Get out the way, we got a Wootoff!

Swoopo question: You're only charged when you purchase bids, not when someone else bids, correct?

Also, why waste hundreds of bids on one item? Couldn't you just swoop in (rim shot) at the last second?

 

I think you are charged the cost of your bid. Say you bid .30 cents on a TV and lose, you are charged 30 cents... I think.

 

Who the fuck buys a Springsteen music set off Woot?

 

How long do these things go? I have the whole weekend off, I may never leave the house?

 

I just bought 40 Swoop points.

Goodbye, life. Goodbye, checking account balance.

 

It's $0.60 per bid and every time you use a bid, that money's gone whether or not you win. And you can't "swoop" in at the last second because every new bid adds some time, so it's not over until everyone decides they're no longer interested or runs out of bids.

I'm flat out stunned how terrible and awesome this company is. I need to start up my own version. A TV I was watching yesterday sold for $180. The winner big 450 times. So he spent $180+$270, which was still well below the $800 price for the TV on Amazon. Good deal for that guy. He paid close to half price.

But, the auction went up to $180 from $0 in $0.06 increments. That's 3,000 bids, at $0.60 a piece, or $1,800, plus the $180 the winner paid. So the company made nearly $1,200 pure profit on that one auction and the winner still came away feeling like he got a good deal.

It's such a shitty way of doing business it should be illegal, but man oh man does it make money.

 

Yeah, it's really quite brilliant. I'm just wondering if there is a cutoff point for auctions; I mean, the bidding has to end at some point, right?

Whatever the case, I was intrigued enough to plop down $24. Not sure if I'll use bids now or wait for some late night auctions.

Here's an interesting Washington Post story on the site:

Consider the MacBook Pro that Swoopo sold recently for $35.86. Swoopo lists its suggested retail price at $1,799. But then look at what the bidding fee does. For each "bid," the price of the computer goes up by a penny, and Swoopo collects 60 cents. To get up to $35.86, it takes a stunning 3,585 bids -- and Swoopo gets its fee for each. That means that before selling this computer, Swoopo took in $2,151 in bidding fees. Yikes.

In essence, what your 60-cent bidding fee gets you at Swoopo is a ticket to a lottery, with a chance to get a high-end item at a ridiculously low price. With each bid, the auction is extended for a few seconds to keep it going as long as someone in the world is willing to take just one more shot. This can go on for a very, very long time. The winner of the MacBook Pro auction bid more than 750 times, accumulating $469.80 in fees.

What makes Swoopo so fiendishly compelling is the tendency of people to think of the bids that they have already put in as a "sunk cost" -- money that they have already put toward buying the item. This is an illusion. The fact that you have already bid 200 times does not mean that your chance of winning on the 201st bid is any higher than it was at the very beginning. A new bidder can come in at any time and at the cost of a mere 60 cents jump into the auction in which you've already spent more than $100. The money you've put in has gotten you no closer to the goal than a losing raffle ticket.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/11/AR2009071100684.html

 

Swoopo is like eBay crossed with one of those "hands on a hardbody" contests.

 

Seems like I read somewhere that there is actually an official end to every auction but that it rarely reaches that point.

 

That robot looked cool, until I realized it was 13 inches tall. If i'm paying $99 for an Erector Spykee, it better be a good 6 feet tall.

 

I bid on a Canon EOS -- retail of $1,100 selling for $7.50 -- with one second left but was denied.

This site is fucking addicting.

 

Better than the hunk of nerd junk they're selling now ...



http://woot.com/