There has been some rumbling about an auction site called Swoopo, suggesting that it is either clever, even legal, money-making scheme on the part of the German parent company, formerly Telebid, or a new way to get gadgets cheap. Interestingly, it could be both. The auction system is considerably different than other sites – EBay included. It works like this, if I understand it correctly: you “buy” blocks of bids for $1 each. Each bid costs $1 and increases the price by 15 cents and the auction time increases to 20 seconds in the last 20 seconds – if the auction time is 10 seconds when you bid, 10 seconds are added to the time. When the clock runs out the final bidder pays the auction price which is essentially the “number of bids” they entered, say 200 bids at $200, and the final price, say $400 for a total of $600. It’s obviously great if the device is worth less than $600 and you win but if you lose the auction, that $200 goes up in smoke.
