Penny Auction REVIEWS – Which Penny Auctions are the BEST Bargains?

Online auctions are serious business. Though many bidders would’ve already taken that information to heart, some bidders literally take it to the extreme. Unfortunately for the industry, there are many unruly and dishonest penny auction site operators all across the internet. So many in fact that it’s hard to keep track on exactly on how many they are. However, there are also bidders that have less than stellar online practices as well.

There are bidders in various online auction sites that team-up with one another to help win specific bids. This sort of “bidding collusion” creates an air of paranoia that legitimate bidders are being wrongly scammed. Strategic thinking or underhanded bidding? Whatever the case may be, it’s a practice that does not support healthy bidding, either now or in the future. A good number of sneaky bidders go so far as to collect email-addresses and other contact information of other rival bidders, and personally threaten them to back off from the bid.

Online auctions have always beMuch like SwipeBids and JumboCloseouts before it, Speedybuys.com is the latest penny auction site to bank on suspicious call-to-action marketing techniques to get new users to hastily sign up on their site. Users are lured into signing up for SpeedyBuys.com after seeing that only a limited number of members will be accepted for bidding. For a site that’s trying to increase its user base, that’s definitely a shady claim.
Users who bite on the carrot will then be required to enter their contact information, including their credit card details. They are then required to purchase a starting $150 bid back purchase before they can begin bidding.

Checking the site, it’s easy to see the resemblance between SpeedyBuys and JumboCloseouts. The two sites are so similar that SpeedyBuys even missed out the removal of the meta page name information on their site. Instead of SpeedyBuys headlining the browser tab, it’s JumboCloseouts listed as the site name.

Although the domain registrant of SpeedyBuys is listed as private; web information site, Alexa ranks SpeedyBuys at 1,068,209 in terms of three-month global traffic. The bulk of SpeedyBuys’ traffic comes from the United States as well as Canada, getting a majority of their visitors and bidders from there.

SpeedyBuys, unfortunately, does not offer refunds to your $150 initial bid back purchase unless you find yourself losing every single auction during your trial. However, bidders will point out that to keep penny auction sites profitable, auction sites will have to keep its users spending way past that quota. A number of users who have already bitten into SpeedyBuys’ shady call-to-action marketing have already reported in. They urge new users to read the fine print. For those looking to get into penny auctions, reading the fine print before registering is always a good way to start.

GongBid.com seems to have stirred a beehive of suspicion with a few shady forum posts over the past week. A forum poster under the name “Pintos” posted a seemingly harmless review on the UK based auction site on a penny auction forum.

“Thumbs up play and still play there. Great site with quick support,” username Pintos posted.

It was a post that would normally be easily dismissed. However, the post was followed a day later by another forum poster by the name of “Sodaman”.

Sodaman posted, “Anyone else have any experience with [the GongBid.com] site? They have been open for seven months. The cash payouts are within hours and emails are prompt. I noticed the site makes money on almost every auction ran. Especially the $25 auction. The six auctions I’ve won on the sale price is between 2.5x-5.x retail. Minimum loss and no risk to the site owner. What’s the secret?”

A day later, Sodamon follows up his own post with, “A day after this post one $25 auction sold for 9 cents. I think they are reading “the forum.” Go read! Where were these great deals in the past 6 months? I forgot to mention that there are no win limits here.”

After some very resourceful sleuthing, it was discovered that GongBid.com has the same IP address as the original poster, Pintos.  On record, Pintos has already won several auctions under GongBid.com, and one specifically against forum poster, Sodaman. Further investigation reveals that username Pintos has the same last name as the domain registrant.

Despite GongBid stating the illegibility of relatives and employees to participate in GongBid auctions, their online marketing schemes seem to dictate otherwise.

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San Francisco-based online auction site BigDeal has recently launched their completely re-designed website to better cater to their bidders, customers and visitors. Decked with a new logo and a new color scheme for each of their product categories, BigDeal has also unveiled a new addition to their already diverse product line-up.

Style, the newest product category of BigDeal has a keen focus on fine, luxury jewelry. However, Style is only the first step in an initiative to cater to more female customers. BigDeal also promises more women-targeted items to be unveiled on the site in the near future. Style joins BigDeal’s other popular product categories such as At Home (featuring various home goods) and Tech (showcasing various gadgets up for bidding).

To promote their new Style category, BigDeal is tying it up with their Loyalty Bucks program, offering 50% to 60% off on select jewelry items at their Loyalty Bucks Store. For those unfamiliar with the concept, every dollar spent on BigDeal bids will add a dollar to the bidder’s Loyalty Bucks account. These Loyalty Bucks can then be spent on other items on BigDeal at a significant discount. Loyalty Bucks have been a great way for active BigDeal bidders to get more value for their money.

To help advertise their re-launched and re-designed site, BigDeal has taken to their Facebook page in promoting free bids for the growing auction site. BigDeal aims to reward users with a more refreshing, eye-pleasing and accessible bidding experience than before. Stay tuned for more updates on further developments on the site.