Sunday, October 17, 2010

Guidelines for Penny Auction Site Owners

Pennyauctionwatch.com published recently an article "Guidelines for Penny Auction Site Owners". From the title we concluded that it will focus on how to make the PA website successful.
In fact, the article is about what not to do. Despite this, we fully agree with the following tips.

What Not to Do

* Never, ever, ever shill bid- Don’t use fake admin bids/bots, this can be a script or it can be the site owner bidding. against customers or users that are employed by the site to bid and are not paying for the bids.
* Never divulge users personal information to a third party. Make sure you do not fail to BCC e-mail addresses when bulk mailing.
* Never tell other bidders how many bids another bidder has.
* Never give out free bids under the table.
* Don’t false advertise, don’t use “fake news advertorials” or create shill watchdog sites.
* Never pretend you’re a customer of your own site, this is shill reviewing and is prosecutable (see United States v. Denlinger).
* Don’t inflate retail prices.
* Don’t have hidden fees or fine print, display terms & conditions in a readable font.
* Don’t auction off items you cannot afford to lose and do not intend to fulfill.

Thanks, Amanda!