gaemul

Has anyone used swoopo and won and auction? Seems a little too good of a deal. I tried bidding on some items but didn't win the auction. I was only willing to risk $20 so I got outbid.

Just wondering if anyone has bought anything from an auction on swoopo.com

attgig

looks interesting. too bad i can't bid there, cuz they can't do maryland. sucks.

but yeah, from quick research, they've been in europe for a while, and they made money there.

if you look at some auctions, cuz of the $1 per bid, they're definitely making money even if the last bidder gets off with a steal.

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attgig

so, just saw that i use the site now. thinking about buying some bids. did you win any auctions on here yet?

gaemul

nope, and I spent about $50 so far. So I'm not going to be doing it anymore

ArkiStan

"It costs $0.75 to place a bid. Each bid raises the auction price by $0.15" and delays the auction closing time by 15 seconds.

This is very interesting. I must say this is an absolutely brilliant business model from the company's perspective, but not so much from the customer's perspective, since you could potentially lose a lot of money even though you're not the winning bidder, unlike conventional autions where you don't lose anything if you're not the winning bidder. i've been watching a PS3 auction with 15 seconds left for the last 10 minutes....i'm fascinated.

edit:
the auction just ended at $66, so some lucky dude got a new PS3 for $66 (plus the cost for however many bids he made), but 440 bids were required to raise the price to that amount, so the company sold off a new PS3 for $396 ($330 [75c x 440 bids] + $66) , which is the rough price of a new PS3. Funny how that evened out.....
Once again, fascinating!

ArkiStan

Just read this article:
http://technologizer.com/2008/09/17/...igned-gimmick/

some of the comments mention that there's no way to tell if the company itself is bidding on the auctions, making it very hard for customers to win. in the case that the company wins the auction, they don't t even have to produce the product, but they still earn tons through the losers' bids. Once again, it's a total scam, but an absolutely brilliant one, nonetheless!

Cheesypuff

ive seen this site before...a novel business model to get money. They bask on the anticipation of winning the auction. And for the person who bid and lost, they feel they should bid again because they've already have an investment in the item. This sucks for the consumer, great for the company, great for the person who wins (granted they didn't big more times than the retail price of the item).

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InfiniteNothing

Sounds more like a slot machine than an auction house.

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Maarchk

Looks so tempting. i signed up but backed off when i read all the negative reviews and how the site is shared with american and european websites and it seems like they share auctions. that seems odd cause the pricing wouldn't match up so i do think something fishy goes on..

I'd love to but i'm gonna stay away.

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ArkiStan

i agree. i was THIS close to signing up, but thankfully i read that article just in time.