Flookle Rip Off

CHR15

Complete Jokers!!!

The TV Companies have been fined heavily for the phone-in scams.

People phoning in (costing £1 a call) to enter a competition where the winner has aleady been selected.
The victims have been paying to enter a competition in which THERE IS ZERO CHANCE OF WINNING

The authorites have been rightly clamping down on these scams

Doesn't this sound remarkably similar to paying 50p to enter each bid when the reserve hasn't been reached SO THERE IS ZERO CHANCE OF WINNING??

This scam is completely different to a Reserve on an auction site (e.g Ebay) because until the reserve is met it doesn't cost the bidder a penny.

gillez

flookle wrote: »

Using the GHD4's as an example,
Reserve £22
Bid Value £0.08
Number of bids required 275
Amount generated from Bids (at 0.50p each) = £137.50
- Cost of GHD4 (Approx £100) = 37.50
- Shipping (£5- £10, £7.50 say) = £30.00

Total profit (excluding VAT liability) =£30, and that’s a generous estimate, not taking into account price of Premises rental, rates, power, phone, internet, equipment rental, wages etc. hopefully the site will continue to grow and we will review our profit margins as more products shift, to the point that no reserve is required, and no final payment either. As mentioned several times now, every product will sell; it’s just a matter of time until they reach that point.

This is your total profit as long as each item reaches the reserve and not a penny higher.

The item is listed until the reserve is met. At this point you will have 275 bids, and probably a similar number of bidders (the main benefit of bidding before the reserve seems to be to get yourself notified when it's met, so I can't see why bidders will bid more than once). You then email them and they have at least an hour (of course the time keeps growing) to place many more bids in the hope that they will be the last one. Therefore I think it will be highly unlikely that you will get enough bids to meet the reserve but no more after that. If you get enough bids to meet the reserve, I think your profit will end up being much more than £30. Of course if the reserve never met, you don't have to give away anything, but still keep the money from the bids already placed, so make even greater profit.

I don't think anyone on this site objects to people making an honest profit. But we (I'm speaking collectively here) do object to people paying money with no chance of winning, as all bidders will do before the reserve is met. I also object to you telling us you're only making £30 profit from a £100 item when we all know it will be much greater than that.

The other big objection is bidders paying 50p to add 8p to the current price. Now I know that's not what you're really doing (as you said before, it could just as easily be a number of bids) but that's what it looks like. The actual reserve price, and the amount that each bid adds is arbitrary - therefore why don't you make the reserve price higher (say, £137.50 in your example above) and make the 50p bet add 50p to the item? Obviously the answer is because you want to make it look like the item only costs £22. Who's going to take a second glance if the price says £137.50?

I found your site by doing a search on google for an iPod Classic 160GB. flookle was one of the cheapest at £160. I'm not quite sure where that price comes from though, as on your site the reserve price is £46. This amounts to 575 bids, or a minimum of £287.50 (and 575 people bidding once the reserve price is met). Quite a lot more than the £46 it looked like at first glance. And who knows where that £160 price came from?

You also haven't answered the OPs question about why she can't get the remainder of her original £25 back. I would be interested in the answer to this.

I didn't bid on the iPod by the way.

flookle

As mentioned in the previous post we will be constantly reviewing the profits, the auctions that have been won so far have always been within a small # of bids after the reserve has been met, so a flurry of activity after the item has ended is not guaranteed. If we regularly get a dependable amount of activity when an item ends then we will reduce reserves, and this should be more likely if more single bids are placed.

And yes a reserve based on x * 0.08 rather than x * 0.50 looks better.

OP never contacted us.

These are examples of the 2 types of auctions, the sealed bid being pretty self explanatory.





When you click on the image or the "Place Bid" button on the Standard auction you are taken to the screen below





When you sign up You have the following screens





And at the bottom of that page




Despite the points raised and re raised, i.e. that we actually show you how much money we want to make, rather than running bots like other sites so you just THINK you can get it for nothing, we are trying to run a profitable but Fair business, we may not get it right straight away, and changes may be required to get it exactly how it should be. We do give the users as much information as possible about what we are doing.

kenef, please email us directly if you still have any queries.

Rob
www.flookle.co.uk

Former_MSE_Andrea

Hi everyone

This is an interesting one. We're going to give flookle permission to post on this thread only so that he can answer site users' questions.

However, flookle, before you continue if you could have a look at the forum rules, the site's terms and conditions and make sure you don't include your website address in any more of your posts that would be appreciated.

Thanks for your help

Andrea

omen666

jo_message wrote: »

I lost my some of credit.....

Stay away or you will lose more

Justicia

Well RobFlookie,

Thank you for visiting and coming here to respond. I have considered your offer for investment. I've read your replies here on this very site and have taken some time to have a look at the website of Flookie itself.

After careful consideration, my only response can be; that it's not a viable business, not something for me to invest in and so...

"...I'm out!"

Grandma_Nell

Flookle is still trading even after all the complaints. I "won" a childs scooter for one of my grandaughters. That was at the begining of this year. I never received the item. I emailed them time and time again to no avail. So....I took my claim to Paypal, initially as a dispute, but when Flookle did not respond I escalated the dispute into a claim.

Paypal investigated and found in my favour but were unable to refund my money as Flookle had 'no funds in their account'. Now, I know that Paypal can take money directly from my bank to pay my bills - why can they not from Flookles account - unless possible or pehaps Flookle are very cleverly moving money about very quickly - or by automated transfers.

If Paypal has found in my favour and they have investigated why are they still affiliated and serving Flookle - surely Paypal must see if they withdraw their service, Flookle could not operate.

Perhaps if all those people who have been cheated in one way or another by Flookle were to take out a dispute in the Paypal "Resolution Centre" there may be sufficient evidence collected of widespread non-receipt of items paid for, as with my case, or of other possible problems which all you out there have experienced.

Help to stop this unfair practice

Grandma Nell