

Ask HN: What od you think of Pay to Bid Auction Sites such as Swoopo.com - mcalvey2

Do you think the pay to bid sites like Swoopo are a growth market for a new company? Do you think they are scams? What are your overall thoughts?
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jgoewert
Scam? Not exactly, but shady. Growth, I guess. There are ads on TV for another
site just like them.

Simple concept though, sell bids. When you have reached your profit line, have
the robot on your server (that spends no money) stop bidding on an item and
let someone win. Then you just find a low price on amazon.com and dropship it
to the winner.

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GrandMasterBirt
Yea, scam. Do the math and you realize its a scam. Theres been posts on this
over a year ago. Think about it. At 1 cent increments if bidding itself costs
1 cent. By the time the price reaches 100 bucks you already made 100 dollars
in bids along. But bidding usually costs 5 cents per 1 cent bid so you already
made 500 dollars on a 100 dollar auction + 100 dollars for sale.

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ddemchuk
From what I've heard/read about them, they take a lot of manual maintenance
and oversite to make sure things run smoothly.

As far as scam, they aren't really tricking people, it's just that people are
dumb and don't spend enough time to realize they could spend a shit ton of
money on something if they don't pay attention.

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getonit
Thieves, milking the naive for all they're worth as fast as they can, before
they're inevitably outlawed.

