{"id":49159,"date":"2012-05-04T12:31:02","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T10:31:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=49159"},"modified":"2012-05-07T10:16:58","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T08:16:58","slug":"smokoo-shut-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/49159-smokoo-shut-down.html","title":{"rendered":"Smokoo shut down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Controversial penny auction website <a title=\"Smokoo\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/428837-Smokoo\">Smokoo<\/a> has stopped trading following an acquisition by Bidfair. <a title=\"Bidfair\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/428841-Bidfair\">Bidfair<\/a> offers similar services to Smokoo in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Smokoo announced on its website that it has been \u201cacquired by bidfair and has ceased trading\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSmokoo customers may access Bidfair Site at www.bidfair.co.za,\u201d the Smokoo announcement states.<\/p>\n<p>According to Smokoo their customers are required to manually register a new account with Bidfair within 60 days to keep their credits.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce 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,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n<p>Bidfair CEO <a title=\"Denzil Govender\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/428843-Denzil-Govender\">Denzil Govender<\/a> said that they decided to acquire Smokoo to boost Bidfair\u2019s presence and grow its user base.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe 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,\u201d said Govender.<\/p>\n<p>According to Govender it would not have made sense to keep Smokoo alive as it \u201ccannot offer any more options to their current users\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBidFair has a much more unique platform that allows us to introduce new concepts into online auctions,\u201d said Govender. \u201cAlthough the Smokoo name will soon fade away, all of its users were welcomed into BidFair.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Former Smokoo marketing director Thomas Pays said that due to a confidential agreement he could not comment on the matter.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Smokoo, penny-auctions and Consumer Protection Regulations\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/18021-smokoo-penny-auctions-and-consumer-protection-regulations.html\"><strong>Smokoo, penny-auctions and Consumer Protection Regulations<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Smokoo may become illegal gambling: DTI\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/18445-smokoo-may-become-illegal-gambling-dti.html\"><strong>Smokoo may become illegal gambling: DTI<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Controversial penny auction website Smokoo has been shut down following an acquisition by Bidfair<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[11309,11313,35,11307,11311],"class_list":["post-49159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-bidfair","tag-denzil-govender","tag-headline","tag-smokoo","tag-thomas-pays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49159"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49243,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49159\/revisions\/49243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}