site WHOIS is registered in Washington.
Apparently their "helpdesk" isn't much help. So don't bother. When you call they tell you they will contact you if you leave a message - OR NOT.
I don't doubt that at one point or another they "let" someone win a small auction or two to keep the word of mouth going, but MOST people WILL LOSE YOUR MONEY. Don't believe me? Why don't you buy some bids, and bid strictly on ONE item. KEEP clicking (bidding) every four seconds. If you keep doing it and keep watching the clock you shouldn't be able to lose - UNTIL THE SITE MAGICALLY FREEZES when you are the highest bidder and you find out two seconds later that you lost! Do it again for a different item. Now you see what I'm talking about?
Don't spend a penny on biduh. At least i won't anymore, because i'm not stupid-uh.
0 comments