I'm tempted to sign up and speculate £20...

Swoopo

Has anyone else used it?

Looks the same as mad bid, you spend all the money buying the bids in the first place!

Looks like a complete con to me. There is a notepad on there going for £1.50, with ten seconds to go. Who is going to pay 50p to place a bid at that stage? If they do, the time gets extended, so they lose the item. Why would anyone place a bid in those circumstances?

for all but the winner it is a complete con - same principle as the lottery. Lots purchase bids (equivalent to lottery tickets) but only one person wins. So Swoopo get their money 50 times over and the item going for peanuts looks attractive. Chances of winning v.v.v.v.v slim.

As far as I can see, the only possible motive for bidding when the price is ridiculously low is the hope that no-one will outbid you. Logically, that is a possibility, since everyone else might see the folly in placing a bid. In practice, though, it doesn't happen, since clearly people are bidding, or at least the price is being ratcheted up.

So the question remains: Why are people bidding?

I can't understand why people would bid at such a low price either. The only time it could be of any real use (apart from being bored and speculating wasting £20) would be if you were planning on buying one of the more expensive items.

You'd wait until the price was similar to that of which previous items had sold for, and then start to bid as late as possible. Say, buy £100 of bids, item sells for £300 and valued at £700. Even then, you would have to spend a long time sitting in front of the computer bidding, be lucky and have a quick internet connection...