It's another one of those auction websites that charges the member to buy a packet of bids (60 cents per bid, minimum packet is 40 bids). There's no guarantee that you will ever actually win an auction. I'm sure that they're making their money off of all those members who buy bids in the hopes of getting the bargain ipod or digital frame.
The auctions run indefinitely since every "bid" adds 20 seconds to the countdown clock while increasing the bid amount by 12 cents. Only the last man standing when the clock runs down gets to purchase the item.
I'm watching one auction and every time the countdown nears 0, another bid is registered and the clock resets. The current bid is $28.92, which represents 241 bids. At 60 cents/bid, that means the Swoopo has made $144.60 just from bids on an item that retails for on
Amazon for $140. And the auction hasn't ended yet!
It might be interesting to watch every once in a while but I don't think that I'll be participating.
ETA: That auction finally ended and the final bid was $71.88, which means the auction company made $359.40 from just bids alone. That's a great purchase price for the winner if they used less than 100 bids to win that thing. Not so great if they spent 114 or more bids on it. And really lousy for the people who got absolutely nothing for their money!
