Scam? or just bad programming?

[oncenothing77]

I've got a subscription to the TechPB videos on YouTube, and this one came out today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfCNn7lHTVY&feature=channel
and i was just warning you and was wondering what everyone thought of it
all i know is it really sucks that we have possible scams like this in our industry

[*mess*Chain_gang]

I dont think all this guys stuff is perfect but I think he has the right Idea.


This site looks like a total scam to me with Kitty's vids and stuff

[cutstep]

first let me say that I like Mike a lot and think he is doing a great thing for the paintball community.... but on this I think he is wrong... this website went online only a few weeks ago and their traffic has gone nuts with all the publicity.... they didnt have the robust system to deal with the traffic and ran into the trouble Mike is talking about with auctions ending at the wrong time and multiple winners and whathaveyou.... keep in mind that they are making money even if they sell a geo for $19.85... keep in mind that every penny the auction goes up is .75 for the site so they made $500 or so by selling it for that much.... there is no reason to scam anyone if you are making that kind of green on each gun...

I hope they correct this server problem because I think its got potential to be a good place to get crazy deals

[*mess*Chain_gang]

first let me say that I like Mike a lot and think he is doing a great thing for the paintball community.... but on this I think he is wrong... this website went online only a few weeks ago and their traffic has gone nuts with all the publicity.... they didnt have the robust system to deal with the traffic and ran into the trouble Mike is talking about with auctions ending at the wrong time and multiple winners and whathaveyou.... keep in mind that they are making money even if they sell a geo for $19.85... keep in mind that every penny the auction goes up is .75 for the site so they made $500 or so by selling it for that much.... there is no reason to scam anyone if you are making that kind of green on each gun...

I hope they correct this server problem because I think its got potential to be a good place to get crazy deals

Lets hope they fix it

[oncenothing77]

yeah, if it is a good site, it would be sweet to buy from, but or now its just a little too shady for me

[brycelarson]

I'm going to go with both scam and software glitch. It's gambling - not an auction. you've buying raffle tickets at $.75 each for the items. And yes, they're not ginving anything away for $20. They're collecting a couple thousand tickets at $.75 each THEN charging someone $20 + $20 shipping on a $1300 marker.

Now, there's nothing wrong with this business model as long as you're clear about what it is - and they're sort-of clear.

The glitch just exposed a huge flaw in their software - and caused this huge ruckus.

[cutstep]

I think thats the real issue here.... if you thnk about it though, its not too hard to pick say an ego9 or dm9 or whathaveyou for pretty cheap, if you buy 100 tickets at .75 and end up buying the gun at even $450 you spent $550 total for over $1000 in gun.... seems like its worth it to me.... and its not really gambling, you can win for sure if you bid high enough, just like ebay except for the other bidders can come at you faster and there isnt a set end date..... I certainly see the validity of not advertisings this site on pbn or techpb or here for that matter.... they are driving down prices and the other advertisers dont want that so they pressure the sites to keep this kind of thing from advertising..... imagine Dye advertising on a banner and right next to it is a banner for this site saying you can buy a dm9 for 75% off.... I dont think they would be too happy

[Drachen]

So they may make 500 on the marker, but you know they're not getting brand new Geo's, DM9's, and Ego9's for that low. So they're taking a cut, and wouldn't be making any money. There's no way they'd be able to make a profit off of brand new guns, with nothing wrong, and sell it for that cheap. Something just doesn't seem right about how they're doing it.

[cutstep]

one bid costs $.75

brand new geo sells for 187.10 (one of them sold for that price last week)
price goes up a penny for every bid so the total number of bids is 18,710

on bid costs $.75 so 18710* $.75 = $14,032.50 + $187.10 (final auction price) = $14219.60 - cost of the brand new geo (lets say they bought it for retail at $1200) = $13,019.60 in total profit (minus operating expenses of course)

so you got a gun for $187.10 and whatever you spent on bids and they made over 13k on the people who didnt win

does that make more sense?

even pmr's selling for $5 make them money (500 bids is a lot)

[evolkers2003]

also if any one advertises on their site thats cash monies. Its kind of a cool business model, i might try to knab some stuff there in the future if everything starts to work out.

[Thalion]

If it's just a software error, why not put an end to it temporarily for maintenance, then relaunch with the corrected version?

I'm not here to accuse anyone, just observing (from a computer engineer standpoint), that if you know there's an issue (and there's no way they still don't know after this video going to multiple large paintball forums), you resolve it.

Dishonesty is a poor way to run any business, even a gambling one.

So, we shall see if it's just an error or if it's an intentional scam by watching what happens next, rather than deciding based solely on this video.

[Hawk]

exactly my point. instead of continuing to run faulty software, they could temporarlily stop the site due to matenance instead of ripping off countless people. if its truely a glitch, then they shouldnt still be auctioning things off. in all honesty, i wouldnt be suprised if they got sued for opperating the site when they know full and well that theres a problem like this.