A (MLM) Skeptic: Penny Auction Zeek Rewards mentioned in Top Ten Scams of Idaho

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Penny Auction Zeek Rewards mentioned in Top Ten Scams of Idaho

Image representing iPad as depicted in CrunchBase

Can you "win" iPad for $25? Only when hundreds of others lose dozens or hundreds.
Image via CrunchBase

According to columnist Robb Hicken, penny auctions is the most insidious scam of 2012, and Zeek Rewards is specifically mentioned.

1. Penny auctions: The online penny auction Zeek Rewards was shut down this year as a Ponzi scheme. TIPS: Pay attention to details in signup, annual fees, minimum bidding requirements, maximum prizes and refund details.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/12/31/2396820/the-top-10-scams-of-2012-in-the.html#storylink=cpy

Technically Mr. Hicken's tips will only help if you're simply bidding, not being an income-opportunity affiliate (which is a whole different "ball of wax", so to speak, but it's not a bad place to start.

What's worse, the whole penny auction industry itself is misleading.

The whole idea of penny auctions is that you may be able to pick up an item for pennies. However, each "bid" cost real money. Thus, most of the money you spent are for purchasing the bids to be used, so you've PREPAID for the items, thus, the "winning bid" is very misleading.

For example, let's say, you won this iPad for $25. It's worth a couple hundred, sure. Sounds great, but how many bids did you use?

If you used 200 bids, @ $0.65 each, you've spent $130 + $25 + shipping to get that iPad into your hand.

No longer that much of a bargain, is it?

And that's ASSUMING you win. If you lost, those 200 bids are just GONE. You spent $130 for NOTHING.

Now imagine dozens of people all lost, hundreds, and one guy won. Except you don't have to imagine, because that's the reality of penny auctions... hundreds of people lose so one guy can win.

It's a lot like playing the lottery, except lottery is run by a government and is audited, and penny auctions are run by private firms and who knows if they're cheating lying SOBs or honest injuns.

Recently BehindMLM published a letter allegedly from a VP of such a post-Zeek penny auction called Bluebird Bids, which called for an investigation into their own system regarding robot bids, i.e. when some sort of robot is bidding against the bidders.

And a VP of the company is questioning his own senior executives regarding internal practices, and the company then shut down for "maintenance", this does not look very good.