[becadar]

I recently noticed that new auctions started poping up. The way they work is different from ebay - here you must pay some fee to get your bid placed on the auction. All goods are sold so cheaply that it seems to be too good to be true.
I know at least 3 auctions that advertise on facebook right now - swoopo.com, bidobest.com and italian one, that I can't remember now, but during last few weeks I saw at least 10 such sites.

Isn't that gambling? Is it legal at all?

[talkgold]

All I can say is that the owners of Swoopo make a killing.

For instance, they have a Wii Fit. Which retails at $90. Each bid costs $0.75 and increases the bid by $0.15. The Product sold for $62. That means there were 413 bids which costs users $0.75 each = $310.00 So Swoopo made $310 + $62 = $372.00. Not bad for a $90 product huh?

[becadar]

so this explains why these sites are poping up like mushrooms after rain

[Goldnote]

I watched auctions on swoopo one night for about 2 hours. Yes they are making a killing. You could spend $10.00 or more in bids and not receive anything. I would rather just pay for it out right. What if you bid for several days and never won. You might have just spent what it would have cost in the first place.
Good Luck!

[larry5]

Found an interesting version of the penny auction www.centmonkey.com where you can convert after winning the auction the original price of the auctioned item to it´s original value and ''cash'' out it as real money. Does anybody know if swoopo or any other has similar feature and does it work after all ???