Here's my story thus far- because I've blown $1000 & have nothing to show for it.
I started over Christmas break, which spans 3 weeks due to a sick child & school break. For at least 10 of those days, I spent about 6 hours surveying auctions, reading guidelines to the letter, researching closed auctions, what days & times a macbook or ipad sold for the least amount. I actually put tally marks on a calendar & wrote the winning times. I invested so much time into it. I blew $150. I realised later that you can see a gambler's (let's face it) profile when you click their name. Their bid history, items they were watching, items they'd won. You can also hide that info from the public, which I realised against a competitor who's only info was that he'd had an account since october.
I did more research, stuck with the times I'd agreed were best. Turns out, there is no real "best time"- I'm american military in italy, so I thought I had an advantage. Turns out 3am on the east coast means it's only midnight on the west coast, & I'm sure there are a lot of people who have figured out how to handle that problem (ie bidpaks, bidpaks, bidpaks). You can see the cost to the bidder, btw, when the auction is closed. There is a cost next to their bid amount- when I saw one guy had one a macbook with 1500 bids & his "bid cost" (apart from the "final winning cost") was under $5, I was incredulous but realised he bid on bidpaks
& won that way. So. They DO give a final cost to the bidder. I backed away from an auction that was on autopilot by a bidder called WHATEVER2, because I'd witnessed WHATEVER1 steamroll another auction- don't tell me that's a coincidence, that person is bidding on the same thing, bidpaks & ipads.
My big beef is with Skoreit not putting a cap on auctions. They make a ton of money, but buyer beware. Eventually people will see through that & the business will falter, but I guess that's the point- they're making profits while they can. Lowering the bid price doesn't help either because that just leads to more bids being placed & drives the "final auction price" up, which is how they lure people in.
So I bought $150 in bids & added them to my remaining 22 bids from december (I can't use promo codes, my phone number is italian). I watched a macbook for 3 hours & jumped in when the power bidders bidding agent quit, when the auction reached $67ish. I threw in 20 bids with the bid agent, hoping to scare off competition. I held back & watched how many pounced when my bid agent stopped. I watched for another hour. When I thought the time was right, I threw in some more. Looking at the closed auction history I can see it was a freak circumstance- that auction closed at the third highest price for a stinkin 11 inch macbook, at $155ish. I'm still sore because I watched for a sum total of 7 hours while one woman who actually paid for her bids blew over 5000 bids for nothing. She (Rosemare) went on a bidding war with EnergizerBunny- who also threw in at least 4500 bids (I stopped looking at his pop up profile when he dropped out, but he resurfaced when my streaks ended). At hour 5, it was looking in my favour- plus, I'd already invested $300 in bids & wanted that macbook. When I finally think I'm winning, around $120 (doesn't get that high too often), WHATEVER1 rolls in & just blasts me. I ended up buying more bids in hopes of not losing the auction & therefore losing all that money. That guy won with under 200 bids, & while I sure didn't invest 5000+ bids, I threw in about 800. I'm still pissed. If you see that auction now, it shows he won with under 200 bids, sure, but his "bid cost" was less than $10. If you paid for those bids, that would cost about $130. The next night I just watched. I followed another auction with high hopes (my husband is away for work & I can't imagine how he'll respond to "high honey I blew $700 & have nothing to show for it), and I have a lot of bids remaining- enough that I could actually win a macbook. Rosemare finally won, & good for her (unless it really is rigged)- the final price for a 13 inch macbook was $91.52. However, she used 3136 bids that cost her (supposedly, but an fyi for any real people bidding out there) $1885. 60, with the total cost to bidder being $1977. 12. She alone paid twice the value. Plus, that's 9152 bids, or $5,675 (even if people used bidpaks that they'd won, they still got paid for them). Minus $1000 for the macbook. That's $4675 in profit. Not many companies survive when their customers catch on that they're making a 500% profit. Honest suckers will drop out, the ones who bid just to turn the product for profit will win bidpaks for nothing, & they will bid with free bids. The only way this company can sustain is to capitalise on the suckers now, while they can. Unless they cap their auctions or come up with another scheme, it's a failure based business venture. Why it's even legal is beyond me, because the BBB should insist to capped auctions- that way, they still make a buttload of profit & keep business flowing. When I look at the auction that I was stupid for & got screwed over in, alongside others, with the final price at $155.57, that's 15,557 bids. Or $9,645.10 freaking mackbooks. 20 ipads. Think about it. $8,645 in profits, more than 800%. The winner, WHATEVER1, had won 8 of the 240 count bid paks, 2 of the 120 paks, and a 60 pak before that auction. That's 2,220 bids, & he bid 900 to get those, which gives him 1320 in free bids. That's why people get the screenname BIDS2BURN or NOTHINGTOLOSE. They make their own business off it. I'm ALL about getting a good deal- I've scored (& been screwed) on Ebay. But at least there you don't have to pay out BEFORE an auction starts. That's why Ebay has been around for so long. It works, & it's customer friendly to all customers & not just the lucky few (very few, on skoreit) who happen to win & don't have to deal with the guys who have endless bids (another screen name). It's also a major time investment, because the reason most people go on skoreit is to score a deal, not because they have money to burn. If that were the case, we'd all hop along to the Apple store & spend $2500 on a macbook pro.

My biggest gripe right now is that I was expecting to get an offer with skoreit overtime- supposedly, you can get an offer for the item you want minus the difference in the cost of the bids you put in, but fat chance of that happening. If that were the case, EnergizerBunny would be offered 5 FREE macbooks, & I could get one for under $500.
I still have a load of bids remaining, and I'm going to sock em into bidpaks- enough that I can eventually make up for the loss & "win" a stinkin macbook. All things considered, I invested a lot of time & money researching strategies when I could have just ordered the macbook for the same total cost, which I hope to recover in spite of the irrecoverable time lost. I'll just consider that a learning lesson.

Amanda-
Thanks a lot for this post. Much better then the normal comment-- "TOTAL SCAM!" when really they just don't understand the site. Buuuuut, do you think that the bidders like WHATEVER1 are bidding bots for the company? That's what I'm worried about
Thanks!

Why do the same people criticize people for low grades are these employee's or paid people the site sounds like cow pies.