When I first wrote about Swoopo back in 2008 I found it abhorrent. It was, in short, a form of gambling masquerading as an auction site. You paid for bids – the more bids you bought the better the chance that you’d be able to pay a reduced price for a certain item. The real money came from the suckers who ran up the price. All those previous bids, at $1, were junked in the process.
They called it entertainment shopping. Now, however, I call it dead.
The company filed for bankruptcy in Germany on the 23rd and although the site appears to be down due to “technical difficulties,” I think the difficulties are more financial. Technologizer has found that the company is finding a liquidator to divest its assets and all bidders with current balances with the company are SOLwoopo.
Some of Swoopo’s competitors are still around (I feel I must refrain from linking to them except in excoriation and so I’ll avoid that here) but hopefully they will suffer the same fate. Fools and their money, as they say, are soon parted. It becomes immoral when the ones doing the parting have stacked the deck in their absolute favor.
Online auction site with an alternative bidding system. As of April 2009, Swoopo auctioned over 10,000 products per month and had more than 1,200,000 registered customers. How it works: online customers buy “bids†in advance. They cost $0.75 each and are sold in packs of 30, 50, 100, 300 or 700. Bidders have the choice of placing single bids, or, using an electronic bid assistant called the “BidButlerâ€. Alternatively, customers can bid via the phone. Every bid placed, increases the price of...
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