Swoopo Auctions

13:22.52 - Tuesday 9th September 2008   (Link to This Entry)

Every now and again you come across an idea you wish you'd thought of first. Swoopo Auctions (here) is just such an idea.

An expensive electronic item is put up for 'Auction' - it could be a Nintendo Wii, an iMac, whatever - and people bid for it. Every time you bid, the price of the item goes up by 7p and the remaining time is incremented to give other people a chance to outbid you, just like a real world auction. There's a final end date/time as well, just to stop people bidding forever.

The genius bit is that Swoopo charges you 50p for each bid.

Let's have a current Swoopo example: At the time of writing there's an 80GB PS3 console up for grabs, and the current price is £59.15. It started at 7p, which means 844 bids have been placed to get it up to its current price.

844 bids has earned Swoopo £422.50 in bidding fees, and if the current high bidder wins, he'll have to pay £59.15 on top of however many bids he's made, so this £299.00 item has sold for a minimum of £481.65 - nice work if you can get it!

Update:
They're taking the mick now - an auction for £40 cash has brought in £80+ so far. As someone here said: "Well that's one way of laundering money."