Atomic Playboy

These are links I found interesting for 26/01 through 30/01:

• GlimmerBlocker — pAd blocker for Safari implemented as a non-intrusive proxy./p
• Noscope | Journal | Extra Image Tags Plugin — pThis is a very minimalistic WordPress plugin, which finds all images you insert into your posts, and wrap them in extra 's, so you can style the hell out of them./p
• The $300 Million Button — p”It's hard to imagine a form that could be simpler: two fields, two buttons, and one link. Yet, it turns out this form was preventing customers from purchasing products from a major e-commerce site, to the tune of $300,000,000 a year. What was even worse: the designers of the site had no clue there was even a problem.”/p
• Cops Talk Funny — p”From recruits in academies to senior officers and command staff, you talk funny when you take the stand. Is it in the water at the academies; is there a secret society where you're taught this special language?”/p
• Videogames outsell DVD and Blu-ray in 2008 — pRetail sales of videogames overtook that of DVD and Blu-ray for the first time, as sales of packaged media grew 6 per cent worldwide to hit USD 61 billion in 2008, according to Media Control GfK International./p

So I got an unsolicited email invitation from some Maria that I’ve never heard of for an auction site called MrSvensson, that I won’t deign with a link.

I’ve seen this sort of semi-scammy deal before. Sure, they have auctions. Sure, people win them and get the item. But the entire auction method is completely stacked.

When you bid on an auction, it goes up by 0.10 SEK (about 0.012 USD, or 1.2 cents). However, you must first buy bids before you can place them.

You can either pay per bid on your phone bill for extortionate sums that MrSvensson blames on the phone carriers (which I totally believe), or buy bid packages with 10 to 50 bids. It starts with 10 bids for 149 SEK (14.90 each) to 50 bids for 3849 SEK (7.70 SEK each). A bid via cell phone costs 20 SEK per bid.

The big scammy profit for MrSvensson is that you pay them to bid even if you don’t win. You bid on something, the cost of that auction goes up by 0.10 SEK, and you’re down one of your paid bids. If someone places a new bid, it goes up by another 0.10 SEK and you’re both not winning the auction and paying them for that lost bid.

Granted, they do have a “cashback” deal where the second and third highest bidders (as in most bids placed) get a certain amount of bids back, probably to instill a sense of not actually throwing your bids away, while at the same time encouraging you to place more bids.

On their “Lucky winners” page we get a few examples. Someone won a bid on a vacuum cleaner for 25 SEK. That means with bid increases of 0.10 SEK there were a total of 250 bids on it.

Let’s assume that most people go for packages and buy 20 bids at a time. That gives 12.45 SEK per bid. With 250 bids, that’s a total of 3112.50 SEK for that vacuum cleaner.

Did the vacuum cleaner cost that much for MrSvensson? I doubt it. So there’s one person that got a vacuum cleaner for the extremely low price of 25 SEK (about 3 dollars), and the rest of the bidders essentially threw their money straight at MrSvensson.

Another example: a digital camera won for 122.70 SEK. That makes 1227 bids for a total of 15276.15 SEK or 1860 USD in bid fees. It looks like some semi-decent compact camera that I very much doubt costs more than 500 dollars.

Playstation 3 for 216.40 SEK (26 USD)? That netted 26941.80 SEK (3280 USD) in bid fees.

Is this a legal business method? I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer. It probably is. But I still see it as just a step above scams. There is nothing whatsoever preventing mysterious users run by the people behind the site to place snipe bids on auctions so they don’t sell too soon in case the item isn’t profitable via the bid fees yet.

“The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.”
— George W. Bush, discussing the decline of the French economy with British Prime Minister Tony Blair

Update: Well, too bad it’s just an urban legend. But typically Bushy nevertheless.