Auction And Appraise - Auction Systems Fraudulent Auctions Using Shill Bidders For Fake Reserve Pricing Phoenix Arizona

I have been buying stuff from Auction and Appraise since it started doing online auctions in real time, so for years. I do the online side, my friends go in person.

This is all just based on observation based speculation, I am not making any accusations, but I am saying it suspicious and anyone who has bid here along time will probably back them up.

Personally, I can come up with no other explanation for things that consistently happen for years, other than Auction and Appraise is committing fraud and violating the contract all bidders agree to.

This is as close to truth as you can get from someone who is an observer instead of a insider. AA has certain items that for whatever reason have to be sold for a minimum price. Maybe that is the price they paid, or it is on consignment disguised as a police auction, or whatever. These are usually items that are expensive, at least a grand in resale value.

These are assumptions, just want to be clear on that, but they present the most likely scenario in my mind (the only other option is consistent gross incompetence) based on our years of observations.

They have a shill bidder, maybe two.

Here is how it works... say I am online and bidding live on a vehicle. I bid $6,000. That bid is the winning bid, it confirms it by saying so on the next item page (where it shows previous item winner ID and price).

Great, I just got a car I can sell for $10k for $6k!

That is until you go down to get your item. They tell... oh that is not on your list of winning items. You say, "Ok, but it said so online, it confirmed the auction ended with my ID as the winner at my price".

They say "Oh, you must have a bad browser or slow connection or something." (They play this one on everyone, despite the fact that I am IT specialist that designs similar systems and they are totally full of it)

You say, ok, so who won, for how much? "Oh, someone on floor. It was well beyond yours" (the rarely can give you the price it sold for).

When you have friends down there, they can confirm that no one on the floor bid that amount, and vice versa for internet.

I recommend everyone do this if you are bidding on items that are expensive and you are trying to get a deal. Bid in person, bring a camera. Have someone online at home with a screen recording program as evidence.

If you notice a floor bidder jumping in at the end on such items to win it when they go cheap, he is probably a shill. Online shill can play against floor bidders.

Snap of pic of this guy. At the end, note if he takes delivery of the items. Snap a pic of the car he is getting into. All of this will be helpful if you decide to pursue the matter or can see the blatant shilling.

We were so mad after the last auction... why? We were the verified winners of a nice vehicle we really wanted until it was time to pick it up. The above scenario is what happened again in this case, supposedly a random "floor" bidder got it. The only problem is the people who were there recall no bids higher than my online bid.

I instantly knew after hearing this since this vehicle was not the norm it was probably a purposefully misrepresented consignment or personal sale from the owner or manager.

Ok, so what. Even if someone else did place a higher bid or not it is gone, right. The guy won't be able to sell it there now, because then I would know for sure and they would be obligated to sell it to me as the highest qualified bid if he couldn't pay for it or backed out.

WRONG... they had the gull to offer it in the very next auction again without contacting me to let me know so I could enforce me bid.

I will tell you what, these guys run it very loose and shady from what I can see. The type of things I see taking place on face value are fraud, breach of contract, and a number of other things. We have lost countless 10's of thousands in potential profits on lost items like this. They never fix the "problem" which means to me the problem must be one that is intentional.

We are doing an investigation by recording the screen captures and raw data packets from the online bidding to legally prove we were declared the winners. We will also have people recording the auction audio and taking pictures of suspected shills and finding the connections.

We are trying to get more insight from an employee who seems to sympathize with the situation.

If we do come up with more solid evidence to support what we speculate has been going on all this time we will pass that along to the authorities and media who have already shown interest if this is in fact a racket like it appears to be.

No matter what, even if they aren't acting with a deliberate intent to shill, they need to get their act together. The raw packet level data (this was the data sent from their server to our computer to our web browser) we already have showing us as winners of items they claimed we did not win could cost a boat load of money in a easily won lawsuit. A class action would include anyone who ever bid there, and that would be tens of thousands of people.

Even if they stand by the accident explanation, it doesn't matter, it is negligence because the problem has been brought up dozens of times just between people I know. Probably hundreds or thousands of times when you count everyone else.

If anyone else has experienced similar problems please post. Also, start logging data for your network card when bidding. Also capture the screen with a screen capture program for proof. I would be interested in participating in a class action if enough others get their proof together.

Jake
Chandler, Arizona
U.S.A.