Who are those “BidButlers”?? Yes, it’s true that some could be one of us (since they have that option), but would it be wrong to say that some/most of them are running by their own people? Is it that impossible for them?? (even it’s a physical bid made by a real person, so called “SingleBid”). They could easily control any auction with their own bids to bring the price up to certain levels. After reaching upto 400/500% (or even more) profits perhaps they let it go for the real bidders. People – please stop trying to to bid against them constantly just by looking the the auction price thinking the winning bids are just a few clicks away.

count the bids at the end after losing the auction and see how much you lost ( or even after you’ve won). just a simple little example from NOV 4th, 09. http://www.swoopo.com/auction/madden-nfl-2010-ps3-/238939.html.

Auction Price: $33.48
All prices are in US Dollars
Bidder: Dave456
Auction ended
on Nov-04-2009, at 02:11 PDT
Dave456 won with 89 Bids
and saved 0% ! Worth up to: $59.99
Placed bids (89): $53.40
FreeBids (0): $0.00
Auction price: $33.48

Savings: $0.00

The original selling cost of this MADDEN NFL 10 game was 59.99. The “winner” posted total bid worth of $53.40, and the winning price was $33.48 + $4.90 shipping.

($53.40 + $33.48+$4.90 = yo do the math), and compare with their original selling price of $59.99 + $4.99. How much did he save? Would you still “Congratulate” him??

Now, it’s possible that they can claim that few “real” people do get some bargain every now and then and are all happy about it. But, is it absurd to say that these giveaways are working as some sort of advertisements for them, so they can add some more unlucky people into their entertainment scam?

Why aren’t they being investigated? How they are still getting the fun out of looting people? Why most of the very low priced winners are by “BidButlers”, and some ends in just a few bids? When the price isn’t going up faster because there aren’t enough real bidders in the auction who are those 2/3 BidButlers post 30/40 bids in just a second to raise up the time few minutes so others can join?
How do they know when exactly to close the bid so other new bidders can’t join that particular auction? How can they call themselves legit? Why people are falling for these piece of crap over and over? When was the last time a person were actually able to interact with the winners of the auction or, others so called users? Who is backing this business up? Why Paypal is supporting them and hurting their reputation? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a lolipop???? ……….The world may never know!!

Allwaysinvestigate.com I wonder if that is a actually website …Now there’s in idea………

Also thank you fourm……….

Joshua James

I tried it , I lost and its a scam. Stop even trying to inflate the numbers to something it isn’t like the other google losers claiming millions of visits to their website a day only to have a closer look that 90 percent of the traffic again wasn’t even on the site more than .5 or so of a second which means it was faked with a traffic generator.

I believe swoopo is just a division of some more retarded google employees using their free time or a google subdivision most definately.

There is a bit of skill involved in this that people dont get. Bid Butlers DO NOTHING for anyone except the site since about 5-10 bid at the same exact time, it just jacks up the price and wastes your bids. Next thing you know, it has wasted about 10 of your bids and you’re pissed off at your own stupidity and taking it out on the site.

And before you accuse anyone of scamming you out of your cash, remember that you got a legitimate good for your money. Bids are a good, and as long as you agree to purchase them, you can’t call the site a scam. Yeah, if they didnt give you the item or bids you won, then they’re a scam, but if you just lost and feel like bitching about it, learn to man the hell up and accept the fact that your ignorance and stupidity messed you up

HASTENO.COM special week! Top three bidders will get credits back! The winner will get 25% back+ item, second 50%, third 25% this week only! NEW “Bids” price! “Bids” cost only $0.60 US cent.

Happy bidding
HASTENO.com

It is a legitimate site, but I don’t think it is “entertainment shopping” for the casual shopper (henceforth referred to as the “chump”).

There are only two winners in this site:

- Swappo itself, it makes a decent amount of money collecting all the paid for bids left over by the chumps. And some money leftover by the professionals (see below)

- And the professional bidder, these are individuals or groups (talk about collusion!) that will takeover an auction – NO MATTER WHAT! – They will outbid the chump each and every time. Why? Since they bid on so many auctions – they get some products at massive discount and on others they overpay by a few dollars. When they average out their winnings – THEY will come out ahead. Losing an auction for the professional would be showing their weakness and THEY WILL NEVER SHOW THEIR WEAKNESS. They will keep placing their bids until the chump gives up! THAT IS THE ONLY WAY TO WIN!!!! (If you are a chump who goes against these giants – you will fail. If they do let you win – you would have paid more than the product is worth!!!). These people have thousands of bids in their accounts as opposed to few hundreds that the chumps have in theirs (Think of it this way: you might have a 24 caliber pistol but the professional brings a bazooka to the auction!!!)

An aside – some of the auctions end at enticingly low prices – do you know why? – The chumps have given up too early and the professional has walked out with a mega bargain!!!

With this setup the casual shopper will ALWAYS LOSE – ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS! If you do get “LUCKY” consider it a lightening strike!

The people at Swappo.com might have started out with a good intention of providing “entertainment shopping” – but the end result will be this: the site will get taken over by professionals – not before a lot of amateurs “chumps” have lost a lot of money! Eventually the business model will fail – there is no doubt about that! (I don’t think the chumps are dumb enough to support this site forever! – some of these hapless people will probably file law suits!!!)

Here is my conclusion, bid in Swappo.com if you below to one of these categories:
1) You are a professional (way to go man! or woman!)
2) You live in a Manhattan penthouse and have a trust fund, and your hobby is smoking weed.

OR ELSE

Run as fast as you can from this site, it will ruin you faster than Las Vegas. Do your “entertainment” shopping on either Amazon.com or Buy.com.

IT IS IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS A SCAM.

QUITE SIMPLY, YOU BID (GAMBLE) $25 YOU AMAZINGLY ENOUGH WON THE iPHONE THEN THE VERIFICATION PROCESS POPS UP, HANG ON YOU HAVE AN ACCOUNT!?! THEN 14 DAYS PASS, YOU COMMUNICATE, NOTHING, AGAIN NOTHING AGAIN NOTHING AGAIN NOTHING THEN INSULT TO INJURY YOUR “ACCOUNT” DISAPEARS AFTER NOT BIDDING FOR 3 MONTHS ALONG WITH $15 IN EQUVILENT BIDS, THE ITEM IS IN HISTORY IS NO LONGER AN iPHONE BUT A SAT-NAV GISMO, YOUR $25 WORTH FOR ALL INTENTS & PURPOSES NEVER HAPPEND, BUT FOR THE FIRST 14 DAYS YOUR USER NAME IS USED TO PROMOTE SWOOPO OH BUT WITH A SNAZZY PHOTO OF SOME CUT N PASTE CALVIN KLINE MODEL.

AFTER HAVING TO CLAIM ON CARD INSURANCE AS WHERE MY MONEY WENT WAS APPARENTLY NOT SWOOPO.COM OR .CO.UK I VOWED NEVER AGAIN.

MY ADVICE > STAY AWAY OR GO TO TRADE SITES, SAVE UP WHAT EVER BULK BUY 5 PLASMA TV’S TRADE THE REST EITHER ON EBAY OR LOCAL PAPER GET A BARGAIN THAT WAY.

Being that the Business itself is making money off the bids, I would feel there would be less likelihood for any internal monitoring system from preventing a self-outbidding scheme from taking place.

Lets look at it this way.

Swoopo puts up a hot item… lets say a 50″ Plasma TV. Bidding opens up at $1.00 with a half hour bidding time.

It gets a few bids and by the time it reaches a 5-Minute marker it is still priced rather low at lets say $27.00.

Now is where the “Fun” begins. With time breaking 5-Minute marker, the bidders watching the auctions are getting more tempted to closely watch the item to try to “pick” their moment, hoping no one else is going to bid.

By the time it breaks 1 Minute remainder time on auction, the 50″ Plasma is up to $50.00. If it was a $0.01 auction item, each bid was increasing the auction price by $0.01 / increasing seconds on item by 1-4 seconds (from what I witness watching an auction today). Each bid transaction comes at a cost of $0.60. For the item to have reached a price of $50.00, there would have been4,900 bids @ $0.60 a bid for a total item sale value of $2,940.00 for that 50″ Plasma. ($49.00 / $0.01 x $0.60 = $2,940.00) I doubt they paid retail value for that 50″ Plasma, so the percentage of Markup on the item sold even at $50.00 would be well over 100%.

That’s just the icing on the cake.

Now lets say Joe Blow was banking on getting himself a cheap Plasma and this looked like too sweet a deal to pass up. Joes been bidding since the minute marker and made a grand total of 30 bids (30 bids @ $0.60 = $18.00). Lets be honest, $18.00 isn’t that much money really, but if Joe doesn’t win the bid, he spent $18.00 on absolutely nothing. Compound that by the thousands and you really got a huge rip off scheme going.

And I am hardly finished. What Joe Blow doesn’t realize, along with the hundreds of other participating bidders, is that Swoopo stacked the decks! They’ve got auto-auction bidders who will continually outbid you on every item till the final tick of the clock. “10 seconds, 8 seconds, 5 second! What, Outbid by JohnnySpot2 yet again!!!… I’ll win this TV YET!”

As I said earlier, who is monitoring these auctions to ensure that this is not happening and how is someone to know they auctions are legit? Who is to say that Swoopo hasn’t set into place an auto-bidding program behind their website for every available auction, or that they aren’t hiring people on the side to bid on the items themselves, and paying them a percentage of the bottom line $$$ markups they are making off of items. Who is tracking the items sold to ensure there are actually items being delivered to “customers” as you might think of them.

I highly doubt there is any monitoring of a site in this nature, and I am willing to bet that there is a indecipherable user agreement the length of a full series of encyclopedias covering Swoopo’s A$$ for the legality of the business they are conducting.

If that penny auction 50″ Plasma went up to $200.00 on the final sale, Swoopo brought in an astronomical $11,940.00 for a set that would have retailed $1000.00 – $2000.00 in stores today.

If Swoopo is engaging in self bidding on auctions, and they do not actually let a real bidder/customer win an auction, that $11,940.00 would be ALL PROFIT, since in fact no item was sold or delivered to a “customer”/bidder. I don’t care how they may be doing it, but I would be very skeptical on the ethics of this business and would lean towards the angle that this may in fact be the very thing they are doing.

Someone ought to have the business investigated for fraud.

Good deal or not for an individual purchase, this is capitalistic mentality at it’s dirtiest.

Hey… SWOOPO… CUT ME IN!!! I’ll bid on your auctions for you all day for a measly 1% of your profits from the auctions I partake in, and laugh my A$$ off all the way to the bank just like you are doing.