Penny auctions are a popular way to save money on consumer goods. They can be exciting, fun and allow you to feel like a winner when you succeed in outbidding fellow members. But, there are risks involved. Not all penny auction sites are legitimate. Some of them use shill bidders to artificially raise the prices. Others use automated "bots" to place fake bids. The worst sites do not let any "real" people win their auctions.
Obviously, you should never participate in an auction that isn't legitimate, as it would be a waste of your time and money. SwipeAuctions wants to provide you with a list of things to be wary of, so you can feel confident whenever you choose to sign up for a penny auction site.

Legitimate auction sites will post tracking numbers for the merchandise they have shipped. If they are unwilling to post the tracking numbers, you should be concerned.
Each and every testimonial on the site should have a picture of the customer who sent it in. You can only use someone's picture with his or her permission, so if there is a photo you can be sure the testimonial is legitimate. If there is no photo, the site's management could have written a false testimonial.
Alexa is an online service that ranks websites according to how many page views they receive. You should always research an auction site’s Alexa ranking. If thousands of people seem to be bidding, but Alexa shows they only get a couple hundred hits a day, you should be concerned.
You should be able to win as many auctions as you like. At SwipeAuctions, for example, there is no limit to the number of auctions you can win. But some sites want to limit the amount of merchandise they sell, and will only let you win two or three auctions a month.
There should be an easy way to contact customer service directly from their website should there be any problems. If they seem to make it hard to find out how to contact customer service, you should be very worried about the integrity of the site.