Since my last blog entry early this year I have started seeing more and more of these Penny Auction sites, some of which actually look promising. For example, I saw a commercial on TV for QuiBids so decided to take a look and see how truthful they are as opposed to BidFan.
On their home page it states QuiBids is a BBB Accredited Business so that’s where I went to first. I was surprised to see that they were indeed accredited and since September of last year and they have a A- rating with responses to 144 complaints filed against them (yikes!), here’s a link to the BBB Review. Contact information is also listed there as well as in the whois info of the domain name.
So digging further I went to QuiBids register page where they have a video from News 9 channel. I Googled the anchor woman, Kristen McIntyre, plus news 9 and returned what looks to be a legitimate news station in Oklahoma. All menu items go to where they should go (unlike BidFan that used a fake news station website which the menu items took you to BidFan). Below the video they claim they have been in articles from ABC, MSNBC, etc. Now just try to find those articles, I couldn’t with just simple Google searches (i.e. msnbc quibids article, etc.).
I did come across a Wired article but only reason it showed up is someone posted the URL to QuiBids website, I don’t think that counts. Their also listed on local news channel websites which happen to be ABC or whatever.
The last thing I found was a PDF document from Beckham & Mandel, Business Litigation Attorneys, here’s the link to the document. It’s a class action lawsuit which you can read if you feel like it. So while QuiBids looks a bit more legitimate than BidFan, QuiBids might be the safer Penny Auction to try out if you’re really interested but I would still advise not bothering with any of them.