I  have been obsessed with swoopo auction.  I am seriously considering a full time career as a professional swoopo bidder.  I have bought refurbished digital cameras at Ebay and other outlets but I think we might have a site where you can take it beyond buying stuff.  It is my fourth post in as many blogs about different things swoopo.  So I visited the site again to see an auction that actually ended on a camera that I really want.  Fortunately there was my Nikon D90 swooped away by a lucky winner.  Very interesting stats on it indeed.  The winner bid 219 times!  I must admit this was a persistent bidder.  219 bids is not an easy feat at Swoopo where the last 20 seconds of an auction can run several hours because it gets extended everytime someone makes a bid (the winner did use bid butler which is a robot bidder – in my layman tongue).  Lets crunch some numbers here- 219 x .60cents = $132 + Auction ending price = $89 with a grand total of $221 for a $1200 camera.  That is a great deal no doubt for the winner.  What about the 100-300 losers though. If they bid on average of 20 times, it cost them on average $12.00.  Now multiply that by lets say 150 bidders = $1800.00.  So Swoopo nets $2021  for a $1200 camera.  Does this sound like the games at the county fair ?  Lets face it, we all have played bingo!

Here comes the career change opportunity.  First you have to buy sime bids at .60 cents each.  You can then bid to win bid coupons.  Those extra coupons can be used to try to bid to win (a full blown assault).  I haven’t read the fine print but I believe Swoopo allows you to redeem the cash value of the winning item.  Chachiiiingggg!  I must say I am seriously considering retiring from my professional slot machine playing career.

I do have a concern though.  How do they make sure that the system is not being manipulated.  How do I know that when I have a winning bid on hand their inhouse robot is not going to come in an bid against me if the item is loosing them money at my bid price ?  We do live in a semi-free market (as of 2008) but don’t you think their machines be certified by the gaming department for fairness?

I have been researching on the factory process of refurbishing cameras.  Now there is no exact science to it. But I thought it would certainly not make sense for a manufacturer to spend a couple of days of labor for its RMA and quality assurance engineers to check and repair a $199 consumer camera that was crushed by a garbage truck.

I am quoting the following from cnet’s review site by Lori Grunin, senior editor. First the question by one of her reader”

I’m thinking about buying a factory-refurbished, non-SLR 7.1-megapixel digital camera. The refurbished camera price is considerably less than the new camera price. Are there negative factors to be aware of in buying a refurbished digital camera? Note that an extended two- or five-year warranty is available for the refurbished camera at a reasonable price. I would appreciate your comments on this.”

and here’s her response ( note that the question refers to an SLR and at the time the question was answered, I think it would have been in the $800 price range).  Here’s Lori’s answer,

“My knee-jerk response to this question is usually “Stop! No! Don’t!” The market has been going through a period where a newer-better-faster-cheaper model arriving next month renders even the cheapest used models obsolete. But looking down at my motionless knee, I realize that we’re slowly coming out of that cycle, at least for the better, solidly made, midrange cameras. So ask yourself: is it a really good or a so-so product in general? Mediocre products usually aren’t worth the cost and are even less of a good deal if they’re used. Unless you’ve been jonesing for that particular model, you’re probably better off with a new version of a really good but lower-resolution (or less full-featured in some way) and less-expensive alternative.

In all cameras, the parts most likely to fail from regular wear and tear are the buttons, the switches, the connectors, the zoom-lens mechanism, the electrical system (it can’t charge the battery). The LCD is sensitive to large swings in temperature and humidity as well as unusual stresses. If the camera has a hinged LCD, the hinge will have a relatively high chance of failing as well. Unless any or all of these get replaced during the refurbishing process–which generally consists of checking to make sure parts and systems are still up to spec–then they’re more likely (in the probabilistic sense) to fail sooner under your ownership than a comparable new model. Search the Web for user complaints about the camera to see if any of these parts fail more frequently than others. Then find out how much the extended warranty will cost. You definitely want to add that to the purchase price and make sure that the total is still considerably less than a new model. And check the terms of the warranty to make sure it covers the parts most likely to fail from normal use.”

And this is the normal response.  I dont blame her. She want’s to err on the side of caution.  But the general reaction of people to refurbished camera’s is that “wow… something was broke and they replaced it” almost like a car that had a bad collision after two year of use and got repaired in a auto body shop.

My contention is that 90 percent of all the factory refurbished cameras had nothing wrong with them to begin with.  A lot of the mega electronics stores that are large enough to have a clout with manufacturers have an agreement with manufacturers that should there be any kind of complaint or returns, they take the product back, even if there was nothing wrong with it.   I have known people buy a camera for an occasion and return it within the full return period for a full refund with an excuse like ” well, the pictures did not come out to my satisfaction” – thats all the store needs.  Completely unethical but for the point of argument if that store had managed a return agreement, it goes back to the factory and comes back as refurbished after a full diagnosis.  Consumer law states that once it is sold, a return in an openbox cannot be sold as new even if it was not used.   In some cases they do have a quickly fixable problem. But the whole point is that it is not worth it for these manufacturers to repair a major flaw.  In my 15 years of buying refurbished electronics and refurbished digital cameras, I have never once had a problem in its quality or durability.