shopgoodwill.com Goodwill Industries of Southwest Florida Uses an employee shill bidder Fort Myers Florida
I made an outrageous maximum bid on shopgoodwill auction 45962876 put up by Goodwill Industries of Southwest Florida. I was tired of playing the snipping game ad just decided I'd let the market determine the price. I set a maximum bid of $177.77 one minute before the auction ended. 4 seconds before the end of the auction there was another bid of the very same amount. What are the odds of that happening??--of course that bid didn't win.--the purpose of it was not to win the auction but to jack up the profits. The next lower bid was 101.78 so my bid should have come in at 102.78
national customer service apparently just forwards complaints to the local branch. local Customer service said "we don't do that"'. I filed a report with the FTC--they don't get involved in individual cases--just keep the information for their records. I filed a similar report with state of Florida Attorney General--probably in a similar dead file now.
One response I got from a state government agency was--well it's hard to prove. Give me a break. The company knows the pertinent info of the person making the bid. It shouldn't take an auditor very long to find out the bidder's activity and number of completed sales. I am filing a report with our state consumer protection agency--they're more interested in righting an individual transacton than getting to the root of the problem.
Lesson learned: don't think you're getting an honest auction on this site. You might be able to do it with sniping during the last 8 seconds If they haven't stooped to hard-coding the generation of a shill bid in their newest close of auction routine .