Thursday, May 17, 2012

Smokoo

South African Penny Auction, Smokoo.com, Closes After BidFair Acquisition

Controversial penny auction website, Smokoo, has stopped trading following an acquisition by BidFair. Bidfair offers similar services to Smokoo in South Africa.

Smokoo announced on its website that it has been “acquired by BidFair and has ceased trading”.

“Smokoo customers may access BidFair Site at www.bidfair.co.za,” the Smokoo announcement states.

According to Smokoo their customers are required to manually register a new account with BidFair within 60 days to keep their credits.

“Once the 60 day period has expired any Smokoo customer who has not manually registered a new account with BidFair, will forfeit any Smokoo bids remaining on their Smokoo account,” the company said.

BidFair CEO, Denzil Govender, said that they decided to acquire Smokoo to boost BidFair’s presence and grow its user base.

“We decided it would be the better move to take over Smokoo rather than doing a merger. Although we are not as recognized as Smokoo, we are leading the way in customer support and customer satisfaction,” said Govender.

According to Govender it would not have made sense to keep Smokoo alive as it “cannot offer any more options to their current users”.

“BidFair has a much more unique platform that allows us to introduce new concepts into online auctions,” said Govender. “Although the Smokoo name will soon fade away, all of its users were welcomed into BidFair.”

Former Smokoo marketing director, Thomas Pays, said that due to a confidential agreement he could not comment on the matter.

So, good and bad news for Smokoo fans today. Smokoo was an interesting penny auction site, though not heavily discussed in the general penny auction community, as they focused primarily on its South African customer base. The PennyBurners Team had an opportunity to interview both Thomas and Li, co-founders of Smokoo, on PennyTalkRadio in July 2011 and were always impressed by their quick communication and dedication to their customers. We wish them and the rest of the Smokoo Team well as they move on to new adventures.

We have not heard much about penny auction site, BidFair, as they are also primarily geared towards South African bidders. From their About Us:

BidFair was launched in 2010 by a group of tech savvy, marketing guru’s with a vision of making the online auction scene more exciting, rewarding and fair for the bidders! The company is based out of Durban, South Africa. With our staff having many years of experience in the online marketing, finance and computer science industries, we strongly believe we can deliver the best auction experience to our customers with the best promotions, service and integrity. We strive to keep our costs as low as possible to maximise the number of great deals on offer at BidFair.

If you were a Smokoo customer, please remember that you have 60 days to manually register a new account with BidFair in order to keep your bid credits. Please REGISTER by clicking here.

If you have experiences with BidFair and feedback to share, please join the PennyBurners Penny Auction Forum. It's FREE and EASY to join and we'd love to hear from you!

04 May 2012 Katie "Hijinks"

Penny Auctions - Smokoo

International Penny Auction, Smokoo.com, Gets It Right

Last month, we had the honor of interviewing Thomas and Li, co-founders of international penny auction site, Smokoo.com. (To listen to the PennyTalkRadio Podcast, please click: July 06, 2011).

We wanted to follow-up the fantastic interview with a more in-depth article on Smokoo, and with the help of Nic Latouf, we have some great information to share with penny auction bidders!

One of the goals at Smokoo.com, is to continuously dazzle their customers with mind-blowing auctions. Their most amazing auction to date was a Trip to the Edge of Space in a MiG Fighter Jet. The winner of the auction will be flown to Russia, Moscow where Smokoo will put the winner up in the Crowne Plaza for a day. Between some amazing site seeing and meals at some of Moscow’s top restaurants, the winner will take a first-class train ride to the town of Nizhny Novgorod, where they will be taken up to the edge of space in a MiG-31 fighter jet. It’s a trip that is nothing short of sensational! We have done our research and we couldn’t find another penny auction site that had an auction as breathtaking as a trip to the edge of space.

Smokoo is also pretty famous for selling cars, and not just any cars. Their first-ever car auction was for a Mercedes C180 CGI. They have sold the best Mercedes, the best BMW’s, and the cherry on the top was an auction for one of the fastest cars on the planet, a Nissan Skyline GT-R. The car is nicknamed “Godzilla” for a reason. It’s a real mean machine!

Another milestone for Smokoo is when they sold 5 cars in one month. Every Monday morning, they had a Kia Picanto on auction; plus they threw a BMW 520d and Harley Sporster into the mix!

Smokoo is very active in social media; especially on FaceBook. Here’s a cool story about how their “Facebookers” enjoy the Smokoo Fan Page: When Smokoo auctioned off the Harley Sportser, they decided to visit a neighboring city where the winner of the auction was based. They took the bike down personally for the handover. When they arrived in the city, they posted on FaceBook that the first Smokoolander (the name they give their FaceBook faithful) to introduce themselves would win 500 credits. Within minutes, the Smokoo Team had some people following them around the area, until one of the brave ones came up to the team and said, ‘Found you!’ It all happened within minutes of Smokoo posting the competition on their Fan Page. It was a lot of fun, and they were amazed at the power of social networking!

Smokoo runs competitions daily on FaceBook, and they also like to mix it up to keep the excitement levels high. One of the fun things they do is run mini-auctions on the Fan Page, where they ask people to say ‘Bid’ on the thread. The last person to say ‘Bid’ as a particular corresponding auction closes wins credits! Smokoo only allows three ‘bids’ to give everyone a fair chance and to illustrate the importance of patience and strategy when securing an auction, even though it is just a fun FaceBook auction.

Smokoo.com also goes to great lengths to have the one of the most transparent operations. When Smokoo started, they had a 100% Open Door Policy, where users who were new to penny auctions could pop by their offices and join them for a cup of coffee – and according to Thomas and Li, many did! Over and above that, Smokoo encouraged the winners of auctions to pick up their items at the office if they were in the area. Daily users would pick their stuff up from the offices and, subsequently, Smokoo has developed amazing relationships with many of them.

We have been very impressed with Smokoo, their Team, and their dedication to transparency, fair play, and stellar customer service. Have you bid at Smokoo? Share your experiences at the PennyBurners Penny Auction Forum!