{"id":1174,"date":"2010-09-10T08:57:22","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T15:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=1174"},"modified":"2010-09-09T09:04:25","modified_gmt":"2010-09-09T16:04:25","slug":"why-penny-auctions-for-gift-cards-are-a-bad-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=1174","title":{"rendered":"Why penny-auctions for gift cards are a bad idea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/wp-admin\/post.php?action=edit&amp;post=529\" target=\"_blank\">Penny auction sites<\/a> love to tout the incredible deals that customers walk away with, but the reality is far less pleasant.\u00a0 For every person that gets a great deal on an item, there are tens or hundreds, possibly thousands that spend money to bid that they can&#8217;t get back.<\/p>\n<p>Well, their credibility has taken a further blow with reports (like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pennyauctionwatch.com\/2009\/09\/penny-auction-owner-asks-for-fake-members\/\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pennyauctionwatch.com\/2009\/09\/muulu-vuulu-scam-penny-auction-reviews\/\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a>) that some of these sites are using auto-bidding bot software to bid up the auctions, thus costing all those that participate more money.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t be lured by these phony deal schemes.\u00a0 If you want a discounted gift card, purchase one from one of the many legitimate <a href=\"www.giftcardadvocate.org\/resources.html\" target=\"_blank\">secondary marketplaces<\/a>, like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.giftcardrescue.com\" target=\"_blank\">GiftCardRescue<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.plasticjungle.com\" target=\"_blank\">Plastic Jungle<\/a>, or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cardpool.com\" target=\"_blank\">CardPool<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Penny auction sites love to tout the incredible deals that customers walk away with, but the reality is far less pleasant.\u00a0 For every person that gets a great deal on an item, there are tens or hundreds, possibly thousands that spend money to bid that they can&#8217;t get back. Well, their credibility has taken a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1175,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions\/1175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}