Bid (to spend) with Swoopo.com

Swoopo.com, the online auction web site,  is drawing attention from critics who say they prey on human foibles, like the tendency of people to overlook the small increments of money they spend to pursue alluring discounts.

These critics also say that players face long odds in Swoopo’s auctions, where they must compete against people in the United States, Britain and Germany. And they say that Swoopo is making a nice profit on each item when all the bidding fees are tallied.

Competing bidders spent a cumulative $2,337 in their losing effort to buy the $1,498 refrigerator, for example.

Swoopo says it must spend much of that revenue to advertise the auctions and attract customers to the site, which it says had 2.5 million visitors in July, double the number it had a year earlier, and a total of 2.5 million registered users.

Swoopo positions themselves as a spend to save, shopping entertainment site. Bidding on the nice looking new inventory runs 60 cents a pop. (Bid units are bought in bulk, with 40 @ $24 being the lowest entrance fee.) Which doesn’t sound like much, but with limited merchandise and numerous competitors you’re going to spend a pretty penny to most likely fail in your quest. Plus, each bid extends the time remaining in an auction by a preset amount of seconds. Resulting in additional bids and more spend …