I have no doubt that live auction sites such as Smokoo and ViaZiz have been all over the Internet for years. But they’re a pretty new phenomenon in South Africa – to their benefit, because they are making a killing.
In a nutshell, here’s how these auction sites work: You sign up for free and then purchase “bids” separately, which can cost anywhere from R3.50 to R7,50 each, depending on the size of the bundle of bids you decide to get.
Auctions are live on the site and have a countdown timer. Every time somebody makes a bid, the clock time jumps back 10 seconds and the “auction price” goes up 1c. Needless to say, fierce bidding action happens in when the last 10 seconds of an auction come about because everybody ties to outbid the rest in the dying seconds, only to see the auction prolonged by an additional 10 seconds every time.
So, an in its dying seconds can still be prolonged for hours at a time.
But that’s only half the story. Every time you click to bid, while the “auction price” of the item you’re bidding on only goes up 1c, you’re essentially paying between R3,50 and R7,50 for every click – and this is where Smokoo and ViaZiz are making a killing.
You see, the items on their sites are highly coveted. iPads, MacBooks, LCD TVs, cameras, iPhones….all the stuff that people lust over but can’t afford. When you see an iPhone 4 on auction and the auction price is R56.79, looks like a pretty good deal…and it would be if that was the price you pay.
You see, in order to get to R56.79, bidders would have had to place 5,679 bids, which, at the lowest bid cost of R3.50, has netted the auction site a cool R19,876.50 even before the item is sold. That’s a handsome profit considering the iPhone itself only costs around R8,000.
Here’s another example where an iPad “sold”for just over R1,000 but Smokoo actually made over R107,000 from the auction.
Bid rigging, price inflation and fake auctions seem to be a big problem with these types of sites as well, because ViaZiz seems pretty vocal about the fact that it does not do this and that all auctions are “fair”. But that’s not to say that other similar sites online don’t do this to make more money.
And herein lies the danger – people think they’re getting a good deal online when they are having to pay way more than the price they see, and also the ingenious business model that is making the owners of these auction sites so flippin’ rich very quickly.
The flipside, of course, is that you could be the lucky person who puts the winning bid down on an auction for the cost of one or very few bids and end up paying the bargain price for the prize (and the not-so-bargain price of R600 delivery in some cases!).
I see that certain auctions on ViaZiz also offer a bids-back guarantee that if you win the auction, you get all your bids refunded, so it really comes down to who has the most bid at their disposal and the endurance to sit in front of a computer until the other bidders give up and the clock eventually runs out.
Either way, lots of money is being made and by the look of activity on the sites, people are lapping it up. It may not even be about winning the item..it may be the same thrill that you get from gambling, which these auction sites essentially are – casinos.
Wish I thought of this business model.
But the question is, how long will the novelty last before people realise they’re gambling their money away faster than they realise? And, how long will it be until the National Gambling Board steps in and puts these sites out of business?
I, for one, am staying clear of these sites because as the old adage goes: “If it looks too good to be true, it probably is”…and in the case of Smokoo and ViaZiz…it totally is.
All the other blogs are saying that the maths is flawed, in terms of what the winner pays, on the calculator at the end, it shows how many bids and what they cost in total added to the price paid and the shipping then subtracted from the retail price and the winner still savs money, sometimes they don’t, yesterday for example, a Samsung camera was up and the winner ended up paying just under 200 bucks for it, but he spent over the 600 bids, he had the auto bidder on and therefore spent something like 3000 on the camera but, a external hard drive was won for something like 60 bucks and the winner of that only bid once, spending only 5 bucks on the bid, which means coupled with the shipping cost, he/she still saved a lot of money.
Totally agree. But you can be guaranteed that on hot must-have items like iPads and iPhones, you’re never going to spend just R5 on a bid…and therein lies the beauty of how these sites are making a killing.
Shipping to México?
You’ll have to ask THEM.
I’ve recently signed up with viaziz after i’ve been a member with smokoo for a while and never winning anything. Loosing quite a tidy sum. So i decided to monitor viaziz for a week and follow one auction at a time. I did not buy any bids and by the 3rd day i could no longer access their site. This is the message i get on their site:
Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access / on this server.
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
I’ve monitored their site for at least 12hrs a day.
Therefore, although they vehemently deny any scams, i still think it’s a rip off.
The site is actually a ripoff. I personally never made a bid there, but it seems that the site is making fake claims and using auto bidders to place bids just seconds before the countdown is to hit 0. You never really seem to win any bid there…
I have been using the site for months and have been posted my own tips and experiences on my website, please come and share your experiences with Viaziz too.
Just so anyone reading these comments knows, Smithy works for viaziz! The site viazizscam.com is run by viaziz too. You can check there dns and it is the same as viaziz.com.
This site is a Rip-off. They take your money and once they have it you can not get hold of anyone. Now they have only bid packages on the site? That was my hope to become a bid millionaire. Told we would recieve a shuffle with the bid package. Still might be coming it was only 8 months ago. My tip of the day is to stay away from these thieve’s.
One pissed off Canadian
Viaziz is a great business model, but it is very VERY missleading to users.
You don’t pay for the item, you pay for bids, and this can be a costly trap. Make sure that you read every thing on the site.
But viaziz.com do lie. This is from their own FAQ
“How do I pay for the product I have won?
There is nothing more to pay! The auction ending price is for guidance only – We do not require the final ending price to be paid.
The ONLY cost associated with our website is the bid package costs.
Shipping and the product costs are fully absorbed within our bid package costs. ”
So in actual fact, the price displayed that represents “the price of the item” means NOTHING. All it means is the munber of people who have bid on the item (just remove the decimal point). They make their money from selling bids which pays for the item. Viaziz is actually lying when they state that someone just picked up an item at 95.6% off because a person may have won a $2000 item for $86.38 could very well have cost them $4000 to do so.
So don’t be stupid, just pass on what is “too good to be true”
ViaZiz are actually thieves! At no point did I choose a bid package or authorize money to be taken from my account by ViaZiz. ViaZiz stole $300 from my account without my consent. They have not returned my emails or the money they took unlawfully. Jail time is what I would recommended for these fruadsters..