Blue Bird Bids pulled its penny auction operations offline in early January 2013, citing a need for "maintenance" and "structural changes." This shutdown followed internal concerns about "auto-bots" artificially inflating auction prices, a practice the Federal Trade Commission warns about. Vice-President Eric Swaim had reportedly flagged these issues to management.
The company initially stated the maintenance would take "72 hours or so" and that "all functions" would return by January 8th or 9th. However, the auctions remained offline well past this announced timeframe.
A new domain, "DevBlueBirdBids.com," registered on January 5, 2013, now displays what appears to be a test version of the auction website. The site runs no live auctions and shows a default installation of the "Penny Auction Wizards" script, with unbranded elements suggesting a hasty upload. The domain's registration is private. Given the "dev" prefix and the main site's downtime, the domain likely functions as a live test environment for Blue Bird Bids itself.
The discovery that Blue Bird Bids uses the Penny Auction Wizards script helps explain an earlier internal issue. Late last year, during a "fantasy auction" for 2012, Eric Swaim reportedly emailed Blue Bird Bids management about "auto-bots" inflating auction prices.
Swaim, in his position, investigated some of the alleged auto-bidder accounts. He found none of these accounts registered as "reps or customers in the system." This suggests the accounts were built into the auction backend, used by the company to artificially increase auction prices. The FTC notes that dishonest auction sites use such bid bots, or human shills, to extend auctions and keep users bidding and spending money.