I HAVE PURCHASED A FEW FIREARMS AS A FFL GUN DEALER AND COMPANYS RESPONCE TIME AND FREIGHT CHARGES ARE TERRIBLE

Have used PBid multiple times and have never had issues or problems, Good items of interest and All Good.

This is the the 3rd time this has happened with this auction house.

No RESERVES ON DIAMONDS GOLD ETC

Used it a few times. So far so good!

I think a lot of people misunderstand what Proxibid is. I have only used it twice now but I only used it the first time because I couldn't make it to the local auction Crawfordfamilyauctions.com. There were a couple of rings I wanted to bid on so I used Proxibid and I won, I didn't even pay through Proxibid, I went down to Crawfords and payed and picked up the items.
The second auction was online only from an auction held in California. I bid on two rings and and payed through paypal. Everything went fine.
What I am noticing is that many people are treating Proxibid like it is ebay which it is not. Anyone who has gone into a live auction in person knows how auctions work, that is exactly how this site is. Proxibid is only a host site for the auctions, that is it. The ABC Auction house is having an auction today and they want it available online so they place it on Proxibid.com. If this type of auctioning makes you nervous what I suggest is looking up in the yellowpages auction houses in your local area and go to a few auctions, get the experience of a real auction, not ebay style auctions.
At real auctions some items are consigned and have a minimum price, if it doesn't reach that price it doesn't sell, or the time gets extended based on a request from the owner. When you do purchase an item don't waste your time calling Proxibid, call the auction house and deal with them directly.
Most importantly you need to remember you are bidding against people that are there physically at the auction house.
Good luck people and have fun.

Misleading terms, confusing payment instructions, and a shelter for sellers who violate consumer law.
I have made 2 purchases with proxibid. Both were difficult in dealing with both the auctioneers and the customer service department.

When signing up, you place a creditcard on file which they warn you may be used to pay for the auctions you win. Smart online shoppers will often use a specific creditcard for online auction purchases so that they have chargeback rights in case of fraud or non-receipt. This leads the consumer to believe that his payment method is on file and may be charged by the auctioneer at the close of a sale to the card that the consumer choose when signing up for the site and which the consumer has already deemed safe and comfortable.

However, many of the sellers circumvent this and subsequently demand sensitive financial information, such as creditcard info, over the phone after an auction or they demand payment through paypal instead of the card on the buyer's proxibid account.

This in turn leaves many buyers giving out their personal banking information to strangers over the phone or in using a funding source that may not have any protection with it, such as bank draft through paypal. These sellers will also sometimes ask the buyer to pay an additional surcharge to pay over the phone, in addition to the existing buyer's premium and handling charges, which in some cases may violate card association rules.

On Proxibid's "trust" page (http://trust.proxibid.com/) it says, "Marketplace Promise:... We focus on making sure problems don't happen... We don't discourage the use of credit cards or trick you into using your bank account. "

And yet that is EXACTLY what the sellers on proxibid do on a regular basis.

I won items in 2 auctions within the first couple of months using proxibid, and both of those auctioneers attempted to get me to pay in an insecure fashion I was uncomfortable with outside of the creditcard I had already registered for payment when signing up.

In one of those cases, the auctioneer asked me to pay over the phone for an additional fee. When I refused to do so, the auctioneer did process my card on file on my proxibid account without charging me the fee, and I subsequently received those items from that auction as promised. I alerted Proxi to the problem with that seller, and received only a canned response.

In the second case, the seller demanded payment by money order, over the phone, or through paypal (which in turn meant drafting my bank account, exactly what Proxi says it will not make you do). I refused to pay this and canceled the order in accordance with my state's cancellation rights of a consumer contract, and I filed a complaint with Proxibid against the seller. The company instead of reprimanding the seller or helping to resolve the issue placed a "black flag" on my account which prevents me from ever bidding on other items. (who would want to after that?!)

Here is the rest of the "Marketplace Promise" on proxi's "trust" page:
"Auction companies participating in Proxibid's marketplace are professional businesses that care about buyers. They only ask that buyers pay promptly when they win an item and to be realistic in the time it takes to ship. We know that in a very small number of cases a neutral party is required to help resolve disputes and we have resources available to meet this need. Our Marketplace Promise to you is that we will help when you need us... but our focus is on making sure you never do."

Not a single word of it is true. I have called them a third time in the last 24 hours, as i found one more item I was interested in on their site and thought I would give them one last chance. Seeing some website redesign since my last use and reading their "trust" page, I thought that perhaps things had improved. Unfortunately they have NOT. I am being made to jump through hoops just to bid on a small item worth about $5. I called their customer service and was transfered 3 times to have the bogus "black flag" removed so that i could bid, and yet I am still prohibited from participating in that particular auction. I called the auction company, who told me my new creditcard that I just placed on file that day had declined, which was 100% FALSE. In fact I paid something on another retail site within the hour which cleared, and they are only running an authorization not a charge. There is no way there's any problem my card.

I also discovered illegal terms on other auctioneers' listings, including the term that if you do not pay within 10 days, you forfeit your items but they still force you to pay the full amount of your bid and a buyer's premium WITHOUT receiving a product! This is 100% ILLEGAL! And 100% VIOLATES card association rules. It is not lawful to charge a customer electronically the full amount of a product without delivering anything. I know this from experience, because I am an internet retailer myself.
And this term is written just below the term which quotes the UCC rule that basically makes it legal for the auction company to shill their own items, so long as they tell you they do this in the fine print. Personally I have no problem with them shilling. I'm willing to bid what i am willing to pay and no more. But to state in the terms that they can collect from you the full amount of a bid plus buyer's premium and never delivery anything is completely and utterly illegal.

On the whole, I'm very disappointed in Proxibid. I am a seller myself, with 15 years of experience and some basic knowledge of consumer law. I can tell you they are violating several points of protection in my home state as well as others. There is also the matter of statutory cancellation rights of a contract- in many states you have 3 days to exit the deal no-questions-asked. Proxibid sellers (and by extension the website itself) is forcing people to pay regardless of whether or not they receive a product. They coerce you to pay in a fashion inconsistent with their own marketing promises and then if you find that your rights are being violated, they use this against you to block you from doing any further business there.

Everything I have seen so far from this website wreaks of sketchy and probably illegal business practices.
I have 15 years of experience as an internet retailer and have dealt with dozens of live auction houses in my profession. My collectibles are photographed in price guides you may have read, and my items have been shown on TV, newspapers, and magazines. I am not an attorney, but I am speaking from experience as both buyer and seller, including auction formats as well as counter retail. Something is just not right with this site.

I am going to give them one last chance to fix this for me this week, and if it doesn't work the way it should, in a legal and straight-forward, respectable manner, this will be their 3rd strike as far as I'm concerned.

In my opinion this site should be shut down.

Scam reproductions beware!