new macBook pro, <$400
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- gokernyourself
About the craziest auction I've ever seen, makes me wish I'd thought of this idea.
http://www.swoopo.com/
They're charging the user around $.75 for each bid, and each bid increments the price of the item by around 6 cents, and also increments the time left to bid.
By my figure they probably made around 5K on the last macbook auction, but the winner paid $423 plus the amount they spent on bids.
It's a lot like gambling really and fucking brilliant.
Sorry if you thought I was going to sell you a macbook for $399.
- pylon0
They've been doing this with cars and houses for a while now in the UK. Wacky idea.
- brilliant idea. Sometimes they lose money, but most often they're raking it in. And the winner gets things cheap.gokernyourself
- Ruffian0
So don't bid until the last second?
- vaxorcist0
business model is more like a lottery than an auction, and often if you add up all the money spent by bidders it's far more than the cost of the item, but somebody gets very lucky....... or maybe not if they bid hundreds of times....
- Ruffian0
Oh I see, it adds time.
- gokernyourself0
not spam. I just ran across this site at work...
- sikma0
sounds more like a scam the spam
- sikma0
has anyone here bought anything form it?
- brandelec0
this has been around for a while
- gokernyourself0
not yet. Somebody just picked up a macbook pro 13" for 26 bucks. And spent $75 in bids. Apparently swoopo lost some money on that one.
- sublocked0
damn, i thought this was the place to get ahold of those macbooks from that new jersey heist a few weeks back.
disappointment.
- sikma0
there's a D90 going for under $20, but the moment the clock counted down to zero a bunch more time got added to auction. somethings not right here.
- Timer goes back up when people bid.ismith
- that's what I'm saying. Feels like gambling. Not sure this will last.gokernyourself
- bigtrick0
it's basically like a raffle, except the tickets cost 75 cents, and the more raffle tickets are sold, the more you have to pay if you win. so the winner gets a good deal hopefully, whereas all the bidders who didn't win lose small amounts of money.
- except a raffle doesn't keep upping the time every time someone buys a ticket. This is more like a slot machine.gokernyourself
- biggest losers are the ones that keep bidding and don't win i guessbigtrick
- digdre0
that nikon is on 15secs for the last 30mins.
- Bam0
it looks tempting. an average of 65% cheaper then the original price. howcome i don't trust this?
- baseline_shift0
this would only be good for compulsive shoppers who want to 'hedge bets' and see a good return for their investment. (ie, bid on lots of items, and occasionally win something cheap, offsetting the cost of bids on un-won items.)
for the rest of us, its like paying to walk into a store and not buy anything.
- deathboy0
As an example, I am viewing a "penny auction" macbook air that went for $248.03. Since it was a penny auction, that means there were 24,802 bids! At $0.75 per bid, they collected $18,601.50 and all they had to do was send a $1300 laptop to the one lucky winner (and the winner still had to shell out the $248.08 + shipping!)
brilliant. imagine if they also have their own employees bidding, so they dont lose the the equipment, until they have made their profit margins.
- erikjonsson0
i think the word you are looking for is pyramid game
- instrmntl0
seems like auctions are never ending
- xcarlx0
you can spend hundreds of dollars bidding on something, and still not win, sounds like a scam to me.
- sikma0
It appears to be just like a regular lottery, where you pay for the incredibly slim chance of winning something.
Lotteries are a tax for people who can't do math. I will leave it at that.