subject: Penny Auctions - Some Tips For Avoiding Scams [print this page] Penny auctions are an easy way to save cash and time. The greatest thing about these online auctions is that you can acquire bids at no cost and utilize them to order real goods. Some Sites often give away bid packs to draw in new users. Some companies also encourage their users to play online video games to acquire bids. Another benefit is that you get enormous price reduction on products which are otherwise expensive. But you must have self-discipline to be able to get the most from these auctions. Before bidding make sure that the level of competition is medium and winning over other buyers may be possible. In the following paragraphs you will learn how to recognize scam websites and stay protected while shopping.
Listed below are some basic steps that you ought to take before joining a penny auction website:
- First of all, you should ensure that the website you plan to become a member of is well protected against id theft, phishing attacks, hackers and adware. A SSL certification tells you that the site has been tested against all of these risks and is reliable. However, these certificates are occasionally not enough. To be entirely secure a website must be present on a web server which is protected by state-of-the-art firewalls and anti-virus programs. At the same time, the code at the back-end should be totally free of weaknesses.
- Secondly, you have to have a look at the traffic statistics of the website. If you find considerable bidding activity but the traffic is too low then some members could be using programmed scripts to control the bidding system. Alexa rank is a superb indicator of visitors and popularity. As a general guideline you must adhere to auction websites having Alexa ranking of 20000 or lesser. Anything further than this means the site isnt popular among internet surfers.
- Keep a watchful eye on the auction winners. If the same persons keep winning all the time, report them to the administration as they may be making use of fraudulent techniques to increase their chances of success.
- Better Business Bureau is an agency that scores corporations according to client satisfaction. You should only register on those penny auction websites which have a great BBB score. You might have to do some research to locate such a company but when you have found one, you will be able to save a lot of money and buy some awesome gadgets at discount prices.
If you take these steps, the likelihood of falling for another scam will lower substantially.
