[Manic!]

Has anyone checked out Swoopo.ca it's an acution site that seems to sell stuff really cheap. I saw a 40 inch flat screen go for $140.

But there's a catch.
It costs you $1 for every bid and the priced only goes up by 15 cents some only by a penny and every time you bit the 10 seconds gets added to the time.

[willystyle]

umm.. wtf... 80$ for a macbook? looks like a scam to me..

[Razor Ramon HG]

Put it on your CC, and test it out. If it fails, chargeback!

[Razor Ramon HG]

http://ezinearticles.com/?Swoopo-Review---Is-Swoopo-Legit-Or-a-Scam?&id=1873917

[murd0c]

I'm going to sign up right now to find out. Prob a rip off but we shall see :)

[murd0c]

so if you watch the bidding and bid in the last 2nd you could save yourself some huge coin

[murd0c]

just bought 40bids for $30 will let you know how it goes

[Razor Ramon HG]

You have to pay cash up front for bids. And if they bid in the last 10 seconds, the timer get reset.

Here's a video that might help you - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdttRVrW0vw

[Razor Ramon HG]

:lol I'm laughing at all these people wasting away their bids on a low priced item

[murd0c]

:lol I'm laughing at all these people wasting away their bids on a low priced item

ya it's pretty funny, people bidding non stop on those monster headphones. I'm thinking this site may be good at 2-3am when less people are on.

[murd0c]

as well if you do want to do is they have a promo right now buy bids get that many for free I bought 40 and got another 40.

[Razor Ramon HG]

I'd buy some bids, but unless I'd win an item (pretty damn hard), I'd feel pretty ripped off :lol

[chopchop]

Is this for real though? The $50 for a Wii seems unreal?

[murd0c]

I'd buy some bids, but unless I'd win an item (pretty damn hard), I'd feel pretty ripped off :lol

ya I know what ya mean, $30 for 80 bids aint that bad. If I would of got those head phones I would of been happy. It looks like that bid butter is the way to go as said in the vid u posted.

[murd0c]

Is this for real though? The $50 for a Wii seems unreal?

it is real, the site makes the money off the bids not off the products.

[chopchop]

it is real, the site makes the money off the bids not off the products.

Really eh? But where are the products coming from? Couldn't the site just mysteriously outbid everybody at the end of the auctions? Nobody would ever know whether they were outbidded by the system.

[Cman333]

wow they're making a killing

The penny auction for a 40" TV is going for $60 right now....6000 x .75 = 4500.

The TV's worth about $2000 TOPS!!

Damn!!! These guys are smart.

[murd0c]

it's a very smart idea if you think about it. they don't need to bump up the prices cause people are already doing that. they own all the prodcuts and it's a canadian company so shipping doesn't kill. If you time it right and bid when it's up there when people are cheap and don't want to spend the higher price you will still get a smokin deal if you don't keep on bidding like the idiots that are there.

[ShyGuy]

yah..this is a frickin smart idea...

[murd0c]

the issue right now is everyone got double the bids. so right now there bidding more since they didn't have to pay for half of them. Wait a week since the promo is only on until tomm and I have a feeling the bids wont get as high.

[chopchop]

^Yeah and auctions just won't end now, I have been watching the Macbook auction and it keeps getting bidded in the last few seconds. I am still skeptical about the number of actual users bidding on there, the company could easily assign a group of people who would be responsibly in extending the life of the auctions so more "real" users would bid.

The last Macbook was sold at $79, so they made around $6k from that single auction I'm assuming... crazyy!

[Razor Ramon HG]

If you win anything, let us know.

Hmm, it seems they are based in West Georgia street.

[murd0c]

lol for sure I will let ya guys know. The prices are way to low right now. Best bet is to start bidding at the price you saw the last item was won at.

damm thats brooklennave guy is bidding on everything

[Razor Ramon HG]

Yes and no.

Swoopo is a scam in the sense that it is an online gambling site posing as an auction site.

However, Swoopo is not a scam in the sense that they will steal your money, they have a legitimate (although misleading) model. Just don't be fooled into thinking that the site has anything to do with auctions.

They use terms like bids and auctions when in reality, they are an online gambling site where the game is a bit like a cross between a raffle (lottery) and a game of chicken, the the prize is some item you receive (if you win) at an extreme discount.

Leaving aside all this "auction" talk (who are they kidding?) the game works like this. Each game has a prize, and a clock that counts downward to zero. Think of it like this. Everyone who wants to play the game (or the bidders, if you will) is, in a virtual sense, putting dollar bills in a stack, since each "chance" (or "bid" although that term is misleading) costs $1. (50 pence for the UK Swoopo)

When the clock reaches zero, whoever put the last $1 on the stack wins the item, but each time a dollar is placed on the stack, 15 seconds is added to the clock. It's easy to see this game makes a lot of money for the house, or Swoopo. Each bid is like a raffle ticket. You are paying $1 for the small chance that no one else will put $1 on top of it before time expires. Keep in mind the players, or "bidders," can use an automated bidder called bid butler. When multiple people use these, they can instantly bid back and forth dozens or hundreds of times, adding minutes or hours to the clock. Swoopo tells that this is a "strategy" and sad thing is that people seem to be buying it!

You might be asking, "Why is there a price if this isn't an auction?" The funny part is that for a lot of the "auctions" there is no price! These auctions have fixed prices, (the "100% off" have a fixed price of $0.00), and you can see from these that the price displayed is, more or less, just a counter for how much Swoopo is pocketing! Take for example a high end digital camera with a fixed price of $79 plus $12 for shipping. The "price" on this "auction", which I am looking at now as it is still active, is $828. This number is completely irrelevant unless you are interested in how much Swoopo is making. Since that number increased one "bid" at a time by $0.15 and each of those "bids" costs someone a dollar, that means there have been over 5500 bids! $5500 in Swoopo's pocket and the game is still going! You can see how it is no problem for them to send the lucky winner a $1500 digital camera for less than $100 when they made so much money from the game.

Some of the games are not fixed price, and so the winner of the game wins the item but has to pay $0.15 for each "bid" that was placed. On these games there is, I guess, (and I am being generous here), some semblance of strategy, since each subsequent bid is worth a little less. For example, the first bid on a $300 XBOX 360 is a chance to get a $300 item for $0.15, but the 100th bid is a chance to get a $300 item for $15.00, which is worth a little less. I guess the strategy is to wait until the price is high enough to weed out a lot of players and thereby increase your chances, but PLEASE keep in mind you chances are still SLIM!

In conclusion, I would call Swoopo a scam, but that is just my definition. It is what it is. It preys on human weakness, and lots of them.

1. Desire to get a good deal. (At first glance you are buying something at an incredible price, right???!!!) You can see this is their main hook as all of their ad material is just history of past games showing how some lucky fool snagged a Wii for $20 or an HDTV for $200.

2. Throw good money after bad. (You bought 20 chances, and someone kept jumping in with 5 seconds left! I don't want to have wasted $20, so I'll get $20 more in chances and keep trying!)

3. Gambling is fun. (No real need to elaborate here)

A fairly good read.

[murd0c]

also I noticed that it shows if people are useing the bid buttler, The best bet is don't bid if you see that cause they will beat you anyways. Let other people bid and waste there bids.

[StylinRed]

gonna try my hand at this..... problem is the more they grow the worse it is for bidders

[StylinRed]

swoopa probably has a system in place to see how many people are watching the auction, and they'll place their own bids as long as people are "gambling" and watching


We now offer a new type of auction, which means that at a certain point in time, our auctions will become closed to new bidders. This means that just those who have placed at least one bid on the auction can continue to bid - giving our bidders a higher chance of winning and ensuring things heat up a bit. Swoopo reserves the right to choose when the closing point for each auction is, which is why we cannot let you know beforehand at which point auctions will become closed to new users. This new function will make our auctions more exciting, and subsequently offers you better chances of winning our auctions.

[murd0c]

swoopa probably has a system in place to see how many people are watching the auction, and they'll place their own bids as long as people are "gambling" and watching

I was wondering that as well, look at the wii right now damm there making big bucks

[StylinRed]

for some reason the time-remaining on this sony tv bid i was watching just shot up to 15mins even though there was only like 5 bids (at 10sec left)

its up to 70.77$ up a 0.01 every bid(1bid=0.65) = $4600.50 for a tv that costs $2600 at Futureshop or ($1800 if you buy from the states)

they're making a tonne o cash

it says the last auction for it sold at $126.04=$8192.60 in bids + $126.04=$8318.64 the website made and whatever overheard they have off of shipping

[murd0c]

did u buy any bids yet?

[StylinRed]

yeah i bought a 40pack and theres a promotion now for buy1 get1 so i got 80bids

will probably have to check back later tonight (the bidding will probably still be going)

[asian_XL]

the PS3 80 seems like a good deal

[impactX]

Sure feels like a new online gambling site.

[murd0c]

I saw a nikon d90 go for $9.80 O.o I was going to bid but didn't think it would go so low

[impactX]

Everytime you bid, the time limit goes up and $ goes to the site owner. Your chance on getting a good deal is based on the misfortune of others.

[asian_XL]

$0.65 every $0.12 increment...lol

so every dollar increases on the auction price, Swoop makes $5.42 :lol am I correct?

For an item that is $100cdn...they make money once it hits $18.45...holy shit, they are smart...hahah

[01-xtreme]

^its more than that. the increment changes as per item. I'm not sure if its dependent on the item or item price, but this macbook i was curious about changed in increments of a penny.

the macbook sold for about 35 dollars.assuming it was a penny per bid from the start and 12c starting price:


35 dollars ->3500 cents -12 ->3488 bids at 65 cents each -->>2267+35dollars final price -->>2302-1500 retail -->> one macbook made them ~800 dollars.

check my math?

[01-xtreme]

their bidbutler thing is a scam.

if your range is too high, you lost no money but never had a chance to get it

if your range is too low, you wasted a bunch of money to get nothing

if your range is too broad, and you're the only one with bid butler, you may use up all of your bids within the first minute of being in the range of your price.

if there are two bid butlers, all their bids are throw down automatically and the one with the more number of bids within that range wins.

still trying to wrap my head around it.. but it seems like..

winning bidder = winner. website = winner. the 100s of other people that bid but didn't tough it out = suckers.

[StylinRed]

tv i was watching (but ended up giving up the monitoring on it) sold at $90 something


they're selling an Acer Aspire laptop atm but showing a picture for an HP and giving details of a HP laptop

[urrh]

LOL
i see an auction on bids voucher
essentially, they're making money from money

[StylinRed]

there's an auction for a 1oz gold bar but the description talks about a limited edition watch yet the picture shows a gold bar oO

[InvisibleSoul]

Very interesting business model...

[StylinRed]

ok..... a Canon EOS auction was about to end with not enough bids for the website to make their money back on the item and the timer shot up to 5hrs

[willystyle]

damn, this takes forever............

[01-xtreme]

X= retail price
r = increment amount
f = minimum final price

x = (f-.12)*.65/r + f

=> f = (rx+.078)/(.65+r)

don't bid less than f plus a couple bucks.

[Hondaracer]

I bought the 40 pack probably gonna wait till the middle of the night or somthing to blow my bids

[BLUETIGER]

i just created the username Swpobot1012
who wants to be Swpobotxxxx.....................
one for all and all for one..

[StylinRed]

I bought the 40 pack probably gonna wait till the middle of the night or somthing to blow my bids

doesn't work like that.... they've seem to have timed their auctions to expire during the day.... and if its going to expire during the night (and it doesn't meet their minimum price) the timer will just increase a few hours on its own... also if there's an auction thats gone on til the evening it'll likely be closed to new bidders

[Hondaracer]

Hmm after watching and betting on some items this whole thing is kind if stupid, betting seems so futile especially when a higher price item is running out of time

feels like I wasted $30..

[willystyle]

doesn't work like that.... they've seem to have timed their auctions to expire during the day.... and if its going to expire during the night (and it doesn't meet their minimum price) the timer will just increase a few hours on its own... also if there's an auction thats gone on til the evening it'll likely be closed to new bidders
The only reason why some items get pushed back for a couple of hours is when some dumbass members begin abusing the Bidbutler function, wasting precious bids.

[murd0c]

I don't like I was on it for hourse yesterday and not even close. I personally think the only way is to spend $200 on bids and go for a high ticket price item that you know won't lose your money.

[Hondaracer]

lost all my 80 bids

fuck i swear i had the fucking external HD, the timer was at 0, but then a bid popped up..

if you had like 200 bids and wanted a laptop bad enough you could probably get it if u just watched it the entire time

[impactX]

No, do what the video said.

LOL why would you guys blow money on the bids anyway. There are only 2 parties winning in the situation: the seller, and the eventual buyer. How the eventual buyer would get the item depends on the misfortune and stupidity of other potential buyers to make enough bid to let the seller make money. In a way, this is like playing slot machine.

[willystyle]

It's not about how many bids you use, it's WHEN you bid on the item.

[ime2006]

Personally, Play in This place is such waste the money.

The auction never ends. (Only if you get lucky somehow.)
People just keep bidding on the item, the time gets extended 15 sec every last second.

And, how can you be sure that there is no internal account pulling the price up ????

In the end, the owner of the site, Make lots of money.

It is like, keep donating money to the site owner.........geez.




I would say, in the end, this site will die down pretty fast.

[rslater]

What a fucken scam. I was watching this d90, and it was sitting at 99 dollars with 10 second peopel started to bid rapidy and it continued to go back up to 10 seconds, when ALL OF A SUDDEN it went to 6 minutes. WTF?

Why did that happen? I feel bad for the people bidding.

[willystyle]

^ It's called Bidbutler.......

[rslater]

Ok second scam is easy. Lets say bidbuttler is the company, or one of its own is using it. Bid buttle keeps on raising the price other bidbuttlers continue to pay .65 cents, and other single users pay, now at the end teh bit buttler that is the company wins. The company takes all the bid money and just RESELLS the item next time. The item doesn't even need to exist. All the items don't need to exist. As long as a username is winning, we all presume people are getting items.

[Ferra]

Personally, Play in This place is such waste the money.

The auction never ends. (Only if you get lucky somehow.)
People just keep bidding on the item, the time gets extended 15 sec every last second.

And, how can you be sure that there is no internal account pulling the price up ????

In the end, the owner of the site, Make lots of money.

It is like, keep donating money to the site owner.........geez.

I would say, in the end, this site will die down pretty fast.
But as the number of users decrease, existing players' chance of winning will increase....and people being the greedy bastard they are, will jump back in once they see the popularity of the game has dropped and they have a much better chance of winning now.
The business model can't become super popular, but it will probably end up at an "equilibrium" level of users in the long-run.

Honestly, for most people this is absolutely a waste of money and time. Unless you are willing to sit infront of your computer for hours and kept on bidding on the item, you won't have much of a chance of winning and you are just throwing away your money to support the scheme.

There are no free lunch and money doesn't just come out of nowhere.

[ime2006]

But as the number of users decrease, existing players' chance of winning will increase....and people being the greedy bastard they are, will jump back in once they see the popularity of the game has dropped and they have a much better chance of winning now.
The business model can't become super popular, but it will probably end up at an "equilibrium" level of users in the long-run.

Honestly, for most people this is absolutely a waste of money and time. Unless you are willing to sit infront of your computer for hours and kept on bidding on the item, you won't have much of a chance of winning and you are just throwing away your money to support the scheme.

There are no free lunch and money doesn't just come out of nowhere.


One more thing i found ~

The winners are always using "BitButtler"
This is pretty fishy.

[underscore]

^ well yeah, that's sort of the point of the bidbutler, you can run similar things for eBay but I think they either got blocked or they aren't as commonly used.

Ok second scam is easy. Lets say bidbuttler is the company, or one of its own is using it. Bid buttle keeps on raising the price other bidbuttlers continue to pay .65 cents, and other single users pay, now at the end teh bit buttler that is the company wins. The company takes all the bid money and just RESELLS the item next time. The item doesn't even need to exist. All the items don't need to exist. As long as a username is winning, we all presume people are getting items.

yes but that can (potentially) get then in shit if they get busted. the way they're running it now, they still make boatloads of money yet make it look like they're giving people stuff for dirt cheap and little effort and it's legit. if they are doing that then they're just getting greedy.

[willystyle]

There's no reason why they wouldn't give those prizes away, judging by how much money they are making from bids.

I was calculating a TV that they were auctioning a day or 2 ago. They made $30,000 from bids on a $2000 MSRP TV. It would be stupid of them not to ship the product, and risk legal action.

[Ikkaku]

but we won't even know if the winners are actually outside people or just inside accounts ;)

if nobody wins anything, they can't tell if its legit or not, if they keep losing.

[SchoolGlue]

i won two things from this site =( but i still feel ripped off

i got a stupid flashlight from the beginner auction and a 16gig flash drive for 2 bucks...

[Ikkaku]

I stand corrected.

Maybe the previous statement applies for higher priced items, like the previously mentioned high end digital camera. Or I could also be wrong about them, and the owners are just some crazy smart people who could make a large killing with a legit auction site :lol

[StylinRed]

The only reason why some items get pushed back for a couple of hours is when some dumbass members begin abusing the Bidbutler function, wasting precious bids.

ok..... a Canon EOS auction was about to end with not enough bids for the website to make their money back on the item and the timer shot up to 5hrs


no there were no bids being placed when that happened(i had the last bid)



and the other day i was bidding for Resident Evil 5 (ps3) the price got to like $30.xx i placed a bid as it was counting down from 10seconds and someone got a bid in ahead of me but the counter didn't reset it just went to 0 :( but ill just stack that up to lag/glitch

[murd0c]

so has anyone actually won something decent on this site?

[Razor Ramon HG]

I wonder if I invested $500 into bids, if I could actually win a Macbook.