SWOOPO

vaultingSlinky said:
http://www.swoopo.co.uk/auction/macbook-pro-13inch-notebook-mb990b-a-/240687.html

Mugged! The winner managed to over pay due to over 1000 bids!
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The winner will have paid a total of £441.75 + £531.00 = £972.75 for a £899.00 value laptop. The apparent irrational escalation of commitment is due to the fact that, once the bidder has invested a significant amount in bidding fees (say £300), it seems like a better deal to pay over the odds and lose £70 than lose the £300 already invested.
 
Al Vallario said:
The winner will have paid a total of £441.75 + £531.00 = £972.75 for a £899.00 value laptop. The apparent irrational escalation of commitment is due to the fact that, once the bidder has invested a significant amount in bidding fees (say £300), it seems like a better deal to pay over the odds and lose £70 than lose the £300 already invested.
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Yes but as soon as it goes over the RRP why not just swoop and buy it?

He let it go 72 quid above the list price...
 
jas72 said:
Yes but as soon as it goes over the RRP why not just swoop and buy it?

He let it go 72 quid above the list price...
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That's a good point.

It's possible he had the BidButler service running on the auction (I can't see the bidding history to confirm that). It seems anyone who uses that service gets ripped off beyond all compare. If more than one person is using it on an auction, the bids will just go back and forth (hundreds within a few seconds) until one person has used up all their allocated bids (this can be hundreds, with 100 bids costing the user £50). Then an enormous amount of extra time is added on to the auction (10 seconds for each bid made), meaning the winner of the fight-out actually has no greater chance of winning the auction after all.

He could have left the BidButler service running and that may not take into account the list price of the auction, so it keeps automatically placing bids and raising the price until no one else out-bids the user.

Edit: The total cost is largely dependent on the bidding costs of each user, so other users would have continued bidding manually or using the BidButler service even though the total cost to the ultimate winning bidder would have been over the list price, their bidding costs would have been significantly lower and hence they stood a chance to win the auction below the list price.
 
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Lol I love the fact that people bid in the last few seconds regardless of the fact every bid adds time to the clock. :)
 
Won't lie, I am tempted to try it cause another iPhone went for like £24 including everything. Meh, ill probably do something stupid and go nuts and bid like crazy.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if they put items up like the iPhone and made it look like they've just been won for cheap prices such as £24 just to draw you in :p
 
Sinque said:
'Each bid raises the auction price by £0.10.'

So they get as many bids as possible = money.
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my response was to
danza said:
PS3 slim just went for £51.50. The bidder placed just the one bid! But it's already been said - the Dollar Auction effect is at work here, and can easily suck you in. You have to be very lucky to get something that good for cheap.

http://www.swoopo.co.uk/auction/sony-playstation-3-slim-console-120gb-mo/241854.html
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which was also for a ps3 auction that must have been running at the same time as the one thats still going now which i linked.

i find it odd one ps3 auction had only a single bidder while the other has over 36 bidders.
 
arknor said:
my response was to

which was also for a ps3 auction that must have been running at the same time as the one thats still going now which i linked.

i find it odd one ps3 auction had only a single bidder while the other has over 36 bidders.
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He ment that the winning bidder only made one bid, not that there was only 1 bid overall :).

Edit - Ah, just reread what you said, yeah, does seem strange that everyone decided to stop bidding on that one, but continue to bid on the other.
 
This is crazy, the bid is about to end then someone puts a bid on it and time gets added.

That could go on for ages.
 
This is crazy, they must be making a fortune. god help anyone that plays this game.

I bet they are making 2x RRP most of the time when taking bids into account.

Peoples need for a bargain is being abused here but still people shouldn't be so stupid. Wish I had thought of it or maybe I will make my own with a better name.

"the house allways wins" has never been quite so true imo. Better odds doing pretty much anything.
 
Begbie said:
This is crazy, the bid is about to end then someone puts a bid on it and time gets added.

That could go on for ages.
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That's the beauty of it for the auction site ;)

I have to say I'm also tempted, despite having read up on the site a fair bit. There are some genuine bargains to be had for winning bidders, but I'd say there are some basic rules to adhere to:

- Make as few bids as possible. Be aware that each bid is costing you 50p, so minimise your financial commitment to each auction. If other bidders are consistently placing bids when the counter is nearing the end (i.e. the last 10 seconds), back off and let them waste their bids. As long as at least two others are doing this, it is unlikely the auction is going to end any time soon

- Avoid popular auctions. All bidders will have made a substantial financial commitment to the auction and will thus be unwilling to drop out and make a loss

- Don't make use of the BidButler service; it provides no benefit over bidding manually and if you get caught in a bidding war with another BidButler user you will lose a substantial amount of money in bidding costs and come no closer to winning an auction

- Have a reservation price (in terms of bidding and total costs) and stick to it. Agree to make so many bids on an auction and if you reach it, chalk it up as a loss and move on
 
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