There has been some rumbling about an auction site called Swoopo, suggesting that it is either money-making scheme on the part of the German parent company, formerly Telebid, or a new way to get gadgets cheap. Interestingly, it could be both. The auction is considerably different than other sites – EBay included. It works like this, if I understand it correctly: you “buy” blocks of bids for $1 each. Each bid costs $1 and increases the price by 15 cents and the auction time increases to 20 seconds in the last 20 seconds – if the auction time is 10 seconds when you bid, 10 seconds are added to the time. When the clock runs out the final bidder pays the auction price which is essentially the “number of bids” they entered, say 200 at $200, and the final price, say $400 for a total of $600.
While I’m totally down with saving money, I think there is a fatal flaw here for the consumer. Say I spend $500 in bids and at the last minute I’m sniped by a final bidder. Bloops! That $500 is gone and someone has your product for super cheap. The opportunity for abuse is rife here although Swoopo does bill itself as a “shopping entertainment” site and not really a formal auction house. Sadly, it’s cold comfort for those who lose.
Presumably that lost $500 goes towards buying more product for the site and increasing Swoopo’s revenue. They’re reporting about 50,000 users in the US right now so chances are strong that you’ll get to win something of interest. There are also “BidButlers” who can watch the bidding for you and bid automatically, further confusing the invisible hand of the market. Again, we all know what they say about fools and their money.
It’s gonna take them at least a good 10 years before they can compete with eBay..lol
I’m late to this party, but I just had a look at Swoopo. Based on what I see, if the bids are all real, it isn’t unrealistic to assume this site is generating billions in revenue already.
I have no doubts that they are generating billions of dollars in not revenue but actual profit. If you consider their penny auctions and the fact that it cost the bidder .75 cents to bid each time and the item begins at .01 cents and on an average sales for no less than $100, some times more some times less, but averaging it to $100, then break it down…100 cents in a dollar so that makes it 10,000 bids times .75 cents equals $7,500 for that one item that they sold for $100. I would say that they are making a huge profit and I can’t wait for some attorney to catch on and make a class action suit against them.
This is a SCAM. although might be technically legal (i certainly hope not), this site is indecent and exploits consumers with a ruse. The optimal bid strategy is to *NEVER* make a single bid. Once committed to the bidding process, one should theoretically never stop bidding. I sincerely hope some authorities are looking into their business model and find a way to shut them down.
It’s not as bad as Kevin F makes it out to be. There is no reason not to stop bidding, since it’s not like a dollar auction where second place has to pay their bid and get nothing. Investments in losing bids are “sunk capital” – gone, useless, unimportant to the decision to continue.
That being said, many people lack the self control not to continue throwing money at something even after it has clearly become a losing proposition.
I just tryed out the site last week…. bought 30 bids for $22.75
Placed 9 bids on a TomTom 930T and won it for $3.69 which retails at $550
So now iam just waiting to see if it really shows up
I agree with both d00d and Dozer1jr. if you are smart and strategic you have a much greater chance of getting a great deal. However most people who bid don’t have self control and cant deal with the fact they already blew 20 buck and just have to be ok with it; so they go on to lose 50 more and still not win. Its the same way casinos make money, except here i believe the odds are different because there is no equal chance of winning with each bid. And eventually the bid price and the money you have spent on the bids is far more than the item costs. there is a lot more room for chance and random winning but at the same time the odds of you actually winning with a great deal of savings is really low. Like anyone who plays scratch off tickets, unless you start playing and win big you have prob spent way more over the years then you have ever won, which some exception. The odds are not in your favor but the illusion is there and that will get suckers every time, especially if they have good luck in there first couple tries.
The owner of this site is a genius and an a$$hole because they’re is pretty much no way to not make money and whoever wins gets a deal sometimes but all the people who didn’t win contributed way more than the product was worth. same as all the losers that pay for the the large prize winner on scratch off. no matter how much you win the creator makes 500% more than that and that’s why its great..for the inventor.
For all of you that think this site is a scam, its not. I win all the time but i have a strategy. and some times that strategy means i lose money and sometimes i miss out on great deals. I never have bid more than 50 bids on any given product and i dont bid on anything worth less than $600. I also only bid on things that are between 40 & 50 % of their retail value. If it goes out of that range i fold my hand unless I sense a reason not too. This also makes it so i miss some really good deals but like winning the lotto those are very low wins are very rare and few and far between.
Good luck to all.
i won apple laptop foe $4.26 and i resive it in a week,but its realy hard 2 win. tell the true i spend easy $900 allready on other bids just becarfull people,its worse then las vegas.
anybody that buys bids and then tries to win needs a brain transplant
i found an item for sale on ebay for £2.00 i must say the best £2.00 i ever spent
they email you sites that you can go into the admin side known as the back end
and you can see for your self how easey it is for them to rip you off
have a look under PAY TO BID AUCTIONS or item # 230341134113 or
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230341134113&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fshop.ebay.co.uk%3A80%2F230341134113%3F_from%3DR40%26_trksid%3Dp2773.m38.l1313%26_nkw%3D230341134113%26_sacat%3DSee-All-Categories%26_naf%3D1%26_fvi%3D1&_rdc=1
I think they have past Ebay, it’s a different concept. if you want to learn about them go to Pennyauctionwatch.com you will find out who the scammers are.
Its more like Gambling to me.. I tried this a month or two back.. deposited £10 ($20) and only to find me loose it! Its more like this 50 people gamble… 49 loose their money and 1 wins it.. and yea he spends 10 to 25% of product price while the rest is compensated by remaining 49 users and remaining is profit/revenue for Swoopo (previously TeleBids).
Now isn’t that a Gambling or they still call this Gaming? I avoided it later… you only get addicted in loosing more money! I would rather hand around Best/Hot Deals Forums & Cash Back Sites to buy gadgets or gizmos for cheap – Safer Bet!
Its just opinion… !! But I avoided it completely.. :)
It’s kinda like the lottery. They take all your money, for a cheap price, and then give it to the winner, with a percentage going to Swoopo. However, in Swoopo, it’s even harder than the lottery, in my opinion.
It’s not about competing with ebay. It’s about big cash for the owner of this site. How do you know that the people winning stuff there are real? And even if they are, the site still makes a lot of money. This phenomena is based on “one dollar auction” psychology and in the long term, the only winner is swoopo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction
sounds like gambling to me
Sounds like a sucker’s game.
The site is pure genius and probably a money maker. My favorite is the chance to “buy” 300 more bids…though they give them to you for free. Their Fixed Price Auctions are genius as well…no matter how high the bidding goes, you still only pay $98 for a 37″-40″ LCD TV worth $1200-$1999 or more…depending on the auction. So, there is no real risk to bidding higher. Sure, you pay $1 per bid, but if you throw out 200 bids, you still get the TV for $98, saving you about $800.
I did some calculations on a couple of bids…a TV bid up to about $1,200..at 15 cent increase per bid, that’s 8,000 bids. You can do the math…they made $8,098 (bids+fixed auction price), for a TV that cost them MAYBE $1,000 to buy wholesale. The bids are similar, but costs the winner nothing but their bids…one recently “sold” for $256.35, 1,569 bids…so $1,569.00 for…you guessed it…300 more bids to use against other people to make them spend more as well….
The number of bids you see there is for the winner only. It does not show the other 100 or so bidders or more that each placed their own 20-30 bids each as well. The company is making an absolute killing. I bougt $37.50 and lost it all in two days of trying to win the 50 and 300 bid packs. It’s absolutely a gamble. Whats really scary is to think maybe the “bidders” are employees of swoopo bumping up the bids or some computer system that generates different user names.
Actually, you can figure out exactly how many bids are made from just looking at the total price, and the new PENNY auctions are ridiculous. I watched an item go for around $750.00, which is 75,000 bids, at the new $0.75 per bid price how much is Swoopo making on this $2000.00 ATV??? You take the 75,000 bids times $0.75 per bid plus the $750.00 final price minus the $2,000.00 value (Although I bet Swoopo paid less for the ATV) and you get a $55,000.00 in Swoopo’s pocket pure profit after all is said an done. The should ship the item free at that but don’t, the bidder has to pay shipping too. Now how is this LEGAL again??? Should it be??? I personally think that the FTC needs to launch a major investigation into these people and shut them down in the US!!! We are literally throwing our money over seas to Germany with this Gay site!!! That is great for our struggling economy right not….
If you think about it, this is where the real genius comes in. The company makes a profit for keeping the business running and you get a $2,000 TV for $750.00. It’s a win win situation for everyone. If you think about it, every big business makes a ton off of almost nothing. Take Nike and Adidas for example. Those shoes probably cost a total of $35-$40 to make and shit here. Those same shoes are marked up at sometimes over 200%! You can’t get mad at a company for making money. That’s why they are in business. They just found a way for you to profit off the products as well.
There are so many stewpid people on techcrunch who comment as if they understand game theory. Any business is a gamble. People put in fixed amount of money hoping to make fixed amount plus some. To call this gambling is correct but to call this gambling as oppose to another kind of business is incorrect.
The entire economy is based on a game. I once knew a small retailer who bet that more people will buy supersoaker. So he bought up as many supersoaker as possible. He didn’t realize that a big supersoaker shipment is coming the next from a different wholesaler. So when he went to sell the supersoaker at 500% its cost, he ended selling none because another retailer who bought the supersoaker cheaper price him out.
something is wrong when bid is much much higher than the advt price- http://www.swoopo.com/auction/sony-vaio-vgn-fw170j-h-16-4-core-2-duo-n/101046.html
If you notice, when products sell for more than the recommended retail price this is because its a 100% off auction, click on the little banner where the 100% box is ticked and it will explain all.
If its 100% then you will only pay delivery only, so forget the final price.
I’m from the UK and ive used Telebid for a couple of months and already I have won a Sony PS3 for £52, ok i spent over £60 in bids, not only on the item i won but another PS3 i didnt win.
So yes it seems like a scam but people like me do win, its a bit of luck along with having some balls and being sneaky i suppose.
A friend of mine in one day picked up 2 Nintendo Wii’s for £30 and around £40, yes he might of finally paid more with bids but still a big saving.
If you do the calculations its obvious that Swoopo are doing very well and making lots of money but isnt that what its all about with a business, I’m not fussed because its worked for me.
There’s no luck involved in this at all. If you’re determined to become the winning bidder you will be — as long as you keep placing higher bids than anyone else.
whats about some stuff goes over price? its hard 2 win,i think its just your luck that in end u gone have more $
ebay killer?
This makes perfect sense. I did this in an economics class once. The prof. told us he was going to sell $1 and make money. Rules being that the first (winner) and second (loser) place people must pay. Therefore as soon as the price was over $0.50 he made money because he would get the winners money and the second place persons money.
Anyway, the same thing applies here. If you have already sunk $400 into bids and you are out bid even if the product costs $500 you are willing to bid way more because otherwise your $400 gets you nothing. So you end up paying $700 for $500 worth of stuff so you don’t feel like the $400 you already had in was a total loss.
Back the the economics prof. He said that in once class he made almost $20 because people didn’t want to just lose. They would rather win at a higher cost. Seems strange, but it sure is easy to get caught up in the moment.
@David
– Yes this is classic irrational bidding behavior. The only problem here is that it only works once. In other words, your economics professor was able to do this once in class to make a point about how irrational people are, but I bet he wasnt able to convince the same two bidders to do it again and again.
In the short run, this is interesting. In the long run, these guys will have a hard time attracting a repeat audience — becuase for every ‘winner’ there will be at least 1 ‘loser’ (and probably a lot more losers, ie 20:1). Most of those losers will not repeat their waste of cash over and over again ad infinitum. So they will be constantly searching for new users.
This is what makes this closer to a scam than a real business — they dont care about repeat business at all in their model. Its a one time hit and then a big FU to all the losers. I totally think this is an interesting study on humanity, but it isnt a viable long term business.
Brushfire
@Brushfire…
1 Correction to your post…
“but I bet he wasnt able to convince the same two bidders to do it again and again.”
He will most likely not be able to convince 1 (the loser) to bid again… But then again, how many times a day/week/month do people loose the lottery, play card games, etc and loose and continue to play?
With this, you at least have control over it.
I do not care what you say, this is not good for the American economy right now, it needs to be shut down. Brushfire, you are must be one of those idiots who actually play at this site…. Glad to see you have money to piss away on senseless bids when 95% of the rest of the country doesn’t so think about it. Is it really worth that???
Why are you attacking Brushfire? he dind’t say he approved of it at all, he was only commenting on the fact that it is closer to a scam than a real business, for the reasons he so elocuently stated.
It’s a genuine company – I noticed the name change a little while back which seemed odd and a little concerning. Looking at it though I think it is just a name change as the main German company behind is still the same. If you visit telebid.com you’re taken to a different Swoopo site with all the original Telebid details.
Personally I think Telebid/Swoopo is too addictive and too misleading but it does seem to have had a fair share of success making many times the cost of the prizes and even making fortunes on auctioning their own free-bid vouchers (why anyone would personally pay more money than a voucher’s ‘worth’ is beyond me and highlights how dangerously addictive this is)!!
In a pre-emptive pot, kettle, black, strike I’d like to clarify Raffle.it. Raffle.it is also based on a game of skill and does have one winner for each raffle, I guess we’d call it entertainment shopping too. BUT we stipulate from the start exactly how many tickets are available, at what price, and ensure that there is some form of reward that if used, is worth more than a raffle’s ticket cost for everyone that takes part. Raffle.it is on course to be a fully blown marketplace supporting people struggling to sell their stuff, schools crying out for additional equipment, charities and businesses.
I think I’m going to give it a try – the automatic bidder though is dangerous and I think is there to make them more money. It’s almost like a lottery, but with some control. I think if you’re dedicated and fast enough, you can probably snatch something up – like one of those snazzy little eee pcs. :)
Ooops i posted this earlier but not in the place i should of.
If you notice, when products sell for more than the recommended retail price this is because its a 100% off auction, click on the little banner where the 100% box is ticked and it will explain all.
If its 100% then you will only pay delivery only, so forget the final price.
I’m from the UK and ive used Telebid for a couple of months and already I have won a Sony PS3 for £52, ok i spent over £60 in bids, not only on the item i won but another PS3 i didnt win.
So yes it seems like a scam but people like me do win, its a bit of luck along with having some balls and being sneaky i suppose.
A friend of mine in one day picked up 2 Nintendo Wii’s for £30 and around £40, yes he might of finally paid more with bids but still a big saving.
If you do the calculations its obvious that Swoopo are doing very well and making lots of money but isnt that what its all about with a business, I’m not fussed because its worked for me.
Anyway, I like this site, its different and fun plus if you have a good go at it you can do ok, but dont expect to win on 10 seconds when youve only just started and only spend a 5 or 10 $/£ or €, it wont happen.
Actually, this is very similar to a common scheme used in Germany for charity auctions — I remember my high school using it to auction off some items. If I remember correctly this is called an American auction (”Amerikanische Versteigerung”) in Germany — not sure if it is popular in the US. The attraction is of course that if you are lucky you can win a lot with a single small bid, and so it tends to bring in more money for the charity while providing some entertainment. So it is really a cross between an auction and a raffle, or an auction and a poker game.
However, I have not seen this in a for-profit setting and I think this is a bit problematic. I mean, can I run a casino without permits if I pretend it is an auction that involves poker cards as part of the mechanism? Doing this online for charity would be great though.
I think that’s fine… If its a raffle/lottery/gambling scheme then they need to label it as such. Otherwise, its problematic not just from a legal standpoint (at least in the US) but also from a customer standpoint… I dont want to gamble with money unless it is obvious that I am doing so. Usually ordering electronics is not a gamble. If they are clear about what it is they are doing, then I think its all good.
This is a highly dubious business model. Who can control whether the other “bidders” a real or just faked by a computer? The whole thing has nothing to do with ‘buying’ it’s pure gambling – and since you cannot control the outcome of the game it’s not a skill game but a game of chance. Unfortunately, German Start-ups really seem to love such shady business ideas. I know a couple of similar services that I’m not going to mention here – every user becomes a loser.
It’s feels like that money scam when someone askes you for change of 40 in 10s and 5s, then confuses you into giving them more than 40.
Surprisingly I can see their ad (via Google AdSense) on this blog! – http://i34.tinypic.com/jj00mp.png !! Hmmmm ?
I’m not a programmer by any means, but it seems to me a service like this would be pretty easy to exploit with a script…
This site is terrible. I tried it out and it took my money and left me with nothing. I did find another site, 1/2 woot and 1/2 ebay that had some good deals. I got me a ps3 for a lot less than I found it on eBay. Just thought I pass it along. http://www.cowboom.com
***Disclosure – I am the CEO of Swoopo***
Your article has a couple of incorrect assumptions and conclusions.
Like a real auction, bidding will continue until there are no more bids. When someone places a bid, the time is extended to allow for all interested bidders to get in their bids. Imagine an auctioneer standing in the front of a room, saying, “going once, going twice,..” If anyone bids, at this point, the auctioneer will extend the time for bidding to all of the bidders. So, you cannot be sniped.
Auctions for high value items can be live for a longer period of time. We have hence developed a bidding agent called “BidButler” that places bids on our users’ behalf when they cannot be online. Additionally, we are showing the bidding history of the last 10 bids clearly indicating if the bids were placed by the BidButler or not (shown on site as SingleBid).
Any of the money received from bids will first go towards paying for the product that is being auctioned. If there is a surplus of money from one auction, the remainder will be put toward any auctions where Swoopo does not cover the costs of the products in an auction. The latter group making up about 70% of all auctions.
And, as a note, all of our auctions are for brand new, factory sealed, factory warranted items. We are currently shipping items totaling about $1.5 million to our winners every month. Needless to say that all bids are placed by real users. Swoopo cannot influence any auction after it has begun.
Interesting – I hadn’t thought of that, that perhaps the extra money from one auction covers a below-market price on another. Sounds like you have to have some faith in human nature (or psychology) to always provide bidding behavior in patterns expected to create a profit margin.
I don’t understand somethings, like if you are biding in a 10 sec auction and sudenly becomes a 30′ or 1 hour and half. Why is that if not to confuse and kill the biders that are waiting for ours? I don’t feel like being 6 hours sitting waiting for the think to go down to seconds and then back to hours… That’s really anoying and for that reason i’ve tried my first 10 euros and didn’t buy more. (i actually have 3 bids left but what’s the point, really?)
Since CEO Gunnar is reading these posts – I would ask how he is getting around strict gambling laws in usa?
USA State and Federal laws provide for severe criminal penalties.
You can verbally engineer this to mean whatever will make you feel better but bottom line – it is nothing more than thinly veiled raffle / lottery. And the “skill” requirement doesn’t fly under US laws.
Seems your company has legs and some reputable VC backing – I can’t believe you would be so stupid as to launch in the USA without first considering gambling laws that can bring down your entire company and put you in a situation where you are picking up soap for a living.
The only real winner on Swoopo’s website is Swoopo. LOL!! Total gambling scam. People can easily lose $50-$500 on just a few auctions and get nothing in return. If they are going to keep it at $1 bid, they should return 90% of the money back into the bidders acount for the people who LOSE. That way Swoopo still makes a nice profit, but the loses aren’t BIG loser and get discouraged on bidding. I’ll stick with EBAY.com, thank you very much. I can get most of my gaming goodies on EBay for %10-$50 saying and I don’t have to “PAY ANYTHING” to make a bid. Swoopo.com is a German site, so why is this being advertised in America? What a ripoff. Check out the website if you want a good laugh.
@David,
What you described is called gambling. LOL!! People in Vegas do that all the time. They will see that they’ve losed $100, but don’t want to leave a loser, so they spend more money to win what they losed. Same thing is happening here. People are bidding on products they want to win, but then don’t want to lose what they’ve spent, so they spend more to try and win the product that’s worth their cash. No difference, as sometimes you will win all your money back and some times you won’t. With Swoopo, the chances of you getting your money back is slim, unless you win the product and it’s less then the amount of your bids and the final price. Like gambling at a craps, blackjack, roulette or poker table, there are ALWAYS LOSERS. With Swoopo.com gambling con auction site, there will always be a lot of losers. The only true winner is SWOOPO.com.
@Ken,
CEO Gunnar lives in Germany, that’s how he gets around U.S. State and Federal laws. The site it hosted out of Germany. It’s still a scam to me. What can happen and probably will, is the government will have the site shut down permanently. Even though they say the lose money on 70% of the good and make profit on 30%, I honestly don’t believe that.
I’ve been watching their auctions all day and I saw a $229.00 IPod sell for $66.75 which cost bidders $445. So Swoopo made $511.75 – $229.00 = $282.75 off the Ipod. That’s almost double what the product costed. How many did the people who didn’t win lose? A lot. With EBay there is ONE clear winner and no real losers. If you lose on EBay, you just go to the next auction. You don’t have to worry about losing $20-$500 and seeing nothing in return. Good luck to the people who use this website. Supposely they have about 50,000 members. I registered and went to make a bid and found out you had to “Pay For Bids” and I said, “No way!!”. What a joke.
Beware USA bidders – if you are bidding on a laptop auction;
your bids are sometimes being used to compete against Europeans bidding for a DIFFERENT item but under the same Auction ID. Two different laptops, different specs but using same auction ID and combining the bidders to compete against each other and push up the price.
Check this out – if you open up two windows on your screen:
swoopo.com (USA) and compare with swoopo.co.uk (UK). Seem to be same auctions / different currency BUT:
Check out the laptops and you will see two different lots under the same ID – double the amount of interested bidders – only one laptop issued at auction end = FRAUD
Further to above post, check out these two auctions that were running – two different laptops were being auctioned and the bidders were being combined;
http://www.swoopo.com/auction/sony-vaio-vgn-fw140e-16-4-core2duo-vista/104131.html
http://www.swoopo.co.uk/auction/acer-aspire-8920g-18-4-core-2-duo-notebo/104131.html
Two laptops auctioned under one ID – twice the number of interested bidders from different countries forcing up the bids placed. Were 2 laptops given? NO! What did the winning bidder “mask001″ receive? A SONY VAIO 16.4″ and an ACER 18.4″ ???
Or was only one item given???????? FRAUD BIGTIME
If he was bidding in the UK he won an acer aspire, if he won in the US he won a sony vaio. Where is the fraud in this case?
@Mike e boy:
LULZ
Under Help, Delivery & Shipping they have this:
“Substitute items
On rare occasions we are no longer able to source the specific item detailed in the auction. When this happens, we will contact you and offer to send you an equivalent item of at least equal value. Many of the products we sell are high-technology items that have a short life-cycle, so often this will mean an upgrade to the newer version of the item.”
NICE SCAM! SCAM! SCAM! SCAM! SCAM! SCAM! SCAM! SCAM! SCAM!
@Vinay
http://i34.tinypic.com/jj00mp.png
MORE LULZ
@Gunnar Piening
EPIC LULZ
I don’t know about in the US, but here in the UK SwOOpo has been going for a while. Formerly known as Telebid, nothing has changed just the name, maybe they were trying to avoid the stigma attached them.
Anyway, there is a new site starting up over here, I think its UK only, but it sounds like they are on the right track.
Its called Price Plummet and they have a page up at the moment giving some info and a prize draw for a ps3.
It launches in December and the items start at half price or something, and you bid the price down. Also there are multiple game types and they have features which can enable you to use skill to win.
If you can use skill then I think I will be giving it a go.
anyway check them out http://www.priceplummet.com
This site is awesome and is NOT A SCAM!
Go and check it out! You will get the best price for your dollar!
kcbidz is not a scam but swoopo is a scam
Nice tool for Swoopo.
http://www.wikiwif.de/bidwatcher.php
I think these guys are making a lot out of the “auctions”. Whilst there will invariably be one winner who gets a bargain all the others will end up getting burned.
I did a breakdown of an XBOX 360 auction I participated in, seems they made around £600 from it!
I am retired and on a fixed income and tried to win my granddaughter a Wii setup. I did not realize that Swoopo kept all your bid monies and when i lost the bid at $100 for a Wii,
I was shocked to see that the whole sum was gone,just gone! I immediately wrote an email explaining that i apparently did not
understand that they totally kept the $100 and asked to be contacted about this since it was all i had and now can’t bid anywhere.
For all they brag about, they won’t even answer an email , and i have sent one two days in a row. I unknowingly made a bad move and you would think they would respect that or atleast
contact me about it. Call me stupid but i can’t read that well anymore.
I guess if i hear nothing i will have to report this event to the BBB and all the blogs i can reach. Do they really want this? Or maybe they just don’t care.
Thanks for listening
C Kozlowski
kcbidz is the best. Not a scam like swoopo
kcbidz is much better than swoopo. You will never pay more than retail price even you spend $50 in an auction.
for example: KCBIDZ auction an iPhone 3G unlocked for $7.68.
You need to bid between $0.01 and $7.68.
Let’s sat that you invested $50 in this auction and
your winning bid is $1.23. You pay for an iPhone 3G
unlocked $50 + $1.23 = $51.23. Shipping is Free!
So for a retail price of $699.99 you pay $51.23.
YOU SAVE $648.76 that means 93%.
So go and check out www kcbidz com and for sure you will enjoy this website.
kcbidz is much better than swoopo. You will never pay more than retail price even you spend $50 in an auction.
for example: KCBIDZ auction an iPhone 3G unlocked for $7.68.
You need to bid between $0.01 and $7.68.
Let’s sat that you invested $50 in this auction and
your winning bid is $1.23. You pay for an iPhone 3G
unlocked $50 + $1.23 = $51.23. Shipping is Free!
So for a retail price of $699.99 you pay $51.23.
YOU SAVE $648.76 that means 93%.
KCBIDZ auction ?i am going to buy a iphone.that really a good deal.is it ture?appriciate for your answer.
Just google for: swoopo lottery
http://www.google.com/search?q=swoopo+lottery
-> 2000 search results
or: swoopo lottery scam
http://www.google.com/search?q=swoopo+scam
-> 3600 search results
I was a bidder for 6 month. My recommendation: Stay far away.
6 months? And then you tell people to stay away? How were months 1-5 that you hung around and bid??
It’s not even gambling cause even in gambling you have a chance to win these prizes. And as more people see the site and join (give your thanks to google ad) and all bid at the same time. You’ll never win. Since there physically are no close out times so you can’t snipe it either because of their system to increase time. And you have to buy your ‘chips’ and it doesnt come back after a bid so you can literally put $1000 and never see that money again. But you get the sense of enjoyment from ‘bidding’ every 5 seconds at the last second trying to outbid 5 people at the same time. Thus making the clock, infinite. Only if some disaster hits your fellow bidders, will you win. Like lightning strikes all their homes and their pcs fry.
I wouldn’t call it a scam or gambling really.
Some people say it’s gambling because there’s no skill involved. On the surface that may seem true but I bet you if someone were to study the auction tendencies for 2 weeks to a month to get an idea of what the average ending price is for an item then started bidding only when the cost got very near that average. While watching the site upon reading this article I saw 3 watches go between the $7-$12 range, looking at the ended auctions that seems pretty usual. I got my credit card out, bought some bids, waited for a watch to hit $8 then jumped into the action only using my bids when the clock got to 2 seconds – I got a $495 Invicta watch for $12.30 + 13 bids = $25.30. Studying and monitoring the site can put you in a better position to get great prices without spending a ton on bids, therefor skill is involved.
As far as a scam… bah, why? Because some people don’t pay attention to what they’re signing up for or how it works and blow a bunch of money only to leave empty handed? Oh well, someone mentioned the old quote about fools and their money earlier. I also don’t believe the “we lose money on 70% of our auctions” line either but that still doesn’t make it a scam. Though I’d bet anything they’re losing a ****load on the watches, they have some top notch time pieces and they go dirt cheap.
I only wish I’d thought of it myself because this site must be making a TON of money. The real genius ones are the Penny Auctions where each bid only raises the price by a penny. I say a $1200 VAIO that was at $110.80 in a penny auction with 24 minutes left. That’s 11,080 bids or $11,080 or $9990.80 profit for Swoopo over the RETAIL price, nevermind the wholesale price they actually paid. And there were still 24 minutes left in the auction, I didn’t stick around to see what it finally sold at.
Jason,
What you said is so true. Most people sign their lives away. Ever buy something and put it together without reading the directions? Well, there you have it. These people did not spend time which is money to do the research to win and sometimes you get lucky. I have several online auction purchase and sell accounts including ebay and ebid. I spend at least 9-12 hours a day researching, buying and selling, and watching my money grow from purchases and sales. I also get the newest and best of everything and my family does too. Oh yeah and my friends get the used stuff and leftovers. I would not have any of it if I did not research and yes GAMBLE a bit. Life is a gamble you take no risk you get no reward. Look at Trump and others, same thing, risk involved. Also, like this website, sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t. I try to win more than not, so research and read and blog so you win more than lose.
I too saw the add pop up on google, but as always do my research first and I mean research! I spent about three hours reading blogs, some call it lost time and might say time is money, well yes it is. So, if I spent 3 hours researching swoopo and like you waited until the right time and did not bid out of control, did not use the bid butler, I could win loads of stuff. With 50,000 members, you figure what % need to log off to sleep etc. what %would run out of money and these days what % have limited $. One could win extra bids for the next time if I bid on the 300 pack of bids and paid a very small amount and gained extra bids for the next time, I already won in advance. I suggest start with penny bids and 100% bids as you really don’t pay the actual price just for the # of bids you enter. That is why you see astronomical prices as they really don’t pay that amount, only for the bids. I also suggest to stay away from BIG ticket items especially around the holidays i.e. The Wii and other game items as everyone wants them so obviously MORE bids so it costs you more $. A good example was Jason’s watch. Don’t soley rely on just one website, RESEARCH!!! Also, there are loads of winners for way way less than the cost or even price of the item on sale. Like anything on the internet, there are winners and there are losers.
It is sad that more winners are not here telling about it, probably because they are researching the next deal and investing in themselves and making more money.
Just my opinion…:) Good Luck b smart and research and don’t get caught up in advertising scam websites either as they can mask themselves.
That’s because about 20% of auctions are penny auctions where substantial money is gained and a further 10% just the lucky ones. The remaining 70% are well covered by the lucky ones and the penny auctions rake in the money. And if that’s not how your statistics are calculated, then I suggest you take the hint or your comments on here may well be used against you in court…
But about the dollar-auction. Yes it can happen that way, because if say, during a penny auction, the highest bidder has spent $x – y in bids on an item, where $x is the retail value, and the price of the item is currently at $y – 2 cents, if he wins the bidding, he stands to gain 2 cents, but if he loses, he will lose $x – y. Then suppose somebody else comes along and outbids him pushing the product price up from $y – 2 cents to $y – 1 cent, also spending a total of $x – y on bids, this second person, if he wins the bidding will make a profit of 1 cent, but if he loses will lose $x – y as well. Now the first person is faced with either losing $x – y or spending just $1 pushing the price up to $y. His bids would then be at $x – y + 1, so if he wins he makes a loss of $1, but if he loses, he makes a loss of $x – y. Likewise, the second person will then be faced with the choice of either bidding $y + 1 cent and therefore losing $1 + 1 cent, or losing $x – y. And so it goes on…
$y, is always going to be low, and $x is always going to be high. And this type of auction would probably in fact work better than the dollar-auction, since more than two people can theoretically be involved in the final competition, and only those standing to lose only a very little will opt out. Basically, the lower the price of the item goes up by on each bid, the more chance there is of getting this scenario, and the higher the probability of more people becoming involved in the final bidding race. (if the retail value is $x, then there are ($x – $z) / $z opportunities for a profitable highest bid to be placed, where $z is the price the item goes up by each time a bid is placed, therefore there is a higher chance that two or more people will single-handedly place a lot of bids, thereby causing their loses to be higher, thus giving them more incentive not to lose) The penny auction is obviously the optimum situation, short of pushing prices up by fractional amounts…
To prevent these sort of auctions going on forever, there is a time limit of so many seconds for each bid placed during this final race, so that eventually somebody’s browser won’t refresh quickly enough or something and they will lose out. But the more people that are involved, the higher the chance that one of them will have increased this limit anyway, so the longer it will take before one of them gives up. It is theoretically possible to con the entire userbase of 50,000+ (or 800,000+ by next year, etc…) customers into bidding on a single item if $z is low enough, $x high enough, and the item appealing enough to get them started. That would mean each individual would be forced to check on and increase the bidding every so often just so that they didn’t lose out. Eventually the server would run out of bandwidth, but it would be very interesting if this did occur… If enough users were caught up, each individual person could go online once a day or so to ensure they didn’t lose out, and the auction could go on forever, (or until everybody ran out of money to buy bids,) the lack of input by one user being made up for by the other 50,000+ – 1 in the meantime… Talk about tricking the world…
If this company bought up the moon and sold it on a penny auction, the amount of debt created would be truly phenomenal… I’d laugh up my sleeve of course! :P
Just to clarify, it would take just 5,760 people bidding with a final time limit of 15 seconds per bid for each of them to only need to bid once a day. 43,200 with a final time limit of 2 seconds, and 86,400 for 1 second.
That’s 24 hours in a day, making 24 * 60 * 60 = 86,400 seconds in a day, giving 86,400 / t = no. of users required, where t is the time added on per bid at the end of the auction.
Given that the company intends to achieve 800,000+ users by next year, this number of active target users per auction becomes less and less unlikely as the age of the company progresses… But the retail price of the item would have to be well above $172.80 for this many active bidders to be achieved in a penny auction if t is 5 seconds… (divide 17280 users required by 100 because there are 100 cents in a dollar) Lets assume the number of bids per active/competitive user is very high for the situation to occur, then you must multiply $172.80 by the average no. of bids required per user before they can’t bear to lose, then add a bit extra for all the users that are going to opt out. Say that once the potential loss goes above $100, the average user will carry on bidding to avoid losing money. Then that’s 100 bids, so you must do $172.80 * 100 = $17,280, then add on some more. I would imagine the amount extra you would need to add would be approximately the area under half of N($100, ($100 / 4)^2) multiplied by the 17280 bidders bidding $100 or more. That’s 0.5 * ($100 / 4) + $100 multiplied by 17280 = $112.5 * 17280 = $1,944,000 making a total of $1,961,280 for the retail value of the product which is unlikely, but say the average potential loss before people get hooked is just $10, and the time factor 10 seconds, then that’s $((86,400 / 10) / 100) * $10 + (0.5 * ($10 / 4) + $10 ) * (86,400 / 10) = $86.40 * $10 + $11.25 * 8640 = $864 + $97,200 = $98,064 as the retail price with a very large user base before the bidding forces every user to bid once per day until they run out of money. In fact, we don’t even need the initial $864 as far as I can tell because the normal distribution is continuous so that’s just $97,200. But honestly, it’s late at night here so I’ve probably got all this maths wrong anyway! :P
Still, it would be interesting to see what happens if a house is auctioned later on when the number of users has grown very large…
Now… I’m going to bed… XD
What really gets me about this is the shear number of auctions where people bid more times than the auction item is actually worth. Take this auction for example: http://www.swoopo.com/auction/sony-vaio-vgn-fw170j-h-16-4-core-2-duo-n/101046.html
It is a laptop computer with a 100% off deal so you pay nothing for the item as long as you win the auction. The laptop is worth $1399 retail, so you would think that no one would bid more than 1400 times. Well, the winner of this auction bid 2020 times so he actually spent $2020 on getting this thing “for free”.
I just discovered swoopo today, and I have found a large number of “won auctions” where the person bid far more times than the item is worth, I found a camera where the guy bid 1500 times and a watch where the guy bid 720 times. All of these were won with the use of the bid butler.
I understand the idea of the sunk cost fallacy where people feel that they need to keep bidding simply because they have already put so much into it. But since all of these seem to happen with the bid butler, something that you have to pre-program it indicates that people are willing to spend more than the item is worth from the get go. I really wonder if somethign fishy is going on here, for example Swoopo owned accounts are setting up bid butlers on items every now and then just to make a bunch of people lose.
I havent tried using this site and I doubt that I will. It is a genius business plan that I really wish I had thought of first. To me though… it feels too much like the lottery.
http://www.teet.net is the same kind of site that has popped up in the last few months. same kind of auction format. It’s a scam.
SWOOPO IS A COMPLETE RIP OFF!!!!!! I JOINED AND BOUGHT 50.00 IN BIDS AD THEY NEVER CREDITED MY ACCOUNT ,AT SWOOPO,BUT TOOK IT OUT OF MY BANK ACCOUNT. THE BEST IS THEY NEVER ANSWER ANY EMAILS OR CREDIT IT TO MY ACCOUNT AT ALL. I WILL NEVER DEAL WITH THEM AGAIN. I GUESS IT IS TRUE THAT YOU PAY FOR YOUR EDUCATION ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. BUT SWOOPO SHOULD BE CALLED EL SWIPE-OH FOR SURE.
I CAN FURNISH BACK RECORDS TO BACK UP ALL STATED ABOVE.!!!
ROBERT SNELLGROVE
***comment from customer service at Swoopo***
We felt we should respond to Robert’s comment above.
This purchase of bids was attempted but failed for a reason beyond the control of Swoopo. The money was never received by us. Swoopo is operating legally and legitimately and would never take money from someone without following through with the transaction.
The situation illustrated above happens periodically when the bank ‘earmarks’ money for a payment, i.e. removes it from the available balance of the account, and then the payment fails a second level security check. In short, the money never leaves the bank.
We are not happy that these situations create confusion and give people a negative view of Swoopo, however, it is a rare occurrence that we try to manage but one occasionally slips through the cracks. We apologize for this, Robert, we should have picked it up.
Swoopo Customer Support
While this may technically be legal and it’s consumer choice and all that, it is not conducive to the enhancement of the human race and therefore I must state that under no circumstances should any human be involved in any process aiding Swoopo.
Swoopo is distributing wealth unevenly, with themselves as the main benefactors, the few who get a cheaper product being the others.
It is worse than gambling as their house edge is likely to be much greater than that of any casino, meaning they rake in substantially more money than they give out (in the form of products… or sometimes cash [still not gambling though?]).
While most casinos have a house edge of about 18%, (they keep 18% of all money bet as profit), I would think Swoopo’s payout cost compared to bid income would reveal a much less favourable percentage for the gambler… er, bidder. I would be interested to see some financial figures for Swoopo as I expect the house edge to be massive, possibly as high as %90.
This type of activity is detrimental to human society and increases the divide between rich and poor, while giving false hope to the masses by offering cheaper luxury products which are unobtainable by most.
This degrades humanity and I consider Swoopo’s founders, employees and investors the scourge of the human race.
If you work for Swoopo and believe it to be an entirely ethical and noble source of income then you are deluded. I hope you cannot sleep at night, that you feel shame and guilt, knowing that you are helping mould the World into a Cesspool of Disgust and Hatred, where inequality, poverty and injustice are ripe.
It is a sad reflection of society that Swoopo has been allowed to thrive, alongside all the other legal forms of swindling… and junk mail.
Absolutely and undoubtedly SCAM!
I did spend $20 just to make sure of it.
The only fact that they show “300 FreeBids Voucher” and bids go BEYOND its actual value: current bid is $324.90 while they indicate themselves: (instead of $300.00) – shoes that their lying software has a pretty severe bug…
Tell everyone to stay away from Swoop.com unless they’re
willing to gamble.
There is only one guaranteed winner (Swoopo) and a whole lot of
people losing money at $1/bid everything they try to grab
something for cheap.
Swoopo also operated illegally in several states without proper
commerce permits. Also, once to buy your bids, there is no way
get your money back for unused bids. It’s very much like
gambling and not an auction. However, in most gambling you
could cash-out anytime you like and trade in your chips for
cash. Not at Swoopo. They really want your money!
In no auction to you have pay every time you submit a bid. You
only pay when you are the highest bidder. With Swoopo, you pay
to bid and you pay again to buy with many of the “auctions”.
STAY AWAY!
IT`S A TRAP!!!
This is a gambling operation, where the odds are unbelievably unfavorable to the players. If Las Vegas had odds like this, nobody would go there.
In Las Vegas, if you look at a game like Blackjack or Roulette, you can easily calculate the “expected return” on each bet. For example, in Blackjack, if you play perfect strategy, the expected return on a $1.00 bet is -0.05, i.e., you would expect to lose a nickel on each dollar bet. If you are a bad Blackjack player, you expect to lose maybe a nickel on each dollar bet. If you are a very good card counter, you might expect to actually win 1%, or one cent on every dollar bet.
In the Swoopo model, you expect to lose about 99% of each dollar bet, the odds are terrible, and just get worse as the pool of bettors increases on a “auction”. In Las Vegas, they would never tolerate this kind of rip off.
Many people are so stupid about understanding probabilities though, they almost deserve to be separated from their money.
Swoopo is a defenite scam. Check out this 300 bid card that I watched goto $576.75. I watched bidding continually go higher and higher for 45 minutes. Why would anyone pay $576.75 for a $300.00 bid card they can purchase anytime from swoopo for $300.00.
http://www.swoopo.com/auction/300-freebids-voucher/112354.html
If people still think it is for real after seeing this then they need to stay on swoopo and give them all their money cause their too stupid to even possess money. By the way there was a TOM TOM 930 GPS that went for $23 and a Sony Playstation 3 for $83 at the same time people were fighting for this 300 bid card.
I suppose you missed the fact it was a 100% off auction? To clarify – the winner got the item, worth $225 (300*.75) – for $0. He/she was only out the amount of bids placed: 32, which equals $24 (32*.75)…
So in effect they won 300 bids, worth $225, for $24, a savings of $201. Not too bad if you ask me.
Maybe you should check into things a bit more closely and make sure you know what you are talking about before calling others ’stupid’. Just a thought…
What I don’t understand is, why didn’t somebody else make another bid??
I sent in a complaint to the Better Business Bureaus and encourage others to do the same. This swoopo site scammed me as well as others and do not even have the courtesy to even reply to your emails. Just buy the item from Ebay or a retail store instead of wasting money on these guys.
Tbalt14
Better than swoopo- http://www.kcbidz.com( kcbidz dot com)
Here is a list of how kcbidz members will be rewarded when they buy credits:
$10 – 3% bonus account credits + 10 free bids
$20 – 5% bonus account credits + 20 free bids
$50 – 6% bonus account credits + 50 free bids
$100 – 7% bonus account credits + 100 free bids
$250 – 8% bonus account credits + 250 free bids
$500 – 10% bonus account credits + 500 free bids
http://www.kcbidz.com is not a scam and do not sell overprice products like swoopo
I think Swoopo is like Yellmann (www.yellmann.com), not like unique bid auctions / reverse auctions like Bidster (www.bidster.com).
Swoopo is not an auction site with a gimmick, it is a gambling site with an auction-like gimmick. For $1, you are purchasing a ticket that allows you to win the item for the given price if nobody else purchases another $1 ticket for the same item in a given time frame. Since the price goes up only nominally with the purchase of each $1 ticket, you are essentially gambling that nobody else wants to take the same bet as you.
Let’s say winning saves you $200 on a product at the current nominal price. You should bet only if there is a 1 in 200 chance that nobody else will take the substantially the same bet in the next interval. This is very hard to judge, but is quantifiable based on the current nominal price of the item. (If the nominal price is more than V/2 times the bid increment, where V is the value of winning, in the absence of other information about betting trends it is certainly a poor bet. In the example of winning a $200 savings, if the nominal price is more than 100 times the bid increment, it is certainly a poor bet. It is likely a poor bet if the nominal price is anything like that much.) The value of your bet has VERY little to do with the stated price of the item (which will most likely be quite low) and ALMOST EVERYTHING to do with the likelihood that someone else will take the same bet. (I say almost everything because the dynamics of the game change slightly as the nominal price increases, but only with the relatively slow change in nominal price compared to the $1 bids.)
This is a form of gambling, and the mathematics bear that assessment out. The mechanics implement all three of the required elements of a lottery:
Prize – An option to purchase at product at a nominal price that differs significantly from the normal selling price of the product.
Chance – The opportunity to win so long as another consumer does not purchase a ticket for substantially the same offer within a certain time frame from the purchase of your ticket.
Consideration – Each ticket costs $1.
Attorneys General are welcome to contact me for technical assistance in assessing whether the Swoopo game is an illegal lottery in their state. I have no personal interest in this matter other than the academic question of whether this is a form of gambling. I am both an academic with advanced training in statistical methods and a recreational gambler with verifiable winnings at the poker table.
Please contact me at the following anonymized e-mail address:
breevyondo@kriocoucke.mailexpire.com
Swoopo is not a gambling site by definition – there is no randomness involved. If you’re willing to bid more than anyone else you’re guaranteed to win.
That being said, Swoopo is basically still something of a scam. Most people (in fact, everone but one) will lose everything they’ve bid on any individual item and I’m not really buying the CEO’s statement that on 70% of auctions Swoopo doesn’t recover its costs.
Take your chances on eBay or woot.com
Well said!
You are gambling, winning is pure luck here their is NO skill to this, so how is it now a gambling site again??? This is a rip off, and those who play are stupid or have more money then since!!! I took one look at it and knew that, and will never play, I say play cause you might as well go to Las Vegas and play the slots where you will have better odds of winning, at this site EVER!!! The owners are German, it is internet genocide of the U.S. Dollar and any other type of money, so it is almost like another invasion of the U.S. This one is hitting our economy, can people not see we are sending billions of dollars over seas??? Really, where is it coming back in at now, not in the products you win considering they are worth only a small fraction of what we are sending out for them…
So are real life auctions a scam too? You pay to enter and be allowed to bid on auction items/lots… every time you bid, the auctioneer extends the auction, giving other people a chance to outbid you… if you get outbid, and don’t continue bidding, you lose. And if you end up losing everything you tried to bid on during the course of the day, you end up having spent money and getting nothing. That sounds pretty normal to me. So why don’t people consider real life auctions a scam? The only reason people are so up in arms about sites like swoopo is because it’s on the internet, and they’re afraid of what they can’t see. Maybe there are fake/automated bidders used by swoopo to artificially drive prices up or to outbid you till you expend all your bids and call it quits. IF that is the case, then yes, swoopo is a scam (actually, it’d be much worse… at that point, it’d be a fraud). But assuming they are a legitimate company that wouldn’t do that.. and let’s give them the benefit of the doubt in this case, because honestly, there’s no real need for them to do that… then how exactly are they a scam if they are just bringing to the internet what is a common auction practice in real life? I’ve noticed the people who complain the most fall into three categories: 1) they don’t understand how the concept works, and lost money because of it, bidding frivolously, 2) they do understand how it works, and still bid frivolously and never won an auction, or 3) they haven’t even looked at or tried the site out, but are jumping on the “scam” bandwagon blindly. So, again assuming swoopo is totally legit, what about all the people who are winning auctions, and paying less than the msrp on their items? I guess it’d be safe to assume they have nothing to complain about. The empty drum sounds the loudest… and unfortunately, the internet seems to be FULL of empty drums…