This morning I came across a blog article about Penny Auctions and was intrigued enough to follow the links to the Swipe Auction. As a long time fan of yard sales, Ebay and thrift shops, I have real difficulty passing up the opportunity to get a bargain and at first glance, Penny Auctions looked like a great way to get bargain prices on some really cool products.
Who wouldn't be wooed by the possibility of getting a Macbook Pro or a new Toyota Prius for a tenth of the retail price? So I thought I would go ahead and register with the idea in mind that I could try it out with the "free bid credit coupon" offered in the article.
Buyer BeWARE!
As soon I clicked through the registration page, a confirmation page came up telling me I had been charged $159.
The registration process is easy but they do require a credit card to complete... THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN MY FIRST CLUE but I was caught up in the process of entering my coupon code for free credits and I totally missed the small print that indicated the initial "sign up package" was for 300 bids and would cost $159 up front! Granted, my coupon added 100 bid credits so instead of buying bids at 53 cents a bid, I was getting the for 39 cents a bid.. a bargain right? However, I wasn't planning on buying anything that would require me to place 400 bids so I was not ready to commit myself to invest $159 at this time.
WHOA! What happened to the "You are about to be charged...... , do you want to continue?" page????? Did not happen. Just "register now.... BOOM you have been charged!
I went immediately to the customer service section and LIVE CHAT box. The operator who took my inquiry pointed out that the price does appear several times on the promo page (yes it does, in small unobtrusive print) but on my insistence that I didn't not want the package, I was told they would happily cancel my sign up and refund my credit card... in a week or two.
So why can they put a charge on my account in minutes but it takes a week to 10 days for them to reverse that same charge?
At any rate, penny auctions may be a viable way to buy cool things at highly discounted prices but if you aren't in the market to spend time researching how to win bids and you don't have the initial cash investment to buy into the program... stay clear. Otherwise, best case scenario, they will have your money in their account for a week or two, gaining them interest! Hopefully, they we be true to their word and I won't have to fight to get my money back.
Photo by Jeff Kubina under creative commons license from Flickr.co/kubina
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