Powerhousebids is not reputable

I saw this site was auctioning some nice items, and was having success on other penny auction sites, so I decided to give it a try.  First I won a $100 Amazon gift card.  Then I won a few bid packs.  This got me excited, so I purchased more bid packs, and started going for it.

The first problem I had was with their autobid feature.  I bid on the new iphone, and lost all my bids.  The Iphone sold for about $9.50.  I lost all my bids.  Here's the problem.  I had about 1350 bids.  Only 1950 bids were used approximately in this auction.  This means either it took too many of my bids, or was counting them twice.  For every time I bidded, for the auction to stay open, there has to be a counter bid.  That would make 2700 bids, so the phone should have sold for at least $27.00, not $9.50.  Translation.  I lost an iphone because of their bid feature.  To their credit, they did return the bids to me, for which I was grateful.  Would have rather had the iphone, but problems happen.

However, I tried again to bid on stuff.  I started suspecting them of bot bidding, where the administrator has their own usernames and bid on the items also.  This can keep a smaller auction site from losing their shirts because items sell for too cheap.  I cannot be sure, but I'm near positive they use bot bidding based on my experience.  I bid over 500 times to try and test this.  At this point I asked for a refund of my remaining bids, and I would no longer use their site.  I gave them a deadline to reply to me to resolve this.  They contacted me, but just after my deadline, so I put in a request with Paypal to help me resolve it.  Paypal was unable to, but I did get refunded $2.50 for shipping and purchase price on one item.

This was back in the beginning of July 2010.  It is September 16.  Since mid July they have made no effort to contact me.  My account remains open, but there is no record of the more recent wins of two giftcards.  Thankfully I still have the confirmation e-mails. 

I hope I get a refund, but do yourself a favor and check out other sites.  I personally like quibids.com.  It is a little harder to win but they actually honor their auctions.  I have won 11 or 12 times there, including a waterproof digital camera, dvds, wii remote, and a cool lego set.

And remember, always review a site first before you use it.  My mistake.