SWOOPO

one of many sites like it.



cant say i have ever liked people posting some random link and saying "discuss" !
you discuss it, what do you think about it?
 
I refuse to even click and find out the horribe purchase charges that put my £10 purchase at a sky rpcketing £100 charge :p good luck with that though!
 
Morba said:
one of many sites like it.



cant say i have ever liked people posting some random link and saying "discuss" !
you discuss it, what do you think about it?
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lol well as i said a mate told me about it. one mate who seemed to have a clue about it. thought id get your expert opinions as i think its crazy. i mean puttin bids in for stuff you probably wont even wind up buying???!!! however so many ppl are enticed into buying theyll think to stick it out and may not be a good buy?
 
H2F Scott said:
So you have to pay to bid, but even then you still might not win? :/
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Correct. The person who finally wins will get a bargain probably, but all the other bidders will be losing money. Once 2 or more people bid then there will be an obvious bidding war until everyone but one of them runs out of money.
 
As a matter of coincidence I saw an ad for this a few hours ago and did a bit of reading up on it. My conclusion is that there aren't deals to be had.

The idea is that goods appear to sell for significantly below their retail value. However, people are charged a fee for each bid placed (typically 50p for each bid, bought in advance as credits), and every bid increases the time limit of the auction by 10 seconds.

There is an automatic bidding service provided by the website called "BidButler" that acts in a similar manner to a conventional auction sniping tool. As an auction nears closing, someone using the BidButler service on an auction has bids made for them, again being charged for each bid. If more than one person is using the service, the system will automatically battle it out until all but one person runs out of bidding credits. At the same time, every single bid will add 10 seconds to the auction time limit. The effect could be to extend the auction by 10-20 minutes, in which time people will continue making manual bids and those who had used the BidButler will be out of pocket for all the bids made.

It can be an incredibly lucrative business model for the company. Each auction usually receives hundreds or thousands of bids, each one costing 50p. However, all but the winning bidder will be out of pocket for their bids. In many cases the cost of bidding required to win an auction will make the overall cost close to retail price anyway...

Edit: Joshua Stein wrote an interesting couple of articles (first of which is available here) about attempting to "game" the system by analysing AJAX information about bids. He monitored auctions for MacBooks and saw little success.

In case you're wondering where the incentive is for the company, he provides an interesting example: a MacBook Pro valued at $1,299 was sold for $172.84. 17,824 bids were placed, bringing in $12,963 for the company in addition to the final winning fee... for a $1,299 laptop.
 
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insane isnt it?! surely there are times that bargains 'can' be had? not tempted at all?!?!

what are the other ones u were referring to Morba???
 
How is this **** legal?


Honestly, the people who make a living out of this are the lowest of the low.
 
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Naamiko_O said:
I'm watching this
http://www.swoopo.co.uk/auction/wii-fit-plus-with-balance-board-wii-/241503.html

Gone up from £7.30 to £10.50 now :P 3 people bidding, 50 bids costs u a tenner. So they're spending way more than they think!
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Let's do the math on this one...

Each bid adds 10p to the auction price. At a current price of £46.30 at the time of writing that means 463 bids have been placed. Each bid costs 50p, so £231.50 has been spent so far bidding on that auction. If the auction were to end at its current price (which it shows no sign of doing so), the auction site will earn £231.50 plus the winning bid, £46.30, to make a total of £277.80. The stated value is £74.99...

Edit: The auction has ended at £48.40. The total cost to all bidders was £242.00 in bidding fees. The winning bidder placed 47 bids, so complete with the final bid price the total cost to them was £71.90. Again, the product is worth £74.99.
 
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Al Vallario said:
Let's do the math on this one...

Each bid adds 10p to the auction price. At a current price of £46.30 at the time of writing that means 463 bids have been placed. Each bid costs 50p, so £231.50 has been spent so far bidding on that auction. If the auction were to end at its current price (which it shows no sign of doing so), the auction site will earn £231.50 plus the winning bid, £46.30, to make a total of £277.80. The stated value is £74.99...

Edit: The auction has ended at £48.40. The total cost to all bidders was £242.00 in bidding fees. The winning bidder placed 47 bids, so complete with the final bid price the total cost to them was £71.90. Again, the product is worth £74.99.
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Not to mention you can quite easily buy this for less than £50 brand new from various shops. It's also excluding delivery. :p
 
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