this can't be for real???

[jg1967]

Online Gun Auction - Gun Broker - Guns for Sale | Guns4Pennies.com

the prices are simply absurd.

[Phillip Gain]

This looks a bit scammy to me. You have to buy a "bid pack" - which basically means you pay to bid. Each time you bid, it restarts the countdown clock.

So it seems to me, that the owner of the gun gets paid the sale price...plus an agreed-upon percentage of the price of the "bids" that were made on the firearm. The idea is that each gun gets LOTS of bids because the prices start so cheap, and each bid brings the sale price up by exactly $0.01.

As to the buyer - he would have to do a lot of mental math. "How much am I paying total? Final price of gun + cost of each bid I have to make." AND since the bids are sold in packages...whatever you don't use will likely expire...or remain sitting on account with gunsforpennies.com unless/until you purchase ANOTHER firearm.

This site has lots of ways to suck out your wallet.

[Phillip Gain]

Oh, and I almost forgot. If you bid the price up and DON'T win the firearm...you're out of luck for the cost of the bids you placed!

And get a load of this - disclaimer in the site's terms and conditions:

We would like to advise all users to monitor their bidding practices. Placing bids online at Online Gun Auction - Gun Broker - Guns for Sale | Guns4Pennies.com frequently or repeatedly can incur high costs. Users should therefore pay attention to their bidding practices and check their charges regularly.

[Trigerhppy]

They're legit, it's a penny auction like beezid or the others. I've won a few things from them. Not everybody likes the penny auction format, but I find it fun and I've gotten some good deals. To each their own.

[dusted]

anything that seems too good to be true usually is. site was fun to watch for a minute, but i'd shoot myself in the hand before i bought anything off of it. saw a blurb that started with "problems with credit cards" and "down for awhile but back up and going strong." might as well have said "got shut down for bad business practice but by some legal loophole were allowed to continue"

[cmhbob]

I signed up just to see what the fees are like. One auction I looked at charged $25 for shipping an EOTech sight.

Bids/price
30/$29
50/$45
100/$80
200/$150
500/$350
1000/$680

Looks like you get 5 free bids just for registering. Also,

Earn 30 free bids each time you refer a user who signs up and purchases some bids.

Ask the new user to enter in your username or email address in the 'Refer' box when they register, or simply ask them to vist the following link: Register | Guns4Pennies.com

You can also invite members from various social network websites and popular free email services by clicking here.

Terms | Guns4Pennies.com says that unexpired bids will not be refunded. There's no clear statement on when bids expire.

Domain registration is through Domains by Proxy and GoDaddy, so you can't find out much.

[Trigerhppy]

I remember when they were shutdown, it was because they'd been using GPal for their credit cared payment system. If you've heard of GPal then you know what the problem was. If not, google them and you'll see all the crap they pulled. I personally can't wait for that guy to go to jail.

[eXGee11]

Googled gpal, found about 600 pages worth of forum replies. Correct me if in wrong, but the gist of it is this: someone "allegedly (quote unquote legal reasons etc etc) " ripped off gun sellers and buyers wth a gun friendly alternative to PayPal. Items sent and no monies received. Sound about right?

Im curious to see how it ends.

[FN1910]

Please read the fine print and think about what you are doing if you start to bid. As it has been pointed out this is the same as the other penny auctions sites and whoever came up with the idea is a genius. There is nothing illegal or scammy about this other than taking advantage of the ignorance of the public. If you are careful and watch what you are doing you can get some good deals but if you don't you can lose lots of money.

I have "almost" quit being shocked at people who scream, rant and complain about things that work exactly as they are advertised. Like the fellow that complained about his printer taking 11 seconds to print each page. The specs on the printer plainly said 4 pages per minute which is 15 seconds so his worked much better than advertised.

These auctions are not your traditional auctions and some states are calling for a ban on them but that is simply calling on a ban on ignorance and stupidity.

[santa]

As W C Fields said "there is a sucker born every day and two to take him". I am NOT calling anybody on this site a sucker. I see that based on the replies that there are people on this site who are aware of these scams. They may be legal but they are preying on peoples greed and stupidity. Remember "if it sounds too good to be true it probably is".