Two Major Swoopo Changes
Swoopo has made two fairly large changes to the way auctions work on the site. The first applies to the way time is added to the clock after a BidButler Battle. The second deals with how used bids are applied to the Swoop It Now price.
I’m going to let Swoopo’s words take the lead here in explaining these changes:
BidButler Battle Change
All auctions will count down from 24 hours with no time added to the counter for bids placed before the timer has reached 2 minutes. Once the timer has reached below 2 minutes the counter will extend to a maximum of 20 seconds per bid placed and will not increase the timer beyond 2 minutes regardless of how many bids are placed. This means that once an auction has gone below 2 minutes, further bids placed will never increase the counter over 2 minutes.
Swoop It Now Change
Your Swoop it Now price will vary according to the percentage discount rate that is set on each auction, purchased bids will reduce the Swoop it Now price by 60c for each bid placed until the maximum discount for the auction has been reached.
The Swoop it Now price is only reduced by bidding with ‘Compensation Bids’ or ‘Purchased Bids’ obtained using the ‘Buy Bids’ section of your account. Bid bundles attached to an auctioned item, ‘FreeBids’, auctioned bid bundles or bids placed by telephone do not reduce the Swoop it Now price.
What Do These Changes Mean?
I bolded the important phrase in the Swoop It Now change. That is, there is now a maximum Swoop It Now discount for many items. So you can’t get items for 100% off regardless of how many bids you place.
At face value, this change may seem to be a negative for Swoopo bidders, but I don’t think it was meant that way. Having a Swoop It Now discount of 100% had unintended consequences for Swoopo auctions. The Swoopo Pros were able to come into an auction with a ton of bids and use BidButler with abandon. Now, they cannot bully an auction and win. They’ll be forced to use more finesse and fewer bids.
The BidButler Battle change should result in more exciting auctions for everyone involved, because you will no longer see the auction clock soar to 15 or 20 minutes after a Battle. Unfortunately, as someone in the forums pointed out, this makes bathroom trips and food breaks more difficult. However, since the auctions won’t last as long…this may not become an issue.
Will I Get Better Discounts?
I can’t say yet how these changes will affect the discounts on Swoopo, but I’m going to start evaluating the data and update soon with an answer.