Penny auctions have garnered a bad rep due to several bad apples that either "shill" bidded auctions (bid on their own products) or simply did not ship items. Similar to bitcoins, many people dismiss the concept as a scam without even considering the potential. I thought i'd write this post to address some of the concerns that were brought up in this forum.
First, the penny auction industry has gotten very savvy about identifying sites that shill bid or fail to ship products. The independent site allpennyauctions.com aggregate data from all the major penny auction in the industry, it collect data on usernames who are bidding, how many sites they are registered on, who's winning, etc. It's very easy to determine which sites have bots as there are often a few winners that just so happen to only be registered on one site; also sites that fail to ship can never survive in the penny auction industry as bidder will instantly report them and they get bad stats. Even though we track our own feedback rating on our site, you can also check out
http://www.allpennyauctions.com/site/MokiMarket.com/ for an independent analysis of my site.
Secondly, penny auctions is not a scam but rather a skilled based strategy game similar to poker. There a users that consistenly saves lots of money on penny auction sites and there are several well known strategies in the industry. I'll mention a few here:
1) Never bid on an auction with more than a minute remaining: Chances are high that you will be outbid so you are wasting bids
2) Chose an intimidating username: most powerbidder have names like "idontquit" or "neverendingbids" as a tactic to scare bidders from bidding on items
3) Earn a reputation: This is a very balsy strategy, but many powerbidders are willing to bid up a $20 gift card to $1000 bucks if they have to just to establish a reputation as a crazy bidder that will never stop bidding on an item they set their sites on. Once they have this reputation, other bidders simply avoid bidding on auctions that these users bid on and they get even better deals on products
4) Bid on new sites: This is also a risky strategy as many new sites are known to not ship items and shill bid on their auctions. However, new and honest penny auction sites will be losing money because they do not yet have a userbase large enough to cover the cost of their items. Many powerbidders will completely take over a new penny auction site, winning everything. This has become such a big problem and many sites have started to limit the number of wins you can have on a site in a month.
Hopefully this helps address some of the concerns. Register on Mokimarket.com and get free credits with coupon code "bitcoin". It's completely risk free and you could win some great deals!