Scam - Swoopo
 

I've been getting weblinks to this place:

Auction | Cheap TV laptop ipod auctions - bid & win on Swoopo

I checked it out, since at first, it seems like they auction stuff really cheap...until you read the fine print and see how it works:

You have to pay to place a bid, which is something like $0.60. Everytime you "bid", the price is incremented, say by $0.06. So, if something is for bid at $200.00, you place a bid and it is now $200.06.

This means that if the "bidding" is at $200, then over 3000 bids have been placed, and they are charging $0.60 per bid which means they have already collected $1800!!!

They were selling 1oz bars of gold and the bids only get up to $240...but by then, they have collected more than twice the value in "bids", AND you still pay the price at the end.

Nothing illegal here, but wow, what a SCAM!

Actually not a scam but really a brilliant way to generate revenue.

Like any auction you need to know the value of what you're buying.

Watch it for a while and you'll figure out the pattern.

I joined a year ago.

Managed to get some good stuff for pennies on the dollar.

Have also seen plenty of idiots bid more than retail for items and just sat there thinking WTF?

There are a variety of different auction types, some only increase bids in $.10 .15, .20 increments.

I'm just pissed I never thought of it.

Company originated in Germany. Krauts are smart mf'rs.

It's easier to get $1 from 100,000 people than it is to get $100,000 from one person.

So, there's a Nikon Camera right now that has a timer that's counting down to about thirty minutes. The bid is currently showing about $13. If I was to bid and win, I'd have to pay the $6 plus the cost of my bids and I'd have the camera?

You pay the winning bid price.

The cost of the bids that you place are gone once they are placed.

So theoretically you can place one bid and win.

There is a timeframe for the best deals.

If nothing has changed since I last placed then all bidding ends PST.

There is a sweet spot when most people are sleeping that a lot of good deals happen during.

Although I have seen people not pay attention in the middle of the day.

Was showing it to a co-worker one day, there was a great netbook deal going. I was going to place an automatic bid butler to kick in at $10. Thought that'll never happen so switched it to $25. I look back a couple of minutes later and the auction ended at $12. Someone scored.

Oh, there are other deals where you pay a set price regardless of how high the bidding gets.

It also looks like the timer gets reset when a bid gets placed so you can't wait till the last second and snipe it.

According to their website.

Essentially you are gambling to try to win.

So I'm watching (not bidding) an iPod touch, and every time it gets down under 5 seconds someone bids and it goes back to 15 seconds. OK, that's what the site says will happen. Then I zone out a bit, and all of the sudden it goes to 15 MINUTES left.

That's because a ton of people bid at the same time.

As mentioned before it is like gambling. Very interactive. Addictive. Easy to waste money till you figure it out.

After watching it for a while you start to get an intuition.

Took me a couple of weeks to start seeing the patterns and recognizing behavior.

Fridays are probably a bad day as a lot of people goof off at work waiting for the weekend.

This is just crazy... So the touch I was watching had less than 10 seconds to go and it's back up over 2 minutes again.

Lets do some math...

Current 'bid' $118.44.
= 987 bids. (It's been going up by $.12 a bid)
= $592.20 in bids ($.60 a bid)
= $710.64 for an iPod.

And still climbing...

Not me... ;)

SOLD for $152.52, or $915.12.

What a GREAT idea. Someone got a deal on an iPod, and 'Swoopo' made 3x the money.

I say the PP OT members form a consortium and start a competing site!

Pretty cool huh!

At those margins you could afford to go buy crap retail and still make money.