Swoopo?

Ankesh,

Thanks for pointing out Swoopo.

I had a look at the Swoopo site before your other link.

I don't think there is anything Evil about it.

They have figured out a way to get as much as 3x retail for an item, however. So that could be deemed genious. But, pissing off many people in the process isn't that smart so it's anti-genious.

I just saw a TomTom GPS sell for $17.26. This was a penny auction. So each bid raised the price by 1 penny. $17.26 means there were 1,726 bids. As each bid costs the bidder $0.75, they made $1,294.50 in bids. Even if they buy the item at retail After the so-called auction and then ship it, they made an easy $700+ on this one auction.

Or look at another auction... 300 free bids. So they are auctioning off $225 worth of bids. At the time of my post the price is $87.15. At a per bid price increase of 15 cents that means they have received 581 costing bidders $435.75 so far.

The WII auction that just ended for $161.10. That means there were 1,074 bids totaling $805.50 in revenue, for something that costs what... $250? profit of $550 for that auction. So just the TomTom and the WII have made them $1,200 in the last few minutes.

There is a sucker born every minute. And a fool and their money are parted.

Michael Ross