Scriptmatix “penny auctions” such as Quibids are less scams than pure fraud

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Shell games tempt only the gullible, don’t they? So long as YOU don’t fall for them, what’s a little income redistribution among wretches? That’s an attitude shared only by the uninitiated. So-called internet “penny auctions” exploit human vulnerability like trust and avarice, leaving victims to blame their own stupidity or greed. You may shrug off getting burned as a lesson learned, but all confidence tricks count on that. Websites like Quibids and Scriptmatix’s PennyAuction are neither novel discount methods, adventure shopping, gambling scenarios or lotteries. They are con games that lead you to believe you are getting something for your money, until you don’t.

Just because YOU can figure it out -from an objective distance- doesn’t mean Quibids is not patently dishonest. US laws governing fraud are enforced by local statutes, but common law is enough to define this internet scam as representation of falsehood with the intent to profit. Whether or not the auctions use shill bidders, or fail to honor unprofitable outcomes, as have been accused by disgruntled victims, the websites are misrepresentations. The former are obvious illegal practices. The latter is fraud. Or are we so cynical that we accept this kind of scam as merely “predatory capitalism?”

Wikipedia defines fraud in layman’s terms:

1. a representation of an existing fact;
2. its materiality;
3. its falsity;
4. the speaker’s knowledge of its falsity;
5. the speaker’s intent that it shall be acted upon by the plaintiff;
6. plaintiff’s ignorance of its falsity;
7. plaintiff’s reliance on the truth of the representation;
8. plaintiff’s right to rely upon it; and
9. consequent damages suffered by plaintiff.

In particular this scam begin with what’s known as the advance-fee fraud except this buy-in is ongoing and lasts until a mark is tapped-out.

Quibids and ilk call themselves “penny auctions” as if there is such a thing. Onlooker suspicions are assuaged by the inherent implication that if a business scam has a name, it must not be a crime.

Are penny auctions a veritable thing, besides the self-defined new crook on the block? Well, yes, but. The “penny auctions” of yesteryear had nothing to do with these pay-to-play auction schemes where bidders buy vouchers for the privilege to ante into a bidding pool. Penny auction refers to the Depression era strategy of sabotaging farm liquidation auctions by forcing the auctioneer to accept bids in increments of one penny. Aided by cooperative neighbors, bankruptcy victims were able to grind their creditor’s actions to a halt, for a time, because collusion was itself unlawful. Obviously this is a far cry from the neo penny auctions which require customers to buy “bids” with which to place dibs on a desired item, increasing its auction price by a penny each time and prolonging the bidding for another fixed period.

On Quibids, price and time increments can vary between auction items to confuse watchers trying to do the math. As an average, a bidder might pay 60 cents each time he wants to put his name on the desired item, raise its price a penny, and extend the auction expiration by another ten seconds. The last person to cease paying money to keep the auction up in the air gets the item for the final price. But the final cost includes of course what he paid to play.

Imagine musical chairs except you pay 60 cents for every successive measure, an unlimited number of party-goers circling a solitary chair. So long as somebody pays the piper, everyone gets to stay in. Except they’re not “in” are they? Only the last person who put money in gets to take the chair.

The music stops when the next to last person refuses to ante up.

On the internet, the victory or loss is experienced alone. Your embarrassment is “shared,” but anonymous. Now imagine a convention hall, full of sidelined bidders who dropped out as they realized the insanity of paying into a potentially endless kitty whose real value to them represented a diminishing return. Imagine dozens or scores of former adversaries looking on as the last man standing gets the chair, everyone else leaves empty handed and empty pocketed, while the house rakes in the pot worth many times the value of the chair. Think that scam would fly in a non-virtual world?

In the real world, marks who’ve fallen victim quickly learn that there’s a racket of onlookers quick to step in and silence any complaints. Try to warn off the next bystander who looks like they’re about to fall prey and you’ll see exactly what criminal muscle lurks behind the charm of the charlatan.

Oh, it’s a silly, silly hook this penny bidding scheme, and online it’s hard to tell how many dupes are actually taken in. We have only the Quibids customer relations departments to assure us that none of the other bidders are phantom bots or paid shills. It would be so easy of course for the javascript to be otherwise. The same voices explain that Quibids can afford to offer its auction items at these unbelievable discounts due to the income derived from its inventive bid-selling process.

Simple math suggests they could award a winning lot several times over and still keep a tidy profit. Yet their FAQ explain that 50% of their transaction result in an operational loss. If indeed this is true, that percentage is factoring the auctions they offer for packages of “bids,” where customers place bids to win more bids. One can only hope that buyers are given the upper hand on these transactions. Otherwise the 50% percentage tabulates the auctions by number and not their dollar value. Quibids’ losses are phantom, worthless bids sold at a fraction of their worthless value, versus their profitable ones, where $200 consumer goods net $1000 or more.

That kind of scheme resembles a lottery where more tickets are purchased for a fixed-sum reward. Quibids deflects categorization as a gambling scheme by explaining that auction losers have the option to apply their losses toward the retail price of the item, if they elect to purchase it as consolation. How many players take them up on such an offer, only they know.

Upon losing the Christmas raffle, would having the option to buy the turkey at above retail price be reassurance enough for you to prove the affair wasn’t in reality an unregulated raffle?

First of all, the sites use very clever software, and a money-changing scheme to defy the average grasp of math. But the trap mechanism well oiled, the more duplicitous energy goes into the promotion. Quibids is using social networking and email to expand the reach of the news outlets they ensnare. Our attention was drawn when this week the Colorado Springs Gazette directed its readers to this exciting new discount website.

A scan of the various “penny auction” websites would seem to indicate they are using identical software. That opens a whole other can of worms, doesn’t it? This could be an installation one can license, just as one would WordPress or Zen Cart. In fact there is a PHP setup marketed by Scriptmatix who charge $1,250 plus for an installation. First they nail people greedy enough to want Nikon D90s for next to nothing, then they turn their dupes into willing con artists themselves.

Here’s a screen grab from the Scriptmatix brochure, where they explain what kind of return eager entrepreneurs can expect on their $1,249 investment.

It might look like a safer legal recourse to franchise the “penny auction” scheme and let client operators do the defrauding and ultimately face the authorities. Maybe selling the blueprint to a confidence trick does not constitute a crime. Unless of course you are pretending to peddle a fully legitimate business model that you know is actually against the law. We’re back to fraud.

Of course the key to convincing users that your site is not a ripoff lies with successful PR. It’s very likely that many of these multiple installations are Quibids figuring out how to outrun Google searches of Quibids+Scam. Aptly-named rival Swipe-bids for example looks more to me like a designated heavy, meant to make Quibids appear to be honest by comparison. Who knows how many websites this operation has used to elude tar and feathers.

Here’s the SWIPE-BIDS website whose main page stream a promotional video, actually for a competitor, as if it was its own. On watchdog sites, Quibids cries foul, but it’s hard to tell what argument is authentic.

Does “swipe” seem a term well chosen to inspire trust? It’s as obvious as a black hat in a wrestling match. Of course “Quibids” is the most poetic choice for truth-in-tradenames. “Qui” is French for who and doesn’t that account for the mysterious identity of who is bidding against you?

And the watchdog websites sprouting up to monitor the penny auction eruption are themselves shadow operations. Any “penny auction watch” that prefaces their posts with the concession that some auction sites are good and some are bad, is obviously shilling for someone. They may be a village idiot with no concept of the scamming afoot, or they’re innocent at all. But this is speculation.

By all appearances, these sites are reaping Keystone times six, and simply drop-shipping the goods.

A legal indictment of Quibids can precede a formal investigation based simply on their of self-promotion. Theirs may look like expertly crafted PR, and these days of diminished expectations about the objectivity of our media, it may suit many to congratulate the charlatans on their savvy, but Quibids’ self-promotion documents their intent to defraud.

Layers of press releases and paid editorial columns appear to shore up a single real news item which the Quibids outfit eked from an Oklahoma news team earlier this year.

At right are stills from KWES NEWS9 reporting about Quibids, as far as they were told, a home-grown auction website.

Quibids hasn’t chintzed on PR, but they do appear to lack for real faces to front their operation…

According to their own site, Quibids was the brainchild of Oklahoma City entrepreneur Matt Beckham, joined by Shaun Tilford, Jeff Geurts, Josh Duty, Bart Consedine, and spokeswoman Jill Farrand. The 27-year-old Beckham’s identity is confirmed by the Quibids.com domain registration.

Have a look at who NEWS9 is interviewing for the so-called customer testimonial. The kyron reads “Zach Stevens” who purports to be thrilled with the deal he’s gotten on Quibids.

Do we know whether this interview footage was pre-packaged for the NEWS9 team? The distinction is unimportant, but we might note that the cuffed sleeve does not belong to the female reporter.

This TV segment streams on the upper right corner of the auction sites, serving as a de facto suggestion of the site’s legitimacy. The footage streams in a very small window.

But enlarged in these captures, a closeup of “Zach’s” laptop and username reveals this “customer” is none other than Quibids’ owner Matt Beckham, smiling like he has no idea the perp walk that awaits him.

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101 thoughts on “Scriptmatix “penny auctions” such as Quibids are less scams than pure fraud”

  1. It’s going to be so much fun watching Matt Beckham, Shaun Tilford, Jeff Geurts, Josh Duty, Bart Consedine, and “company” spokeswoman Jill Farrand locked up for frauding the American public.

  2. There’s a long long list. Cheney at the top.

    Fraud is so rampant that some think it’s normal business behavior. The invisible hand picked everybody’s pockets.

  3. @Sarah: AWESOME Research!

    I run PennyBurners.com and we have helped a group of SwipeBids.com victims recently. They now have a VERY capable Plaintiff Class Action Law Firm handling the case, and we (I) donated the domain, hosting, design and maintenance for:
    http://www.SwipeBidsVictims.com

    If you or anyone you know have been scammed by SwipeBids, QuiBids, or any other penny auction, PLEASE visit the website, and call the lawyers handling the case.

    Anyone can visit my website or email me for more information: admin @ PennyBurners.com

  5. Yeah, but the whole concept is flawed. Kind of like, you know, playing LOTTO only with fewer odds of winning and no regulation. Plus it’s a game of chance disguised as a legitimate sales pitch.

    The best way to win, as previously noted, is to not play. Just like the lottery. I win, personally, $2 every time I pass by a lottery retailer and don’t go in.

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  8. Nice information, valuable and excellent, as share good stuff with good ideas and concepts, lots of great information and inspiration, both of which we all need, thanks for all the enthusiasm to offer such helpful information here. A penny auction watch is a make new category of method to auction. If you like getting brand new items and receiving incredible deals on them than a penny auction possibly barking right up your passage. When command in a penny auction the bids cost a little bit of money.

  9. Word pattern = Authors first language Chinese. IP Address = Madras, India.

    The link is to yet another tutorial on “How to manipulate a supposedly straightforward system which also supposedly can not be manipulated”.
    It would seem that the people who threatened to bring suit against us in Court for saying that they manipulate their supposedly honest “auctions” have a little bit of trouble keeping their story straight.

    The previous links to tutorials on manipulating Penny Auctions pointed directly to employees or the owners of the Penny Auction website which has threatened to bring suit against us.
    If their network of thieves is growing, then it’s reaching beyond the control of the owners and is providing a wealth of information that counters the allegations in the supposed lawsuit threat and they really should have reined in their overly enthusiastic employees a long time ago. Really effective scam artists recognize the importance of an escape hole at the back of the stage for when the audience realizes they’ve been had. Apparently these guys have locked every exit before setting their building on fire. Way to go, Dumbasses!

    The wisest course of actions would have involved the principle of not committing the crime in the first place. Lawyers cost money, a conscience is free.

  11. It is absolutely insane, it’s obvious that QuiBids uses shill bidders because they are also very poorly trained and they stick out!!!
    Can we just report them to BBB or something?
    How can we let something like this happen?
    ap

  12. BBB is mostly a rating system, all they can do is report that a business had complaints registered against it.
    Which might be good as evidence (but not proof) against them in a civil suit. Not good enough for a criminal prosecution.

    Which gets a little tricky with regards to Mail Fraud and the Internet more so, because the charges are filed in the jurisdiction where the crime occurs. If you live in one judicial district and the person selling you the Box o’ Nothing does it from another, first the prosecutors in BOTH jurisdictions would have to decide which one gets the case. Just about every other crime in the world involves the victim and the perpetrator being in the same place.

    In interstate fraud, which is really the strongest way of prosecution and enabled by the extreme measure of the Feds in whatever agency can actually prosecute somebody for “interstate” if they live across any road, since most roads in the U.S. have part of their funding from federal money. Cross a creek or any other flowing water and it’s managed by the Water Districts, also federal. Use the telephone to call your neighbor across the fence and buy or sell a bag of the Wicked Weed (the actual precedent in the case, took place in Alaska where it’s completely decriminalized and has been for decades, the SALE is taxed, but the way the TAX law criminalizing Marijuana on the Federal level is written, there’s no mechanism for paying the tax. The Federal law prosecutes a negative, the notion that you’re required to pay a tax that’s impossible to pay) and because the Federal Government subsidized the TelComm industries (although you’d never hear the TelComms admit that) it becomes Federal Jurisdiction.

    How often is that used in fraud cases? Eh? I don’t know either. That’s how rare it is. Arbitrary enforcement strikes again.

    Maybe they’re worried in the DoJ that it would open a floodgate of litigation and worse yet, prosecution for such Interstate and International Fraud as the Banksters, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and IMF and World Bank. Also the Iraq Conquest.

  14. I think everyone needs to realize that nothing wrong is happening here. This can be considered a form of gambling if you will. It isn’t illegal and whoever chooses to partake knows the risks. No one is promising you to win these products for less and of course the websites are turning a profit (even if huge) that is what business is all about. One lucky person per item wins it at a cheap price.

    I don’t see this any different than smoking or gambling, if you decide to partake, and you understand the risks, then whats the problem?

    Just my two cents.

  15. Yona, it’s fraud. It’s a confidence scam which victims don’t fully grasp, even apparently you. There are no “winners” in so-called penny-auctions. The final “cheap price” does not reflect the many bids for which the bidder also had to pay. It’s not sufficient to assume defrauded dupes “know the risks.”

  16. Although,Yona, your statement that people who buy into your products and services such as smoking, gambling, alcohol, really, “free-market” capitalism in its entirety, are “stupid” is something we as non-capitalists would get plenty of heated argument and even the occasional death threat if we put it like that.

    Reason I know that is because we do put it like that occasionally and well, you can look through the comments on the site and see the responses. Also the industries you cited, Tobacco and Alcohol for a shining example, spend billions annually on manipulative advertising. One brand of cigarettes had a generic looking cowboy portrayed by about a dozen low-paid generic looking models inviting the gullible, usually children, to “come all the way up to Marlboro Country”, putting it on billboards, magazine ads, television and radio ads and inserting it into the “entertainment” content of movies and Television Shows.

    Then they spent about a billion dollars trying to sue the American Lung Association for just once portraying a ward of men dying from lung cancer with the Trademarked Marlboro Man walking down the aisles looking into the eyes of the corporate victims and “Come all the way up to Marlboro Country”.

    By the other way, the actors hired to portray the Marlboro Man in all those billboards etc…? All died from lung cancer. But, hey, it’s the inherent Freedom for a corporate entity to put out a product aimed at peoples gullibility and which ends up depriving the “gullible” of their rights. Like life.

    And it’s also inherent freedom of speech for people who see a crime in action to report it so that others, like potential tobacco or alcohol or penny-“auction” victims, can steer away from the hazards..

    Just the “auction” and tobacco companies don’t seem to agree with THAT freedom.

  17. I frequent the Quibids site and have won many items over the past 6 months. Their items are priced fairly for the Buy It Now price, so I am not risking anything if in the end I want to buy the item anyway. While several times I have had to use the buy it now option, I conversely have won many auctions and average at least a 50% maybe more discount off of retail. While it is somewhat gambling, it does have a guarantee at the end so you don’t lose anything invested as long as you buy it.

    All Items I have received are brand new, have quick delivery times and have been in working order. The customer service department has been quick to resolve any issues I have reported and always corrected any errors in a professional fair manner.

    I don’t see any crime in what they are doing, and believe everything is fully disclosed prior to you entering an auction. If you think you want to buy something and it is on quibids, you have nothing to lose by trying to get it at a lower price!

  18. So how would anybody know if you’re not actually a fake testimonial? Since every (not just most) of the ones who commented before you were in fact “team members” if you will. Three names from one IP address, all three of them had boasted of “winning” computers, the IP was the same as their website, not their home computers.
    The website offers to sell you a way to win the auctions. Which in a NON RIGGED system would be the same way you win any other auctions, bid more than the others and less than retail.

    That and they were straight up lying about every other detail.
    Now, here’s another thing… customers of any company usually wouldn’t be lining up to offer testimonials, seeking out any who dared criticize their beloved Corporate Entity all on their widdle wonesome. Just doesn’t happen. However, “customers” who are actually accomplices/employees DO. At the direction of the Corporate Headquarters.

    Then there’s the scam Television News Story. Discrepancies like the “happy customer” suddenly in the middle of talking to the “reporter” changing from his casual, short sleeve brown shirt into a business suit and “winning” his bid… on a laptop belonging to the owners of the company.

    Honest people running an honest business wouldn’t have to lie that way.
    Some people spot that immediately and then never trust the company line.
    Some people have their epiphany, maybe not as quickly but every bit as surely, and they, also, refuse to trust the company line ever again.

    So, let’s recap, in really simple terms. You can’t kid a kidder, you can’t con a con, you can’t bullshit a bullshitter… but you sure can fool a Fool, all day every day. Problem is finding fools who actually have enough money to be worth skinning.
    I believe you’re running out of fools.

  19. Here’s something amazing… your contact info is the quibids website. Why would I feel any sense of shock, wonder or surprise at that? So you describe yourself as “They”, third person singular.

    The exact opposite of the Editorial/Royal pronouns We and Us.
    One would expect another not to refer to himself in the third person singular or plural, wouldn’t one. Particularly if one is an employee of the entity he refers to as “They” as in “They run an honest business…”

    People who run honest sales enterprises will give their employees a discount on the market value “buy now” price.
    And forbid them from participating in auctions. If you indeed do work for the company and bid in the auctions, then you’re likely to be considered a “shill”, a person who works in the audience while the pitchman is standing up at the front podium preaching. Somebody who drives the bid price up without having to worry about winning and having to pay.

    Typical of scam businesses, but not of HONEST ones.
    So, Tom, are you standing by your claim that you bid in auctions, and the claim you made by using Quibids’ home page as your contact info?

  20. you guys seem to not know what a scam or what fraud is… despite the fact you gleam a definition of it from… oh… wait… wikipedia?? obviously that must be correct if it’s on the wiki right? :p

    This is a simple business model. i’m not clear on where the “scam” comes in. the website is very upfront. it goes through a variety of examples of what to expect and what not to expect.

    yes the company makes a lot of extra money based on the enormous amount of bids. SO WHAT. again, SO WHAT. if a man can charge $500 for a bottle of holy water, so what? what’s that to you? if someone is willing to pay, that’s between them.

    i came to quibids as a customer. i actually won something (16gb usb drive) for .60. the site does what it says, it provides an opportunity for people to win items at immense discounts.

    IT also allows a user to buy the product at a discount: if a user spends $200 bidding on a $500 product, they give an option to pay the remainder to get the product.

    yes, quibides makes the money. it’s a fantatsic business model that is perfectly sound. to say it’s not sound is to call all lotteries a scam. sure you may not like it (because you never won a damn thing) doesn’t make it illegal. it’s no different the church fundraiser hat says “hey everone buy a $1 ticket for your chance to win a big screen tv.”

    then i dont win, should i walk awya bitter that my $1 didn’t get me a $3000 tv??

  21. Scam.
    The huckster is saying that people who don’t fall for the scheme have lost.
    Here’s a neat suggestion, try selling quality products at a reasonable price and go for consistency.
    Lotteries, by the way, ARE scams. it’s not like you offer a chance at “something for nothing”. The people who you bilk of their dollar, five dollars, ten dollars here and there, they were desperately poor and looking for a miracle way out of that poverty. You didn’t offer “something for nothing”. You offered a very HUGE chance of getting Nothing for Something.. Call it what you will.

    Theft would be an appropriate name, just as a start.
    People trusting your company with their bank account numbers is really hair-whitening crazy. I mean, you’re already ripping them off, what would stop you from cleaning out their accounts?
    By the way, Brian, happy customers wouldn’t bother writing to weblogs that criticize their favorite store. That’s done by Company Employees.

    Like yourself.

    Representing yourself as a “winning” customer puts you every bit in the same position of the Fake Cripple at the Traveling Medicine Show, who comes forward at the pseudo-pharmaceutical version of a Revival, to be healed of his infirmity, cast aside his miserable crutch, leap from his wheelchair and dance in the aisles while the preacher-salesman gets the townies to buy his snake oil.

    So let’s see a chronological progression of the past 70 comments, shall we?

    We see the Corporate shills telling us that our “pathetic little weblog criticizing their business will accomplish nothing”.
    Almost true, because your corporate practices are costing you far more customers.

    Of course by that time they’re broke and bleeding from a rectal tear.

    “customers” who have their IP addresses the same for 5 or six “different” customers, and that IP address happens to be a subsidiary website of your corporate website, one of which was three gentlemen selling an e-book on “how to win a penny auction”.

    In a real and honestly run auction the only way to win is to bid higher than the other bidders and lower than the retail price of the goods. See, that was easy. I could sell that one sentence as an e-book and make a modest amount of money.

    Then it turns out, and is exposed by the IP address, that they’re actually employees of Quibids.
    Hmmm… A company employing people who sell a book that alleges to teach methods for gaming a supposedly honest system? Honestly?

    A TV commercial disguised as a “news story” shows a winning bid being entered on a computer where the username displayed is the Owner Of The Auction. Wonderfully cheesy.

    The IP address of the Three Employee E-Book Authors, who tell us much the same as your final paragraph, is first challenged by them saying they’re roommates and use the same internet connection. When it’s pointed out that the IP address in question happens to be one for a website, not a home PC…

    Then the three get all whiny and snivelly about being outed by the Internet equivalent of Caller ID…

    and say it’s somehow inherently dishonest for people who run a politically sensitive blog, one which suffers periodic cyber-attacks, to use such a tool to help prevent people from hacking the living dogshit out of our weblog.

    An age where the thieves use the freedom of speech provided (freely, unlike your Very Large Chance Of Losing, which costs actual money) by this weblog to complain about potential victims having watchdogs and locked doors.

    Then a letter from allegedly an attorney threatening to sue us if we don’t stop the alleged slander against their company.
    First an attorney would probably know the difference between slander and libel.

    Second, in your own words, Brian, you’ve contested what your alleged lawyers said. You say that nobody reads this blog, no harm done to your company (I believe we passed long ago the point where you could pretend to be a satisfied customer)

    Then a few more revelations on our part about your business practices and associates, usually in response to “satisfied customers” leaping from their wheelchairs and casting aside their crutches, which, despite the sporadic claims of censorship by our writers, those claims of Miracle Cures don’t get edited out, not even painted to look even more ridiculously obvious.

    Do you think, Bryan?

    Oops, I was supposed to make a longer sentence there, like 25 to Life instead of 3 years of work farm.
    I’m sure thieves would be familiar with terms like those.

    But do you think, Brian, that perhaps there’s a really good reason you’re consistently allowed to crucify yourself with your own words?

  22. i came to quibids as a customer. i actually won something (16gb usb drive) for .60. the site does what it says, it provides an opportunity for people to win items at immense discounts.

    IT also allows a user to buy the product at a discount: if a user spends $200 bidding on a $500 product, they give an option to pay the remainder to get the product.

    If they spend the $200, lose the auction, and then buy the item at full price (which they could have done without going to your site, setting up an account, buying “bids” etc) where the hell are the savings?

    The big screen lottery reference. If I spend $1 on the chance to win a TV, that’s the end of it. If I want more chances, I spend $1 per chance. Your “chances” are misleading. Your chances are worth a penny, but cost the buyer .60 cents. Common sense should tell anyone that’s a bum deal for the bidder!

  23. funny how “random reader” and “brian” both like quibids, they both won a 16gb usb drive for .60, they both talk about being able to buy a $500 after bidding $200, and at the end both say something good and happy about quibids. copy,paste, and reword a little bit? looks like my first plagiarized book report from 4th grade. half the sentences are the same word for word!

    brother jonah, im sorry you will never get back the time you spent tearing down brian because he doesn’t exist and “random reader” proved it.

    how can i get paid to lie and say great things about quibids is what i wanna know, hahaha. thats probably the only way to make money off of quibids and other penny auction sites= write great things about them. college student here, i need $$$! quibids, hook me up! i’ll lie for money!!

  24. Ah, it’s an avocation. a calling.
    Their expenditures, if they’re paying the writers by the word, to counter what they consider “insignificant” criticism just shows we make a difference. And it gives people who have been hoaxed and swindled at least a jumping-off place when they go looking for even so much as acknowledgment that they’ve been wronged.
    I could spend money and subscribe to Google Analytics to see just how much difference that makes, but I do know that the sheer volume of Company Shills parking their load of crap in our yard tilts the information Score away from their company.

  25. I used Quibids and I was ripped off repeatedly. I complained about how the time clock would run down to 2 or 3 seconds, after I had been actively bidding on an item for a long period of time, and “Boom” all of a sudden the auctions over! It didn’t go down to 0.

    It was an auction that I was actively bidding on and it always ended up being the same 4-5 names that seemed to be winning all of the big ticket items. If you go to their website and watch closely, you can see for yourself how they do this.

    When I complained about it, they blamed it on my computer. They said it was “computer lag” and that’s why it seemed to me that the auction stopped at 2-3 seconds to me, but that it really went down to 0 and my computer just didn’t show it! I went on a complaint site about it a while ago and on the complaint site, there were several other people complaining about the same thing happening!! I argued with them that it didn’t matter what computer that I used, this would happen and that the computer that I normally used was brand new. They would not do a thing to rectify the situation. This happened to me a few times.

    Also they have this feature that you can set to automatically bid for you, and twice the autobids didn’t use my bids and rewarded the auction to one of the usual bidders that seem to never run out of money! But they did deduct all of the bids from my account even though they were not used. When I complained about this, they refunded my bids that weren’t used, but would do nothing else. I was extremely angry! I told them that again, I should have won the auction and I felt it only fair that because of their screw up, I should be allowed to win it. They obviously didn’t agree with me.

    They also are suppose to have limits of how much you can win in a 28 day period and a limit on the big ticket items. So, why is it that these same users are the ones who always seem to be the only ones winning them and repeatedly with no limits? Because they’re bots!!

    I have filed so many complaints with them and they do not care. I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “Why would this woman keep bidding if this happened?” Because you can not get a refund on the bids you’ve purchased! So you either use them and try to win something or just give them to the company.

    It is also true about how you can win small things so easily when you first sign up on Quibids. But after that, you just can’t seem to win aything after that. AND if you’re bidding on bid packages, people were paying alot more to “win” these bids then they ever would have if they had purchased them outright! Not once in awhile either. Every single time!! That was a huge clue that there were bots! They drive up the auctions and all of a sudden after they had used up what would have amounted to thousands of dollars on big ticket items, the person was gone! Now, who in their right mind would’ve spent more than what it would’ve cost to buy it outright at full cost and then stop and let the auction end and someone else win?

    They’re a crooked site. Plain and simple!

  26. Wow. Brother Jonah, you are one paranoid freak. And, from what I’ve read above in these comments, you won’t get past that first sentence and will make assumption upon assumption to twist it so that I am no more than a shill for the bad guys. I agree that quibids is quite a bit of a little scam – especially in that they wholly mislead consumers with ads that purport to save them up to 90%, which clearly and wholly fails to account for the cost of bids. That does not even account for all the folks who did NOT win that particular auction and who could only try to employ their “buy it now” option, which uses prices inflated above retail and will not let you apply ‘voucher’ bids to the cost.

    But all of that having been said, it’s pretty clear that you, Brother, are so paranoid that you will accuse even a nascent kindred spirit of being a shill – here I consider the discussion with David on August 1 and following. Instead of helping him to come to your conclusion, the absence of a whole-hearted buy-in to your way of thinking led you to accuse him of being either a gullible sap worthy of no more than our pity, or a conspirator with the enemy.

    My friend, there IS a middle ground. And people are allowed to come to alternate conclusions.

    As much as I’ve enjoyed my visit, I must suggest, for sake of maintaining civility in all aspects of our discourse: lighten up just a tad, back off a wee bit, and climb down from such a high horse.

  27. Penny auctions are a contentious topic right now. Some vow that they are scams, while others swear by the deals they’ve scored. For those who think the penny auction model is a scam, the most logical step would be to avoid them altogether.

  29. “paranoid”. Tres amusant.

    Fraud is fraud, calling one crazy in any form for pointing it out shows nothing.

  30. Having been a member of Quibids for 6 months I agree totally with Tom and Brian who have commented earlier. Quibids is a fair and legal site and all the naysayers haven’t the faintest idea how to use it and that’s why they have lost money and bad-mouthed it. Those who say they use shills or bots are foolish. Like casinos they don’t need to cheat since the odds are greatly in their favor to make a profit and they would be in danger of “killing the goose that lays the golden eggs”.

    Here are the rules I follow when I want to bid:

    1) Bid only on items you actually want to and have ckd out the selling price posted by Quibids and you are satisfied it is approx.what you would pay in the open mkt for the item. E.g.; gift cards are always a good item because they are always at face value. Some of their big ticket items can be bought elsewhere at a lower price.

    2) Following up on my 1st rule would be to bid with the intention of using BUY IT NOW if you are not the winner. This way you will never lose you bid money and you will never pay more than the listing price since Quibids will advise you to stop bidding when you have reached the listing price with you cash bids. Using this strategy, more often than not, you will actually win the item at a much lower price.

    3) Use Bit-O-Matic where possible when bidding as described in 1) & 2). This way you may well intimidate other bidders who are not so sophisticated or are just trying to win the item with a few single bids. In doing so try and use it when you are the only one using Bid-0-matic. If their are 2 or more others using Bid-o-matic wait until their is only one other or no others using it. As long as you are using Bid-O-Matic you will always have the last bid and thus can’t be outbid!

    4) On items where only single bids are permitted, bid early and repeatedly and you will very often intimidate other bidders into thinking that you are a very serious bidder and force them to stop bidding.

    I have used this strategy successfully to win many items. Her are a few examples:
    The following prices include amt. bid, selling price and shipping cost.

    Apple ipod touch-8GB-4th generation—$29.57
    Lowes $100. Gift card———————$10.40
    Lowes $100. Gift card———————$13.56
    2-$25 Outback Gift cards——–approx-$2.00 ea
    $1100. for of American Air Gift cards (7 in all)—–$920. Should have done better here but since I needed them for a trip so I went to the limit on a couple of the cards.

    I can only compliment the founders of Quibids for a beautiful money making concept and hope that the dummies who aren’t smart enough to figure it out keep on bidding!

  31. The bottom line ANYTIME that you take out your wallet, is to be an educated consumer. NOBODY is going to do the job of educating YOU, it’s something you must do for yourself to help enable you to make wise decisions with your money. With that said, if you are going to dive into the penny auction realm, DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Watch a site, and watch it again and again before making a purchase of bids. Comb through their terms and conditions, and make sure the site adheres to them. Find out what their win limits are, if any. Then view the closed auction page (if there is one) to learn about bidders who may be monopolizing the site, or when a dominant bidder might have reached their win limit for the day/week/month. I personally won’t bid on a site that has no win limits, or sites that do not promote trust through transparency and do not post their closed auction details. THEN, comb through the forums, like mine at http://www.pennyauctionwatchdogs.com, and see what bidders are saying about a particular site – are they shipping won items in a timely manner? Is there evidence of bots? Do they provide quick and courteous responses to email/phone inquiries? You can learn alot by participating in penny auction forums. Some forums may have their own agenda, so join those where the agenda is to not protect sites when something is amiss just because they may be a site sponsor or because they have previously been verified or given a stamp of approval. These are just some general tips. More info can be found at pennyauctionwatchdogs (not affiliated with that ‘other’ “watch” site).

  32. Legal, maybe. Scam, yeah. Nothing is illegal until somebody passes a law against it.Nunchaku sticks, for instance, were perfectly legal to carry until the second or third time somebody beat up a half dozen cops with them.

    Were they deadly weapons before that? sure were.
    They just weren’t illegal.
    Carnie games are legal to an extent. You’d probably do better going to the toy store and buying your gal that stuffed animal though.

    Faith healers, yeah, sometimes it works, because there are some physical problems that CAN be resolved by psychological means.

    Rainmakers, they would follow the weather patterns, in the U.S. just about anywhere in a normal summer you’ve got about a one-in-five chance of having rain on any given day. If you hit 4 towns, got one or two times that it DID rain, you take the credit for it raining and take the money and split, the times it didn’t you blame some anonymous non-believer in the audience, refund the money and ride out of town on your horse instead of a rail. Easier than actually working for a living, just making a no-stakes bet that it will rain on your camp-meeting a few times at least.

    Where the “auction” sites step into the bounds of fraud, you have to pay something even if you don’t win the bid.
    In a REAL auction the people who are selling pay a commission to the auctioneer.
    Ebay sells a chance to sell, not charge the customers for a chance to buy.
    See the difference?

    Representing it as anything more or less is lying, when you lie to somebody to get them to give you money it’s fraud.

    You can buy lottery tickets in just about any state too, on the lottery ticket it tells you how low your odds of winning really are, but some people will still believe that the more times they purchase a ticket the better their chance at winning.

    We restate, only more plainly, clearly and often, what the business manifest of the penny auctions state vaguely and quietly, that you pay even if you don’t get anything, that the company makes more money off people not winning auctions than on those who do.

    For telling the people exactly that, we get threatened by the company with a lawsuit. A bogus lawsuit.

    That’s lame, dude. I walk with a cane due to injuries that won’t get any better than they are now, many of my friends are disabled, so I know “Lame” when it happens.

  33. Quibids and other penny auctions are gambling and should be viewed as such. They offer the opportunity for extremely large discounts but also the opportunity for lost funds. In all gambling type actions people must weigh the pros vs the cons and if you do not see a benefit in these types of websites then no one is forcing you to participate. I for one think it is an amazing business plan and I can vouch for Quibids in that every auction I have won I have received in a timely fashion. Don’t stand on a soap box and preach what you do not know or understand. Just because something looks like too good to be true doesn’t mean it is. Do the math if you want an educated opinion, I have.

  34. Search “Quibids are Scammers” on facebook and like me please! Spread the word!

  37. Im not sure where the fraud is taking place, it sounds like angry losers to me. Nonetheless these sites are a plentiful source of entertainment.

  38. I am a programmer and have full knowledge of how an auction site works and should work.

    First, all auction site is a gamble. You may win or loose, that depends on how you play. Just like when you play cards. So, calling it an auction site a scam or cheat is the irresponsible remark unless you have some good reason for it. Hence, anywhere gambling is legal this should be legal to.

    Now, the most important part. An auction site is not a scam or a cheat as long as it is operated fairly. When speaking to Quibids, is it run fairly?

    I spent about half an hour looking at the site. Nearly, about 6-10 auctions got closed by that time. It was quick. But that’s not problem, they can run as many auctions as they want. I noticed a strange but common fact among all the closed auctions. Not even a single auction made enough money to cover the cost of the product. So, the profit is a very far away.

    I know, not every auction make profit. Some auctions do get closed early and are in loss. But most of the auctions do make profit. But, what’s the scenario here? No, profit at all. You can not run a site in such way and for such a long time if you do not cheat. Or, you have to have the free access to vault of Central Bank of US.

    Hence, my conclusion is, it is surly a scam. But, keep in mind that I spent very few time on the site and have not even bid myself. So, please correct me if I am wrong but be aware from those fake posts.

  39. According to their own site, Quibids was the brainchild of Oklahoma City entrepreneur Matt Beckham, joined by Shaun Tilford, Jeff Geurts, Josh Duty, Bart Consedine, and spokeswoman Jill Farrand. The 27-year-old Beckham’s identity is confirmed by the Quibids.com domain registration.

  40. With all of the garbage that can be found online, is this really where you want to make a stand? Don’t hate the player, hate the game!

    Visit my site and bid my penny auctions for free!

    Go To: http://www.GotFreeBids.com

    If bids are free, you have nothing to lose.

  41. Did anyone hear there is a class action suit against Quibids claiming fraud. They wont be in business much longer

  42. I went on a quibids spree for my xmas shopping this year. wanted to get the gift cards, i would normaly buy, for a slightly reduced price. and it worked GREAT! in the span of about a month and a half, i had accumulated about 12-15 gift cards from various stores (best buy, future shop, winner, homesense etc.) all of which arrived in a timely manner.

    and just an example of one of my experiences. I bid on an auction for some earrings. won the auction for a really low price, under ten cents. A couple days later, i received an email from quibids, informing me that due to stocking issues blah blah blah, they couldnt ship me the earrings i had won. instead they gave me a list of 20+ items that i could get instead, at approximately the same retail value of the earrings. I chose a $50 best buy gift card (way better than the earrings i bid on, and way cheaper than it would go for even on the quibid site. at the time $50 best buy GCs would sell at around $2.50)

    in terms of the auctions i won, i have no complaints. BUT after reading this entire comment page, i noticed a couple testimonies that match my scenario. a few people have mentioned winning things at first, but then being seemingly unable to win anything at all. this matches my case perfectly. I was so thrilled with my initial success, i bought another bid package and kept on bidding on items. but the frequency at which i won auctions diminished greatly, and quickly. unfazed and still on a high from winning some gift cards, i got my GF to make an account. and boom she was loving it, she also won many gift cards, some stemless wine glasses and a pair of earrings. but within a month she wasn’t winning any more and kinda gave up on the site.

    After looking back on our experience and reading these comments, it seems that quibids has somehow designed their site, to reward newer members with a, perhaps, more “conventional” or “honest” auction to hook them in and to display an image of legitimacy. But then after a set period of time, bots are introduced or shills or SOMETHING that stops you from winning.

    I noticed after both our initial winning sprees (i have account access to both our quibids accounts) that the same items i bid on, and won, in the past, are;
    A) closing at a much higher price on a consistent basis
    B) have way more bidders, and it seems these bidders are willing to place amounts of bids totaling an value FAR greater than the product being bid on.

    don’t know if this is entirely coherent, i’m kinda under the weather and extremely tired lol.

    just thought i would share my experience.

    in closing, i DO feel that something seedy is afoot. I don’t know if something changed right as me and my GF signed up, or if it was some sort of fancy programming. We won a lot at first. around 20 items. But after the initial burst of winnings, we never won again. we’ve since stopped participating, even before reading all this.

    It was ridiculously easy to win at first, but within the span of a month, we literally couldnt win a single auction.

    somethings up.

  43. Looks like this thread has fizzled out and died, which makes me incredibly sad. I would have liked to see that lawsuit flower, maybe it could have saved me from even glancing at Quibids in the first place.
    @Brother Jonah–I admire the tenacity with which you attacked Quibids. I wish I was as articulated. The way I see it, Anonymous should just hop on and take the site down.
    I believe there is still hope in sticking a thorn in the side of this sleazy organization.

  44. I think what you composed made a ton of sense.
    But, what about this? suppose you added a little content?

    I ain’t saying your information isn’t good., however what if you added a title to possibly grab folk’s attention? I mean Scriptmatix ?penny auctions? such as Quibids are less scams than pure fraud -notmytribe.com is kinda plain. You might glance at Yahoo’s home page and watch how they create post titles to grab viewers interested. You might add a related video or a pic or two to get readers excited about everything’ve got to say. Just my opinion, it could make your posts a little bit more interesting.

  45. Anonymous because I am considering starting a penny auction site as I own a couple of nice domain names relating.

    Is the problem simply that they charge $.60 per bid and keep it if you lose?

    What if they charged $.10-$.25 a bid and did the same? I think the only problem is greed, not the practice. As lnong as the product is delivered and there’s a smile on the face…

    Think of a raffle, you buy the ticket, but you don’t get the money back if you lose. Some raffles are free, but more often than not, it’s a buck a ticket. Same principle, the money collected pays for the prize, and the rafflertear (or what ever they call them) keep the profits.

    Not looking to start a big hooplah, but… I damn sure don’t want to see a site I start get blasted here or anywhere else.

    So would the reduced price per bid be satisfactory?

  46. I say we start a group that organizes bidding for quibids and the like. It works like this- we schedule group bidding. Get 100 individuals to bidomatic on an item of desire for only one of the 100 people in that group. Flood the opening of the bidding with say 2 auto bids. This effectively would keep all the others out. Then just let that one person of the one hundred take the item for the third bid. Viola! Scam the scammer!

  47. Howdy. outstanding job. I did not anticipate this.
    This is a striking article. Thank you!

  48. The British Office Of Fair Trade got after Scriptmatix for the fraudulent or shill bidding aspects originally designed into their auction software. Quibids hopes to escape legal action by referring to their operation as “entertainment auctions” but clearly the way that their “entertainment auctions” work is more like a raffle than an auction. Usually raffles are ONLY allowed for a charitable cause. Quibids needs to be shit down as gambling, since it’s a raffle and should be forced to stop using the term “auction” on TV ads since it is in fact a raffle, not an auction.

  49. Ask Matt Beckham, CEO of Quibids about his
    old boss the famous Canadian internet scammer
    Jesse Willms who owned Swipebids back when
    Matt was CEO of that.

    Go to the FTC web site and look up case 1023012
    Case No. 2:11-cv-00828
    FTC File No. 102 3012
    March 6, 2012

    The Scriptmatix software was written to be
    a scam, simulating phantom shill bidders.

    If they “auction” something for $100, they
    collect SIX THOUSAND dollars worth of bid fees alone.

    Of course they can sell a $1000 TV for $100.00!

    http://ftc.gov/os/caselist/1023012/index.shtm

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