buySAFE trusts this Merchant and will guarantee your purchase up to $500.

buySAFE’s mission is to ensure every online purchase goes smoothly, safely, reliably, and without any surprises.

	This merchant’s identity, reputation, experience, financial stability, and ability to honor their sales terms and conditions have been verified by buySAFE.
	buySAFE continuously monitors, in real-time, this merchant’s performance on every transaction.
	A 3-in-1 Guarantee, is automatically included with your purchase, and provides you with: - A full third party guarantee of your purchase, up to $500 - A $10,000 identity theft protection - A $100 lowest price guarantee

What do BuySafe guarantee?

They guarantee that they “inspected” SwipeAuctions and that “buySAFE Merchants are certified to be reliable, stable and able to fully perform on all their terms of sale”.

Can you get your bids back?

I doubt it:

$500 Purchase Guarantee. Get what you paid for, or your money back. All the terms of sale for your purchase are guaranteed, including product authenticity, up to $500.

Since it is clearly stated in the TOS that bids are not refundable, I doubt that they will reimburse bids. What does their guarantee cover with SwipeAuctions? Not much to my opinion.

What about their lowest price guarantee?

Come on people, it is a penny auction business. No lowest price guarantee would work.

Identity theft?

A $10,000 identity theft protection

As far as penny auctions are concerned, it’s pointless.

Honoring their TOS?

This merchant’s identity, reputation, experience, financial stability, and ability to honor their sales terms and conditions have been verified by buySAFE.

Does it mean that Swipeauctions is clean? Since the BBB was unable to find much about SwipeBids (&co) not honoring their T&C, I doubt that BuySAFE would find anything.

Is BuySAFE legitimate?

Who cares? In that matter they are not guaranteeing much. It’s pure marketing. With very restrictive TOS and T&C they can easily respect their own terms.

Verdict from PCAdvisor from 2008

BuySafe might have made sense when e-commerce was young, but in 2008 it seems somewhat anachronistic. There’s no rush for a UK-based service.

Read more about BuySAFE

Before making your first bid on a penny auction:

• Research the penny auction with BBB first. Not all penny auctions are created equal and BBB ratings on various sites range from A- to F. Always research the penny auction site with your BBB at http://www.bbb.org/us/Find-Business-Reviews/ before signing up.
• Read the fine print carefully. Before providing any personal information or signing up for any “free” trial with a penny auction, read all of the fine print carefully on the website. Pay close attention to details on signup and annual fees, minimum bidding requirements, maximum prize amounts and how to get a refund.
• Know what you’re buying. Before bidding on an item, research how much it costs elsewhere and keep track of how much you’re spending on bids overall to see if you really are getting a good deal.
• Keep a close eye on your credit card statement. Many have complained to BBB about being unexpectedly charged more than $150 just for signing up. Some complaints were also automatically charged for more bids when they ran out or for a yearly registration fee, not realizing this would be the case.
• (…) Skipping this part since I doubt you can get ripped off before registering or bidding.

What should you do first and what doesn’t the BBB say?

So basically the first thing you should be doing is researching the BBB for reliable information. Since this article has been broad-casted by Google News, most of you might choose to believe that it is true and reliable.

I’m sorry but the first thing to do is to search the web for information about a company and read feedback. You will need to make the difference between real reviews and promotional reviews. If you don’t know the difference, read PAW. Most of their “articles” are paid reviews posted by site owners.

A real review isn’t automatically negative. Keep in mind that most people post to complain. There is usually a 1/5 ratio. Be careful and don’t fall for ratepoint reviews. Ratepoint reviews can be forged easily.

Educating customers and telling them to search the web before buying bids should be their first advise. This is their role to act as a safeguard…

What are the threats?

Many people have complained to BBB about being automatically charged $150 just for signing up for what was supposed to be a free trial. Others complainants have voiced their concerns that some sites use phony bidders and “bots” to drive up the prices on items. Customer support is also a major concern as many complainants explain they had a very difficult time receiving refunds or resolving other issues with the company.

Read more

What is SwipeAuctions aka SwipeBids rating?

If you are a newcomer you don’t know that the BBB is speaking about SwipeAuctions (ex. SwipeBids) What is SwipeBids rating?

Based on BBB files, this business has a BBB Rating of B- on a scale from A+ to F.

Reasons for this rating include:

• Length of time business has been operating.

Read more

Have a look on another company owned by the same Jesse Willms: F rated

Read more

Complainants allege misleading advertising, unauthorized credit card charges, receipt of unwanted merchandise, and difficulty implementing cancellation procedures. Some complainants allege that they agreed to a trial offer only, and was not aware they were enrolled in a continuity program.

Customers complain after repeated attempts to cancel, shipments are stopped, but the company continues billing them monthly.

Most consumers have stated that the company sold or gave their information and credit card number to another entity called “Living Lean” who also charged their credit cards for products or services.

Based on BBB files, this company has an unsatisfactory record with the BBB due to a pattern of complaints. The complaints concerned product issues, delivery issues, refund issues, and customer service issues. The BBB Contacted the company in an attempt to address the issues, however, the company has failed to correct the underlying reason for the complaints.

At this time the BBB has received a large number of complaints on this company.

What are Swoopo’s ratings?

Swoopo got a lot of different entitites (USA, Canada, UK, …)

Swoopo USA: A rated and accreditated

Swoopo Canada: B rated

Come on…

What are the BBB accreditated penny auction sites?

Swoopo A+

Quibids A-

Bidcactus A-

Bigdeal A-

What does the BBB monitor?

Complaints. It only monitor complaints. Does the site deliver? Does the site respect its own T&C and ToS?

What the BBB doesn’t tell you?

They are not guaranteeing that the site is:

• having decent margins,
• botting and cheating its customers

Moreover the BBB is acting like a sort of safeguard without telling you its own limits.

Be careful, delivering the products and sticking to the TOS doesn’t make you an honest and reliable business! Scammers can take advantage of it. In penny auctions only winners can certify that they were NOT delivered.

Conclusion

Don’t trust them and read a lot more articles than this one. If you want to use an established penny auction site, keep in mind that what matters is their offer, their honesty and their margins. PERIOD.

If you want to access more information about penny auction sites and their past auctions, feel free to use our tools.

1. Monitoring QuiBids auctions (almost 40,000 auctions in 15 days) We will be writing a summary about Quibids in October.
2. Elaborating a membership to give you access to even more powerful tools: Everything will be ready in October
3. Working on our live statistics: still in alpha
4. Working on a few brand new tools: you will have a partial access to them during October

What the hell can you do with those new tools?

When should you be biding?

With the first one you will be able to find when to bid to win anything on a specific website.

What are penny auction sites auctioning?

This tool will help you to know what products penny auction sites are auctioning over a precise period of time. What are the best sellers. What are the good deals? Find out where the real deals are hiding!

What is the best penny auction site?

This tool will help you to compare penny auction sites on a specific period of time.

Top 100 Most Auctioned Products on BigDeal Aug 2010

We made a lot of articles about SwipeBids, this long post summarize everything so that you can avoid getting scammed:

We started by linking a great in depth review of PAW about SwipeBids.com They did a fantastic job at digging all these things about Jesse Willms and Just Think Media. You can read more about it at the end of this long article.

We made a lot of articles about SwipeBids, this long post summarize everything so that you can avoid getting scammed:

Scam Alert : SwipeBids Detailed Stats 08/25/2010 – Swipebids Proven a Scam!

SwipeBids Scams: How is SwipeBids getting traffic?

How to find out that SwipeBids is a scam in a few seconds

SwipeBids, are negative reviews helping their scam? SwipeBids strategy to scam thousands of people

SwipeBids : Another PR campaign, penny auction scam 2.0

SwipeBids Scams: Their Most Faithful Bot Tryagain2 won a Honda Civic

SwipeBids threatening us? Scammers, you wish we were afraid.

Is SwipeBids a scam? Who is behind SwipeBids.com?

Is SwipeBids.com legitimate?

They are doing everything they can to convince you that they are no scam. This screenshot is one of their latest trial. Let’s answer to them point by point:

Tracking Numbers – What the hell is going on with these UPS numbers?

I received a lot of shill comments on my post about Swipebids statistics inconsistencies. They drew my attention to something that I had no time to investigate: their would be delivery system and UPS numbers. What does it mean after all? Not much. They are providing you with a lot of real numbers. It isn’t that hard to get valid tracking numbers without delivering anything. I thought that I should look at those tracking numbers a bit longer. Here is what I did:

I compared what I found on their tracking number report (on UPS site) and what should be on it. I also compared the reports of the same products (Xbox console, Sony Bravia Theater, …)

I found out a lot of inconsistencies!!

1. Same Products are not having the same shipping weight (Xbox Elite, amazon gift cards, sony bravia theater,…)
2. Products are not having the right shipping weight (50% less or more)
3. Bundles are having wrong weight (iPad + Macbook)

Conclusion: SwipeBids is using real tracking numbers but not for the right products!

Proofs:

Read more about SwipeBids UPS Tracking numbers: Scam Alert: SwipeBids, UPS, Delivery, Lies and Truths

Picture Testimonials

As I told you in SwipeBids Scams: Their Most Faithful Bot Tryagain2 won a Honda Civic, SwipeBids seems to be using fake images in their press release where they show “would be” winners standing next to cars. Picture Testimonials are no proof at all. PAID reviews only show that they are ready to pay to look honest.

Alexa Rankings

As I told you in SwipeBids, are negative reviews helping their scam? SwipeBids strategy to scam thousands of people, and in a lot of articles, it is extremely easy to get a nice but inconsistent Alexa ranking. Scamming Alexa and Google is almost as easy as scamming a greedy visitor that wants to believe in that Macbook orgy. Once again, SwipeBids is only proving that they are pretty talented scam artists who can fake almost anything.

Unlimited wins

Remember those Win limits on Gift cards?

I think those $10 cards and bid packs are the only things real humans can win on SwipeBids. They are plagued by bots. That’s a smart way to look honest. Having a few people win cheap gift cards. In an article PAW pointed out that they had win limits on $10 gift cards but not on Macbooks! Seriously? Who would fall for that one?

If they have been doing so, it can only mean that they were scamming people on macbooks and delivering a few giftcards… Those win limits were tacit admittance of botting and illegal activities.

What going on behind the scene?

If you read our article on Scam Alert : SwipeBids Detailed Stats 08/25/2010 – Swipebids Proven a Scam!, you will understand what they are hiding. We monitored their auctions for 12 hours and here is what we got:

• Auctions appearing and vanishing, 0% consistency
• A crazy lot of suspicious bidding activity (botting)
• A very strange auction mix (89% bids and loads of $10 gift cards)
• A crazy amount of daily spent bids (over 7 millions!)
• Users winning for over $50,000 RRP in 12 hours

SwipeBids’ Leaderboard

You can read more about their leaderboard (which disappeared from their website a few weeks after our post was published) on our article How to find out that SwipeBids is a scam in a few seconds. What matters is that they got users who won 20,000 auctions in a few months (between two screenshots) This is completely crazy. Check our statistics about all others penny auction sites to know how many winners they got and how many auctions they are having in a month. Only Quibids is auctioning almost 2,000 items daily. We know that most of you believe that Quibids are a scam and we are watching their auctions since 09/01/2010. Anyway, Swipebids is changing their site every week. They are evolving and correcting their mistakes. Don’t get baited!

The first screenshot is dating from Aug 2010, the second one from June 2010. Killerplauze won over 40,000 auctions in 2months! Scary lol

Daily Contest

This is a screenshot about their daily contest. Now that we got more data, I’m going to prove you that they are a scam! Check the number of bid packs that they are auctioning in 12 hours! Those people would have been buying over 400 packs. (500+ bids for that contest !!!) That’s 200,000 bids…

PAW made a quite impressive work at digging those things. The first alert was the $150 charge that Swipebids is debiting to every new customer.

SwipeBids’ $150 charge

The worst thing is that SwipeBids started charging $150 without people being aware of that. The were charging $150 for a 1 year membership… That’s the first extremely “scammy” fact. They charge you $150 upon registration without even telling you. Now, they are elaborating press releases to feed Google results with information about this $150 and discredit sites who are telling you that they are scam artists.

Anyway, after this investigation from PAW, they updated their sign-up page to add the details about this subscription.

As PAW pointed out their marketing tricks can turn in scamming tactics in seconds: “Due to high demand, we are only accepting a limited number of new customers today. To ensure your spot, please sign-up in the next 3 minutes.”

Who is behind Swipebids.com?

Enter Just Think Media & Jesse Willms, are they behind SwipeBids.com?

Here is some research that PAW did about SwipeBids:

Last week, after seeing that SwipeBids had posted the news segment on one of their launch pages, that News9, Oklahoma, ran with QuiBids.com, which makes it look like the segment was about SwipeBids.com. We contacted Matt Beckham, the CEO of QuiBids. Due to Matt’s experience in Internet marketing over the years, he pointed it out to us that he believes that Internet marketing group Just Think Media are the ones behind SwipeBids.

We searched a bit more and found a Google cached entry showing that Alberta- Sherwood Park – Just Think Media was at one time showing up as the registrant for Swipebids.com

A current Whois domain search of Swipebids.com shows that it is registered by “MONIKER ONLINE SERVICES, INC.” Moniker offers domain whois privacy to protect your personal information.”-Moniker.com

Here is the list of the most auctioned products on Beezid in August 2010 and their statistics. Penny auctions on Beezid revealed!

Over 6 months of Beezid auctions. We worked on 57,599 auctions on about 58,000!