Auction.comReviews 434

Scam, if you want to bid on real state and have the money go somewhere else. They run the prices up on you. Be prepared to sign away all your rights as a buyer. The seller can do almost anything if you sign your rights away to the seller. The terms of the deal change before closing. You get no paperwork or notification of what is going on. They breached our contract by changing from free and clear to a non warranty special deed, closing date came and went no paperwork, no location on where to close. Now they want me waiver and release cancellation as no fault default, I get $0 of the $3700 escrow I sent and they keep it as cancellation fees and damages. Damages. Unbelievable, please avoid don't have the problems I'm encounting

Almost every money scam is based on the victim's greed. I have not been riped off by Auction.com, but I have bid on a few homes they have listed, and I'm not happy about the way it works. It does appear to be a slippery hustle. Basically, the owner of the property (usually a lender) lists the property with Auction.com, and the owner sets a reserve price. The reserve price is not the same as the "opening bid." The reserve price is a BIG SECRET. As you bid, Auction.com also bids against you to drive-up the price to meet the "Secret Reserve Price". Auction.com will tell you this going in, and it is also explained in detail on the Better Business Bureau complaint site. Futhermore, Auction.com does not allow you to inspect the property in anyway. Perhaps they legally can't allow inspections, but they could do this right by conducting a "forced eviction" prior to listing the property for sale. You (the new buyer) can't get a loan on most of the homes listed on auction.com the banks will not loan money on them. The banks are smart enough to not give you a loan on a house you cannot inspect. Much like a casino, it appears the cards ar stacked against you, and the house will almost always take you.

This is definitely a scam cause I called their number for a home listing in Frisco, TX asking if I could attend the auction to watch the process without actually bidding on the home, and he said I had to pay a $5000 registration fee just to enter? And that it was refundable after I leave? Yeah right it's refundable! I even told him it sounded like a scam to me on the phone before I went on google to check reviews for auction.com only to see that many other people have also come to the same conclusion... it's too bad sites like Zillow list auction.com home foreclosures which allow it to look trustworthy to actual buyers. Not to mention they hold these auctions inside a county court office room which they probably rent out for very little to make themselves look more legitimate? Talk about no protection for regular citizens! Also their sample Deed form doesn't even say Property Deed at the top of the form, people who don't know what they're doing are gonna get screwed working with them. www.indopakmassage.com

Organized crime. The banks and this website are just out to scam you and put all the liability on the buyer, they take no responsibility and do not allow inspections as most properties are occupied! In addition they assign you a closing firm somewhere in the USA with outrageous closing fees and not only do you pay all the auctions fees, he escrow fee, non are refundable! Finally you end up paying all the seller's (Banks) closing costs and if you have an agent they will not even offer a commission in most cases because they do not want you protected! Dirt bags. My Realtor found me a better deal outside this organized crime auction!

I want to share my experience as I am currently trying to do a closing. So far I am out 14K (5%) signed the contract on 3/28/14, every time I called to check the status they told me to wait the 15 business days in the contract, that I did my part everything was good. Today 4/12 they send an email asking to re-sign as the electronic signature I made with the software they provide, my initials overlapped the text of addendum. That something I had no control of... I asked them to confirm by email that the 15 business days to return the money incase of no response from the seller stays the same as with everything I read here is highly suspicious. I have to add that the contract you sign is removing all your rights on anything in case something goes wrong (ie. The house burn before the closing, the title of the property has an issue, the property is trashed...) If I had knew before I probably would not have moved forward as the risk - reward is not that good. It's like everything as you move toward something is hard to stop but that's not something I would go trough again. There is other way to get properties from a real sale. As everybody said you are bidding against bots and that was my feeling as well during the process. On top of that it is NOT an auction but the right to submit an offer to the owner of the property and he can refuses or accept. I hope I will not have to hire an attorney to get my money back once the deadline expire. Will keep in touch to let you know what happen. One thing certain, I will invest a lot of time and money in reviews on internet in case I loose my deposit to be sure people can Google it.

STAY AWAY PEOPLE! Whatever you do DO NOT deal with theses people. Absolutely the worst experience I ever went through. All selling costs are the responsibility of the buyer even their attorney fees. They don't tell you this before bidding on any of their properties. You will solely be responsible for any back taxes or claims on the title that you cannot view. They will say they are going to send you the hud so you can view the closing costs but wont give it to you until the day of closing when your there. They give you 24 hours to sign the contract and send it back or you face losing your earnest money which is a whopping 10 percent. Anything you do not exactly as they say will cost you money but they do nothing that they say and that's ok. Anything that normally gets split between the buyer and seller gets put back on the buyer. It was a horrible experience dealing with them. You all see the one star ratings they have and its for a good reason.

A Complete Sham.
You are bidding against a bot in place by the bank. Case in point; a recent property just 2 doors down from where I live went up for bid. I put in one bid with room for me to clean up the house and still make a profit. Only to watch the biding continue well past profitability for TWO HOURS at $250 increments. Is any real purchaser willing to waste two hours of their time placing $250 bids? Another tell is that they can reduce the bid increment and place a bid in the same instant. In the bid I mentioned, I watched the clock and the bid increment, the site shows a $5,000 increment at 3 seconds left, then the bid jumps by $2,500 and the increment drops to $2,500 resetting the clock. You never see the increment drop without a matching bid increase. Bottom line don't be fooled into thinking this site has any legitimacy!

I watched a property I was interested in get bid up over $325,000 on three separate occasions. Each time the sale ended without the property being sold as the reserve was not met. Imagine my surprise when I saw the sale in the paper for $275,000. The response I received from auction.com was to contact the Better Business Bureau of Irvine, CA. They also claim that they do not keep records of the non-winning bids. I guess if you can wade through the BS you might be able to get a deal but it doesn't seem to happen too often.

I bought a house at auction.com but was fortunate enough to have seen it prior to the auction listing when a local realtor had it. Title insurance is not offered on most of the current auction properties possibly due to my experience! Make sure you have it! I DID! Thank goodness. It will cost you prior to winning the bid provided you can get an insurance company to cover the property. The title search costs & you don't get it back!

Because I had title insurance it cost THEM over $******* to get me a clear title (almost as much as I paid for the house) and had I not noticed the foreclosure notice in the local paper thru a local bank attorney, my property would have been auctioned on the courthouse steps to some unsuspecting person. It took me over 9 months to get it straight. I had moved in and sunk over $150,000 into the house over the cost (auction). Mine turned out OK but not before suffering thru months of living in limbo due to stopping improvements to the house, many sleepless nights, legal expenses, anxiety attacks...

No one has ever told me if I would be able to recoup the additional money I spent on improvements from the Title Insurance Company had this backfired. I suspect not!

As realtor for a property put on Auction.com by lender, I shared Disclosures of environmental contamination, mold reports, and over $70k in liens. Auction.com refused to put certified reports om their site.
They also put the home's "highest past value' at over $2M when all short sale offers were under $200k, and no homes nearby have sold over $500k in the best of shape.
Auction.com is fraudulent, Great deals, but Buyer beware on everything. They misrepresent everything.

I read the reviews here and figured I was wasting my time but took a chance because it was my dream home. Customer service got ahold of me right away, Closing was expedited by Auction.com. I kept waiting for my realtor to call my and say sorry... but it never happened. There was a lot of entities I never heard of involved in this transaction but they all seemed to work well together. I paid ******* for my house and with all the other fees it was *******. The house is worth around 600k-629k but I have no intention on selling it. Do your homework and keep your eyes open and maybe it will work for you too.

This site should get negative zero stars, I won a bid, paid my earnest money, and was assigned a closing attorney. After waiting 15 days, I was told the seller(bank of america) had not signed the contract, after waiting 20 days, I got a rejection notifcation letter, I was told by the closing attorney to contact aution.com, I was told by auction.com, maybe I should submit a counter offer, this site is a real... joke, do not waste your time.

It doesnt build a lot of confidence in an online site if you know you are bidding against bots/shill bidders.

Since we are not talking about pennies here, rather tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars im guessing it will only be a matter of time before:

A. The feds catch on
B. Daily paper shows tons of boxes being carried out of their headquarters
C. The two sides announce a (steep) payment from auction.com that doesnt admit to wrong doing but promises to clean up their act

I wish I could give zero stars.

Google auction.com reviews
pissedconsumer.com
ripoffreport.com

I won a property above reserve(reserve MET) provided funds and within a few days my funds were returned cause they changed their mind. (back door better offer?)

It sold for 2x my bid later and then flipped for 2x again...

Tried to bid on local properties. They went higher than my bid but reserve MET... next auction around-they were up for sale again.

Customer service a JOKE!
Chat ended by agent before my questions were answered.

WOW... same experience as with phone support.

I guess if you have monopoly on foreclosure auctions-you can treat customers like trash.

Too bad.

How many of these positive reviews are by employees getting a free lunch for every positive comment or review?