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Oct
05
2008

Money to burn? Visit Swoopo

I came across the “auction” site swoopo.co.uk and promptly wasted an afternoon and a tenner on what some may describe as a scam. Swoopo offers users the chance to grab some amazing bargains, for example some lucky user got this EEE PC for £4. What’s not such a bargain for all the users that don’t win is Swoopo’s revenue model.

The premise behind the site is “pay to bid”, with each auction bid costing 50p. Unlike a conventional auction where you bid the amount you are willing to pay for an item, a Swoopo bid will only increase the current auction price by around 7p, and also increase the auction time by 10 - 20 seconds.

Speaking from my own experience the situation for most users will go something like this. You place a bid for the item you’d like in the last few seconds, this will increase the current price by a very small amount, and also increase the time left by 20 seconds, that’ll cost you 50p. This process will go on until either all bidders have ran out of credits and one lucky bidder wins, or the auction end date comes around - which seems to be 30 days in the future.

For the users Swoopo seems to be nothing more than a lottery. It can only ever be chance that dictates who wins and loses - that or an endless amount of bid credits (money). For Swoopo and the team behind it the site must be a gold mine. Here’s my breakdown of the XBOX 360 auction I was bidding on:

My Swoopo XBOX 360 Auction:

Auction start price:
£00.00
Auction end price:
£73.99
Each bid increments the price by:
£00.07
Each bid costs a user:
£00.50
Total bid revenue for Swoopo:
£528.50
Total auction revenue for Swoopo:
£602.49


So, just to explain my maths in-case I’ve got it wrong - I figure there were 1,057 bids (£73.99 / £0.07) each costing 50p, which amounts to a whopping £602.49 (£528.50 + £73.99) sale price for an XBOX 360!

Somebody at Swoopo is making a fortune out of this. To be fair to the company they are quite clear and upfront about how it works but I do feel that billing it as an auction site is still a little misleading. The site has already raised a few eyebrows, with quite a few people pointing out the pitfalls of the site.

Personally I’ll put this one down to an interesting but financially detrimental way to spend a few hours online. I’m a little annoyed that I fell for it but then again if you’d known my betfair history you’d have probably seen it coming.

What next?

18 Comments

  1. Amerina

    on 6 Nov 2008 at 2:01 am

    It’s funny, I usually check out things by doing the google check on them before signing up etc etc, but with Swoopo I didn’t. Why? There was an auction on a Wii that was at around £8 and seeing the other auctions that had ended at cheap prices, I thought why not? Though I wish I’d known the pitfalls before giving away my £10. :/ It didn’t quite click into my head that’s it’s not a true countdown auction, if you place a bid, the time increases by at least 10 seconds meaning someone else can swoop in with a bid (damn, hence the name). And it’s quite addictive. I’m currently watching a 100% off auction on an AppleMac, I’m not really looking for a new laptop, but it looks cute and sexy, and you only pay delivery (which is about £13 but they fail to mention you still pay for bids too).
    But, thanks to BidButlers, the time’s increased to 01:12:02. Oh and they fail to mention the exact same auction applies to its sister sites (such as America and Spain) too. So even if I stay up till 5am, there may be someone elsewhere bidding in Seattle for example bidding at 9pm. I only wish I’d read reviews and I want my money back now. :/

  2. Pete

    on 16 Jan 2009 at 6:27 pm

    people get upset because they think they can get a TV for 10 bucks, but that never happens on swoopo! if you just use common sense along with some 3rd party research on the site, you won’t lose all your money. just don’t waste your bids early and use sites like [LINK REMOVED] for the research and you’ll do WAY better.

  3. greguva

    on 17 Feb 2009 at 4:09 am

    Stay away from Swoopo!! I bid on a Canon camera a few weeks ago on Swoopo. As it was getting late, I created a BidButler (a device to place bids automatically for you up to a specified number of bids and a specified price). I authorized 200 bids, at 1 cent ber bid. My BidButler promptly bid all of the bids that I authorized, PLUS ANOTHER 20 BIDS! Not only that, but the bid price on the camera went up only about $1.80 - since the BidButler bid 220 times for me, the bid price should have gone up at least by $4.40 (my 220 bids plus the bids from the person(s) against whom I was ostensibly bidding). Not realizing what had happened, I authorized another 100 bids. This time, it used up all of 100 bids almost instantaneously, but the bid price went up only 1 cent.

    When I reported what had happened to Swoopo customer service (a misnomer if ever there was one), they basically said that everything went just peachy and it was too bad that I didn’t win.

    I don’t know if there is a deliberate attempt to defraud customers, or if their bidding algorithm is just seriously flawed, but I would not spend your hard-earned money on Swoopo.

  4. telemark

    on 27 Feb 2009 at 11:15 pm

    Just have a look at who is winning the products. Having studied the site for a number of days plus digging into to some of the winning bidders, It is clear that swoopo, computer programs or people bidding for swoopo are wining the items. Yes they let some through but a lot of items are won by the same name. After following one auction one bidder used at least 700 bids to win a camera. He’d already won the same model camera plus 8 other items, that could have been the tip of the iceberg of what he had supposed to have won. I saw one bidder, bid on eight different cameras in one go, the only reason is so to get the price up.

    An item on the uk site is the same item on the US site and all the European sites. So a £100 item is also $100 and €100, its a good job the Euro is almost the same as the pound.

    This site is a gambling site with all the cards stacked with the house because the house cheats!!!

    Stay away, if your not convinced watch the site for a few hours.

    Thanks

    AB

  5. gruici

    on 1 Mar 2009 at 1:55 am

    i have swoopo and madbid script > info gruici_bogdan@yahoo.com 180$/copy

  6. Mubsher

    on 10 Mar 2009 at 3:59 pm

    Hey everybody do not buy script from gruici_bogdan@yahoo.com he is big cheater he will not provide you script but will get yoru money and will not pay you back. i am already facing this

  7. steve

    on 13 Apr 2009 at 3:54 pm

    I Opened my site as i spent £350 on swoopo an got nothing to show for it. Did you know thay have got in there admin side ato-biders that will keep an aucton going till thay have covered ther cost. Thats why an aucton will jump from say 30sec left to go to over an 1hr. you can get a barging but will also be cheatet. say no to ato-biders thats the rip-off

  8. Seriously?!

    on 6 May 2009 at 8:06 am

    Mubsher must be Swoopo’s wet dream. A retard and his money…..

  9. john

    on 8 May 2009 at 2:32 pm

    I’ve used Swoopo in the past but there are so many using it now it is SO hard to win, bidding against people from other countries as well. Maybe there is auto bidders, i don’t know…. I found another one that is launching soon called doobids. I’d be surprised if anyone knows about it because I have not seen them advertising anywhere yet. They are getting around Facebook as a fan page but they seem a bit different from the others though because they have put extra features on it making the whole process of bidding slightly more transparent, users can upload pics so doesn’t look as much like a scam! UK company registered and VAT registered. Might be worth a punt for those that care.

  10. Vee

    on 13 May 2009 at 10:15 am

    Well after the reviews, i will stear clear.. :(
    Thought it was too good to be true…

  11. natalie

    on 18 May 2009 at 5:22 pm

    ive signed up with swoopo and was in 2 minds over whether or not to buy some bids. i did think it was a bit of a rip off that u have to pay bids, after reading this i think im gonna leave well alone. cheers guys! x

  12. thomas

    on 17 Aug 2009 at 4:46 pm

    Sites like Swoopo are more for fun than for people actually looking for a bargain. I suggest you look around at the other auction sites similar to Swoopo. Hasteno.com is a new one that I’ve been playing on and I’ve actually won a couple things. Playstation 3 games going for $.08 (2 bids!) and a Nintendo Wii going for $2.16 is ridiculous. Before you completely discount the idea, you should check them out.

  13. Katie

    on 16 Sep 2009 at 4:14 pm

    I’m actually new to the whole online shopping concept. I was looking at a variety of sites out there and have many concerns like most.

    After doing some research, I recently stumbled upon this new site, http://www.BIDZONE.com. Basic concept, everytime you place a “bid” on an item the product price actually REDUCES rather than increasing. The price per bid ONLY 50cents and the amount the price reduces 50cents. This is the first site I’ve seen do this!!

    If anyone else has heard of BidZone - comment below because I’d love to learn more!

  14. reza

    on 8 Oct 2009 at 3:24 am

    if anyone is not clear what happens in swoopo read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swoopo

  15. Heavybidder1

    on 24 Oct 2009 at 11:49 pm

    O.k Here is what me carzy(mentally). Everybody who plays(gambles) on Swoopo (atleast in the US and Canda can also use Rockybid.com) Yet there are a lot more users on Swoopo (based on Alexa ratings) when you have almost no chance to win. (rockybid has more than 50% of their items end up under $1. ) So whats the deal is rockybid legit? they do have 500 testimonials, pictures, videos, even gave away a car for $1.24.(Swoopo sold a car too but for like $4,000, I did not bid on that one) Or should I stick my dollars to Swoopo.? (I already played Swoopo, several times and and won one time (Nintendo wii control which I received within 2 weeks for winning; but I did spend about $200) Then again swoopo has more high end items. But again little chance of winning (at least with my strategy). (rockybid has about 6 a day(and another 30 smaller items)) I am willing to invest with a new and better strategy, another $500 of my hard earned money; I am looking for feedback. Do I go to Rockybid or Swoopo! thanks.

  16. evenly

    on 15 Nov 2009 at 10:53 pm

    Don’t bother with swoopo. You can earn your bids for free at http://www.freebidee.com/ and its much better anyway

  17. Jane Talks Tech!

    on 3 Jan 2010 at 7:52 pm

    [...] [...]

  18. mfurl

    on 11 May 2010 at 5:44 pm

    I cant vouch for the other sites, but I’ve won alot from http://www.bidstick.com

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