Complaint Review: Listia Inc - Internet Internet

I have been on listia site for over 3 years both as a seller and as a buyer.  I have had wonderful experiences with the site.  Sure I have had a few sellers who did not perform but listia always refunded my credits if that happened.

There are also a few sellers who overcharge the shipping but there is a place to report that provided, and unlike ebay, listia Does take swift action against sellers who abuse the site rules.  I won a brand new $50.00 wool sweater for my husband on this site and it did not cost me many credits because few were bidding on the item, also I got it absolutely free because seller paid the shipping.  Fifty bucks, absolutely free, you can't beat it.  This is only One of Many great deals I have gotten.

I would like to suggest that you keep an open mind and try listia for yourself.  If you need assistance on the site you just scroll all the way to the bottom in the gray box under Connect with us and there is a place to click to get help.  Try it before you judge, you may have good luck with the site as I have, and, who turns down free stuff ?  Like money in the bank.  And most of their sellers are awesome !  As are most of their buyers. Give it a try!

 i will simplify my coimment as best asi can. my apologies for not using proper grammar etc.

 as a listia consumer for the past approx six months i have from time to time sent and or submitted on several

occasions any ideas or suggestions to their main office customer service dept. for reasons i believe are good and practical ways on how to improve specifics overall for the company and consumers benefit.  all these comments and rebuttals are merely considered as heresay in a court of law.  my personal experience using listia as both a buyer and a seller can really only come up with one possible way that i see a type of scam  taking place. this includes as i would call it false advertising.  in fact this specific situation occured to me within the first few times of using the listia website. i will grant legal authorization of my account for verificatioin purposes if necessary.   the ad stated something to the effect of....hot chocolate homemade great for individual gift ideas for teachers etc wrapped up beautifully for gift giving.  i bid i won . still trying to figurer this whole auction protocol out.  so im thinking i will soon receive two coffee mug type cups with homemade hot chocolte powder inside ready to be given as a gift if i choose not to keep for myself.....when i suddenly realize in actuality what i really won was the hot chocolate recipe which will be sent to me via email.! well iof thats the case i could have just looked up the recipe myself online and not given away what few credits i had. feeling stupid and a little misrepresented at this point iu can only blame myself for perhaps taking the time to read word for word of what the ad indicated. i saw the photo and glanced at the ad and then assumed the outcome would be otherwise.  lik many people say including court judges.......cavet empteur  pardon my spelling errors which comes from latin meaning   let the buyer beware.  whether we are shopping online or in person at a retail establishment or local garage sale remember those two words.

I have looked over what has been said. A person may bid 500 with a previous bid of 200, but the Highest bid will appear as 210 or so. You have to bid above 500 to get the highest bid. No scam, just a way for user ease and preventing last minute bids that tip the scales

Whether you are bidding on items on Ebay, Listia, or any other auction site, the reason you keep getting out bid is a thing called "proxy Bidding". You bid the highest amount of $$ or, in this case, Listia, the max amount of credits you are willing to pay for the items. Someone else has a higher proxy bid in. Listia or Ebay aren't "popping" bid scams. Plus a lot of times there is another user at their computer bidding on the same items, and bidding against you. You must not understand how auctions and bidding works. I've been an Ebay user for 13 years, and a 1 year Listia user. Bought and sold tons of items on both sites. Neither are scams. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

I have been on Listia for a year now, and the only time I have gotten ripped off was when some teenager lied and tried to steal the item and the credits (Listia sided with me when I proved I had mailed the item, and sent them the messages that the kid had been sending me that indicated he was trying to pull a scam).

I am sorry that you are so incredibly stupid that you cannot understand how bidding works.  You didn't win the first thing you bid on, so therefore it must all be a rip off if YOU didn't get $500 worth of stuff within 5 minutes of first acquiring your massive pile of 500 nearly-meaningless starter credits.

I hope that the responses of others have cleared up for you that you were outbid before you started by someone willing to pay more credits than you.  If not, you are so stupid that Listia is much better off without you.

But just in case, let's try it one more time.  If I see an auction of an item I want, even if it is at 25 credits, I will bid 3500 if that is what I am willing to pay.  Not everyone is a last minute sniper moron.  Some of us plan ahead.  I think I need to stop writing this now, because your stupidity is raising my blood pressure.

I have been a very active user of Listia for over a year now and i have bought and sold a lot of items on there. The main thing that people get confused with when it comes to Listia is how their bidding system works. Think of it as like Ebay with a twist. 

The way Listia works is that you bid on everything with credits instead of real money. The trick? You need to list items to gain credits so that way you can bid on things. Now, you can spend money to buy credits, but that takes the fun out of the site. Anything can be listed on this site (within reason of course, no offensive material) and there are countless categories to choose from. Some of these are: Electronics, video games, clothing, jewelry, and a whole lot more. 

With the bidding process, this person that filed a complaint doesn't understand how this works so i am going to give a little insight. When someone bids, it shows what the minimum amount that has to be bid to "Raise" the bid. That doesn't mean that you are the high bidder, it just means that you are going to raise the amount that the bid will finish at. Listia gives its users the ability to bid higher than what the minimum is, and keep their bid solid. This can get very frustrating since it seems like someone keeps bidding against you. 

Lets take and example here. Lets say there is an item that is 2500 credits. I decide that i will pay 10,000 credits for it, but don't feel like waiting to see where it goes. I bid 10,000 credits. The actual bid doesn't say 10,000, it will say 2520. The reason for this is because Listia allows people to put down the max they want to bid to secure that item up to that amount, and if it doesn't reach 10,000, they don't have to pay the full amount of their bid. I think it is genius and allows people to put their max bid and leave it for a while. When someone bids on that item, until the bids reach 10,000 or higher, it will keep saying "sorry, you have been outbid." It is their way of not seeing what the max bid is, keeps the suspense of the auction going. 

I personally love using Listia way more than Ebay because it gives people with not a lot of money to get items they want. People usually use free shipping so most of the time the items  you get are completely free. This site is no joke, like i said, i have been using it for over a year and i have gotten a lot of cool stuff from this site. 

If it was as easy as you say to fix the issues with Listia that would be just fine, however Listia ignores reports on site abusers and offensive users.  I've been sworn at, and threatened, for simply refusing to send items to people who do not obey Listia's rules - and the most basic of all is to send a Listia Verified address. 

No matter if you report they are still out there doing the same thing to the next person.  A larger portion of the users are Absolute Scammers.  Just recently I bid on a coin which the seller claimed was Gem BU, etc.  What I got was a very circulated coin which looked like something found in pocket change.  But we have to eat this, because if you neg him, he'll neg you and Listia don't care and won't listen to your complaints. 

But the worst scammer I have come across sells car parts, he seems to have many ID's, he waits until the final moments on an auction which no one has bid on and bids the minimum, fair enough but he won't pay shipping and won't supply a Listia verified address, he'll swear and threaten you, and even openly say in the complaint he makes for his refund of a pathetic 100 credits that he is going to blacken your name and otherwise threaten you. 

LISTIA DO NOTHING ABOUT IT!  The site totally sucks.  I've had it with all the liars, cheats and stalkers.  Finally the worst you ever want to do is offer a local pickup, seriously you  don't want to meet some of these people!  You can slag off eBay, but at least on eBay I have some recourse against cheats, and pretty much will get what I bid on.

I have been trading on Listia for a few months now, and I like it much better than Ebay. After years of selling on Ebay and having absolutely no recourse for non-paying bidders and liars who make false claims, it is nice to be able to fight back when someone scams me. Yes, there are scammers on Listia, but they are on every auction site, they are like insects that move from site to site. This goes for both buyers and sellers. But most people are good and honest. To the person who paid but didn't receive their items, I hope you left the nastiest negative feedback for those sellers. Warn the rest of us that that these people are shams.

The best ways to protect yourself against scammers on auction sites is to a) check their feedback BEFORE you bid, always! You'd be amazed at how many people don't check feedback only to find out after they have been scammed that the seller/buyer is a sham and has tons of negative feedback. b) always pay with paypal, or pppay, or moneybookers or some other way that you do not give them your bank/credit card info directly.

Don't let one or two bad experiences ruin everything.

Search for sliver dime, silver coin or similar and you will find the same FOUR names driving up the bids but never actually winning them on each others auctions.  I've already been conned by their game.  One thing the scammers have in common is they never reveal where the item is located, that is either left blank of simply reads USA.  I agree with the original poster here, there is scamming going on. 

Here's an example:
http://www.listia.com/auction/4737594-1914-barber-silver-dime

Lets say the bid is 50 credits. I then place a bid for 100 credits. The price I would buy it for is 51 credits. But, if you would place a bid for 75 credits, I would still have a higher bid, no? I would now have the max bid with 76 credits. Now, if you bid 105 credits, You would have the max bid. Simple?

That was not a scam, just a slight misunderstanding. Tell me if I am wrong!

I was using Listia for about a month but they are a rip off big time....I won several items and some i had to pay for shipping.. I never got ANY of my items, paypal wont reimburse you for these shipping charges because listia is not a paypal verified website, i fought with them  for about a week. Listia also will not refund money for shipping charges. I have found alot of these sellers "BOOST" their auctions meaning they get people they know to bid on their auctions just to increase their credits. I dont know who these people are that are saying they never had a problem, maybe they are part of the "BOOSTING" this website is a joke and should be taken down, sellers charge for shipping you never get your item and when i added it all up that i paid for shipping im out 36.00 its not alot of money but basically i just gave them 36.00 for nothing!!

LISTIA.COM IS FRAUD, DO NOT USE THIS WEBSITE, ALSO REPORTED TO THE FBI, AND THE GOVERNMENT INTERNET FRAUD DIVISION....THEY ARE INVESTIGATING

I have been using listia for a few months, and bidding seemed quite strange to me at first too. now that i have completed a dozen of them i believe i have some insight. when you fist bid on an item your bid becomes the highest bid(if your the first one) only you can see what you bid if its the highest. so if someone bids higher you cant see what they bid, you kind of have to guess how high they were willing to go. so if you can go higher than them, the high bid will change to what they bid before you outbid them. a little confusing but defintily not a rip off. i love this site and would recommend it to anyone.

OP, what you are describing is proxy bidding. It is used on eBay and other auction sites. There is nothing "scammy", sinister or even mysterious about it. Read more on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_bid

 How is Listia reponsible for someone hacking into your account?

You are responsible for your account.You have no basis to say Listia is the problem.

From what you state,you know who the hacker is,therefore you should be able to fix the problem.

If Listia deleted your account,there more than likely,was a good reason.

You cannot say Listia is a scam because you have not stated what Listia has done to be labelled a scam.You had trouble with a Hacker,not Listia.

By virtue of your own image you're question was answered correctly.

Koiphish (or whomever it was) had entered a bid of 150 points so when you bid the 125 you were then outbid.
At 151 you outbid them and won the auction.

It is quite possible and frequent in Listia for users to watch by ending soonest and there can be 2, 3, 6 of you all bidding in the last 60 seconds.

The listia system is designed for bidding.

I can enter a bid of 40000000 points for an item that is only at 25 points right now.  When you bid you are going against whatever I have bid.

Of course you still didn't win because more than likely you were one of the low bottom feed bidders trying to outbid me by 10 points or 30 points.

So Yes, I still win.  And the system is designed so I don't lose my entire bid unless it's neccessary to win the item. 
So that I don't go broke in points.

Learn how things work before you file rip off reports.  For real.

I understand what your response to this report is saying, because I have experienced the "max" bid issue myself. However, what the original consumer report illustrates is something different, which I have also experienced.

I was bidding on an auction and every time I did so, the refreshed page immediately said something like, "Your bid was submitted, however you were outbid." Every time I placed a bid, this happened. So I kept bidding up and up. It kept saying I was outbid. Then it turns out I won the auction. However, when you view the bid history, you can see I placed several bids in succession (thinking that I was being outbid) and yet there are no bids in between mine. When I bid 120, I was immediately told I was outbid by 1, so then I placed a bid of 122, on and on. No one was outbidding me at all, though.

The experience I've explained here is what the original report is trying to cover. This is different from the max bid. I understand how auctions work, and you're not supposed to be taken advantage of like this. Also, the original report doesn't seem to have been written clearly--I'm just trying to clear up the situation as to what exactly occurred.  

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I believe the person making this report is not savvy to the auction process of many auction sites like Listia.

I have been a seller and a buyer from this site for around two years and tho some of the users may perpetrate individual scams on their own listings, the site itself is not a scam.

I believe the person who tried bidding and kept being outbid was in fact losing because of "proxy bidding" .  When someone bids on an item they can bid any amount they want, but the lowest amount needed to win is what willl show to other bidders.  When someone bids against them, the difference of the bid shown and what they actually bid is automatically used to keep them in the bidding process until someone comes along and bids higher than their first/original full bid. This proxy bidding is done by the computer and the person with the highest bid does not need to be online.

Example:   I find an item I want.  Its high bid is 50. I bid 500.  My bid will show to be 51.  If someone else comes along and bids 75, my bid will bump up to 76.  People can keep bidding against me, even if I am not online until someone comes in and bids OVER 500.  They will then be the high bidder.  I have often seen people bid over and over in small increments and never outbid the original high bid.

I call the small bids 'nibbling'.  People do this because they do not understand the process of proxy bidding.

Hi, the person who made the negative report did not do his/her research, in my opinion. I have recently joined Listia and have had nothing but postive experiences.

When you make a bid, you can enter the highest bid you are willing to make, and Listia will up the current bid to the next level for you. If someone else has bid higher than that, the bid automatically goes up.

Therefore, you do not have to be there for the bids to go up, and you can be outbid immediately if someone else has already left a higher limit on their bids!! Simple. Not shady.

Thanks for providing this place to complain and to correct things! I have been ripped off by an auction site and used similar sites to warn others. It's a good thing to be able to publish your opinions on sites in a public forum!

Online auctions are easy money making businesses whether it's Ebay, Listia, and especially other "low cost" or "penny" auctions.  The reason why you are not the highest bidder can be one of many reasons.  The popular reason is that someone is watching the bid and is bidding against you.  If only they would list who is watching and who is bidding, you can have a better idea of who is buying what to better know whether or not it is a legitimate auction or not. (Stat padding, boosting, etc...especially when accounts are a dime a million...there are people who will have high popular stats from many new accounts...thus...raising a red flag to the avid hunter...).  However, the real underlying event is that someTHING else is monitoring or watching the auction and then bidding the highest bid +1 as soon as a new bid is entered, especially until a "reserve" is met.  It's an open door since the bids start 0-100 and people can easily "create" a new account with a new email and start off at 500+ points times the thousands of different accounts they have that have bought from each other.  It is easy to make a program so that anytime there is a new bid, the program will automatically submit the bid and even easier to find and download one.  You can not outperform a computer since it can read and process data a lot faster especially on the internet.

I personally waited a few seconds, and then refreshed, and then waited, and refreshed and then bid and was right away upon refreshing my bid was already outbid.  Whether there is an actual person or a program, commonly referred to as BOT or BOTTING, it is harder to tell, hence some sites that require sign up also require authentication or double checking by having you type letters and numbers on images that the average person's BOT wouldn't be able to read/see/authenticate that security measure.  Just be careful because I always wait and bid repeatedly to test the waters of a particular bid.

In all honesty, always be weary since online auctions such as this place are notoriously popular since it's not heavily regulated on the bids that can be made.  People will always look for the best deals and if simple coding can get them what they are after, they will most definitely do so.  But whether it's the company or not, it's only speculation, and thus not relevant.  Sites like Ebay, however, are your best bet since they deal with REAL money.  In the end, the website shows promise as a good idea, but with it being not well regulated and secure yet, especially with the open doors/loopholes that the website presents, I would use at caution.  A simple added security text box to deter bots, of which an extension to the bid is automatically set just incase there is a typo, but most of the time they're super easy to read anyways, would help people have the highest bid...because i'm sure that since there were only 3 other people watching the bid I was at...they wouldn't be sitting around and waiting for the next bid for the next 7 days that the auction is going on....... i'm just saying...

Listia.inc is a ripoff.They suspended my account when someone hacked my account .They send e-mails against this person but yet they let him hack peoples accounts.Beware of Listia they are Ripoffs.

The way Listia or for that matter Ebay or any number of other internet auctions works is:

 An "economically rational" bidder will bid the maximum amount they are willing to pay on their first bid, and never raise their bid. Say, for the sake of example, they bid 20 credits. 

The auction is set for a minimum bid of 1 credit. And if no one else bids. This first bidder's bid starts the auction at 1 credit and the auction will remain at 1 credit until someone else raises the bid. 

So, a second bidder come along (this bidder represents you in this situation) and you see the bid is currently at 1 credit. So, you bid 5 credits hoping to be the highest bidder. However, since the first bidder's highest bid is 20 credits, you will be automatically outbid and the bid will then raise to 5 credits. 

This will continue until you or someone else bids more than the first bidder's bid of 20 credits. 

When that occurs. (Say you bid 21 credits) You will become the highest bidder. 

This is the same system that they use on Ebay. It is not a "bid propping scam"

I have been a member of LISTIA for a few months.And although I sympathize with your problem,I have not had the same experience.I have won a few Auctions and lost a few Auctions.I have also had a problem with one of the winners of one of my Auctions.Most bidders wait until the very last 5minutes to bid on items that are popular,such as iPhones,xBox360's ect.So,it may seem that your being scammed when in reality it just might be one of the numerous people who have learned how to "beat"the bidding process.I have looked at quite a few profiles,and some of these people have won 100"s of Auctions.I'm not sure yet if I will continue with LISTIA,actually Ebay is better even if it's money your bidding and not points.I am going to reserve judgement on LISTIA until such time that I am scammed or feel that it is a scam.