swipebids.com - Truth in advertising questions?

OPEN QUESTIONS TO ALL THE MEMBERS AND READERS OF THIS DISCUSSION FORUM

1/ HAVE YOU EVER SEEN OR PARTICIPATED IN A LIVE AUCTION OF GOVERNMENT OR SURPLUS ITEMS AT ANY TIME AFTER OR BEFORE BECOMING A PAID UP MEMBER AT swipebids.com?

2/ HAVE YOU EVER SEEN OR PARTICIPATED IN A LIVE AUCTION OF ANY TYPE OF FURNITURE NEW OR USED AT ANY TIME AFTER OR BEFORE BECOMING A PAID UP MEMBER AT swipebids.com?

3/ HAVE YOU EVER SEEN OR PARTICIPATED IN A LIVE AUCTION OF ANY TYPE OF AUTOMOBILE INCLUDING THE HONDA AS FEATURED ON ANY OF THE MANY LANDING PAGES AFTER OR BEFORE BECOMING A PAID UP MEMBER AT swipebids.com?

4/ HAVE YOU EVER SEEN ANY TYPE OF STRANGE OR UNUSUAL BIDDING PRACTICES BY OTHER PARTICIPANTS OF LIVE AUCTIONS AT swipebids.com?

5/ HAVE WON ITEMS THAT WERE NEVER DELIVERED AFTER BECOMING A PAID UP MEMBER AT swipebids.com?

Tags: advertising, auctions, government, in, scams, truth

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Rohling on July 27, 2010 at 7:35am

Here are the answers to your questions.

1. I have been using SwipeBids for about 6 weeks. I have never seen a Govt. surplus item. However, I have notice that the HP handheld computer they auction is not new but is an open box item. They advertise that everything they auction is new and in a sealed box. Not true.

2.I have never seen furniture. In fact, I ended up at Swipebids when I did a google search for electronic drum sets. One of the found sites was SwipeBids and I was really interested in seeing what they had so I signed up and they took my $150 before I knew it. They have never auctioned a drum as near as I can tell.

3. I have never seen an automobile auction. I did see them give one away in one of their contests that is based on the number of bids placed in a month.

4. I would say I have seen some stupid bidders who bid against themselves in the hopes that they will run the price up so high that no one else will bid on it. (A strategy that NEVER works) But, I can't say I have seen anyone who is acting as a shill bidder to drive up prices.

5. So far I have received most everything I have purchased. Right now they owe me $140 in Walmart gift cards. If you want to see if folks get the merchandise SwipeBids includes tracking numbers for many items on their site. I have tracked a few and all that I checked on have been delivered.

I have had lots of interaction with their support group and they have quit answering my questions altogether. When I first signed up I discovered that time after time the site did not work as described in the FAQ and the other documentation on the website. Many of those issues have been corrected, but that doesn't mean the programming wasn't intentionally "stealing bids" without raising values, it just means they got caught and had to fix it - this is my opinion - I have no facts to verify it.

I noticed on the ad above that SwipeBids says there are 1000s of winners each day. Most of those wins are not for any of the products shown - they are for bidpacks that folks must purchase to be able to bid on products. I would guess that right now they are auctioning off fewer than 50 products a day. The only item they advertise for a short time is the $10 Walmart gift card. In my opinion they keep those available to allow new bidders a chance to win an auction and then not be able to get a refund.

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Permalink Reply by Justin Asking on July 30, 2010 at 9:17pm

Hi Tomas: Thank-you for your kind reply. I ask these questions in the interest of fairness to this penny auction site only. I was personally drawn in to this auction from an add in our local version of a buy-sell-trade www.kijijiji.com. The link then was to this furniture page I mentioned above but did show what looked like live auctions going on. I took the route of the quick registration but had second thoughts before completing the last step to go back to main to observe more. I never did see any mention of a fee to register nor did I even press the Continue button but later found I was charged $150.00 for just closing that dam pop up window with the "X" in the top right corner. I only found out I had been charged when I opened my email!