BidFun Naxopresence UK Ltd Requires purchase of 'credits' to bid, then repeatedly delay auctions beyond the expiration time listed to eat up your bid credits & you've just paid $50 for the chance to bid London United Kingdom

Hi,

I don't see where the rip off is. Everything works according to the rules which are clearly stated on the site. It says very clearly in several places in the FAQ (linked from 3 places on each and every page of the site) that 20 seconds are added everytime someone bids, and this is obvious by looking at the auctions for a few minutes before signing up or bidding.

As explained in the FAQ as well, the counter shown on each user's computer can only try to track the official counter (which needs to be maintained in a central location), and there can be slight delays which may lead to see the counter reaching 0 and then be updated with the new bids / counter value after a short delay.

Next, no bids were "taken": the user created a robot to bid automatically on her behalf, with high limits. The robot did what it was told to do: it placed bids and used credits.

Finally, user sent a (not very polite) message at 21:02 UTC, got a reply at 22:01 UTC (less than an hour later, at a time which is way outside regular hours here), which she obviously received since she sent another not very polite reply at 22:15 UTC (to which we replied as well).

We can only recommend one thing to future users: read the rules, watch auctions for 5 minutes before bidding, don't click on a button to "create a robot" if you don't want a robot to be created, ask questions first rather than after, and please be a bit more polite when you send e-mails. Sore losers not welcome.

The BidFun Team.

Let me start by saying that I have just had first-hand experience with bidfun.com and I must concur with this Rip-Off Report. Unfortunately, I did not do my research well enough prior to purchasing bidding credits (or what I now know could more accurately be termed as "betting" credits) and participating in one of their auctions.

I also want to make it quite clear at the onset, that I did read all of bidfun.com's terms and conditions and FAQ's prior to participating in the auction and accepted these and the way in which it is claimed by bidfun.com that their auctions are conducted. Yes, it's true what the "owner of the company" states about the rules regarding the addition of 20 seconds to the remaining time with each bid placed being clearly defined on the website. I don't have a problem with this, nor do I have a problem with each bid costing up to AUD 1.00 depending on the amount that you purchase, so I am not a sore loser - as the BidFun team seem to refer to anyone who has a complaint about them.

What I do have a problem with and what the "owner of the company" fails to acknowledge either here or anywhere on their website, is that, as a genuine bidder, you will also be bidding (or betting) against "robots" clearly created and operated by the "BidFun Team". This is not immediately apparent and even after (as the "owner of the company" suggests) watching the auction for 5 minutes it is not clear. Indeed, this only becomes obvious when you have watched or participated in the auction over a period of some 7 hours or more and when, after some time you also notice that the same bidders that are placing literally hundreds of bids in your auction, are also placing the same quantities of bids in other bidfun.com auctions running simultaneously.

Of course, these bidders don't have to worry about placing thousands of dollars worth of bets just to win an item with a RRP of $250.00 do they???? No, they don't .... and that's because, as non-genuine bidders, it has not cost them hundreds of dollars before they finally realise what has happened and that the auction has, in-fact, been fixed!!!!

So .... to the "owner of the company", it's not that hard to comprehend why so many people are now claiming that bidfun.com auctions are a rip-off or a scam, is it? I'm not sure what planet you are living on, but in most places that I know of in the civilised world, fixing auctions by artificially driving up the price of the auction item through the use of shill bidding is a criminal offence. This is especially so in the case of bidfun.com, which actually takes your money before the auction has ended or the final bid has been placed.

What the "öwner of the company" needs to remember is that everything about bidfun.com presents as it being an online auction website ..... not an online gambling operation. The difference between the two is quite distinct.

In the first case, bidders participate in an auction under the belief that they are bidding against other genuine bidders with the same intent (and somewhat similar financial constraints) as their own. This is regardless of whether or not those other genuine bidders choose to place their bids through the creation or use of a robot or some other automated bidding function.

In contrast, however, punters using an online gambling operation (or participating in any form of organised gambling for that matter), do so with full knowledge and acceptance that they are betting against the house (which normally has vastly superior resources at its disposal) and that the house will probably have some direct involvement or influence in the outcome of the event.

Genuine bidders in an auction would ordinarily expect that it was them and the other genuine bidders participating in the auction who ultimately determined the outcome of the auction .... not the interference or direct (or indirect) participation of the organisers. It is, therfore, not unreasonable to suggest that if, before entering an auction, genuine bidders knew that they would be bidding against entities representing the auction's organisers, agents or owners..... then they would in all likelihood not want to participate in the auction. This is is exactly the reason why shill bidding in an auction is regarded as deceptive and criminal conduct.

In the face of all this criticism, I would really be interested in knowing if Bidfun.com actually intend to introduce some transparency to their auctions. For example, would it consider displaying the total number of bids to date that have been placed in any one particular auction ... just as ebay do?

Would it also consider showing the full list of bidders and not just the last 10 or so, as it appears that 10 bids can actually be placed within a period of less than 5 seconds from from when the clock counts down to zero, as well as in any other 5 second period while the auction is active? And in this regard, doesn't this kind of make the act of watching an auction for 5 minutes before deciding whether or not to join the bidding rather futile???

In my opinion, I very much doubt that bidfun.com would be too willing to implement such transparent processes. This is because such transparency would undoubtedly demonstrate the practice of shill bidding by clearly exposing on record those bidders that are willing to "spend" upwards of AUD 750.00 to win an Ipod with a RRP of $250.00.

Despite these claims, what I find equally perplexing (or disappointing) is just why bidfun.com have found it necessary to resort to such unscrupulous conduct. This is because, whether or not you agree with the format and rules of their auctions, the basic concept behind them is actually quite brilliant and they would still realise quite tidy profits from their auctions just through the income generated by genuine bidders. In this sense, I can only attribute their actions to one thing and that is just pure greed.

On a final note, I have sought to bring my strongly grounded suspicions of their deceptive and criminal conduct to the attention of PayPal. This is because PayPal, since the very time of their establishment, have gone to great lengths to maintain their image as a service that protects consumers from fraudulent activity and shonky sellers. I'm quite sure that PayPal would not like to be seen as a conduit through which unscrupulous operators can and are facilitating the proceeds of their criminal conduct.

I must say that one of the primary reasons I personally felt that the bidfun.com auctions would be operated legitimately was largely because of the involvement of Paypal in processing their funds. Nevertheless, I still have faith in PayPal as a reputable operator, but I'm afraid there will be a possible civil court action against them appearing on the horizon should they fail to begin a rapid process of distancing themselves from any dealings with bidfun.com

I made a report to paypal.

I was determined to win an auction and used the site for 24hrs, none-stop, and it became very apparent to me that they were  either using robots or employees who did not have to pay for bids to out-bid other bidders, so that infact there is no real auction. As you have to pay in advance to bid, you're simply giving them money and don't have a fair chance of winning an auction. I witnessed robots created to outbid other bidders and the amount placed on these robots would have exceeded the cost of the items on auction.  Even more bizzare was the fact that 4 or five bidders seemed to log on at exactly the same time and followed the exact same pattern of creating robots that seemed to bid more money than the retail price for the item on auction for various items seems a little too much of a coincidence, and the same names seem to bid in this way and always win.

I paid to bid because i thought it would be an easier way of winning an auction, as it would be less competitive. when you visit bidfun.com it presents you with links to various other international sites, so that you can choose your local one. This is in itself deceptive, as it suggests that you will only be bidding with users locally, but that isn't the case, you're bidding against everyone else using the sites worldwide. had I known this was the case, I would not have opened an account with bidfun.

the really annoying thing is that the victims of this scam are people who don't have much money, trying to get a bargain only to be ripped off.