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Too Stoopo For Swoopo
Imagine you are attending an auction to bid on some really high-in-demand products. Everything you may ever want will be at this auction: the hottest electronic devices, gold and silver, a watch you can only dream of. But before you can enter the auction, a clerk tells you that you have to buy a special auction currency. Think of it like buying tokens at an arcade. You will need this special auction currency in order to make a bid on an item. If you run out of tokens, you can buy more on the spot in order to keep bidding. Most people would think that’s insane and would walk away from the auction immediately, however as you head towards the door, the clerk informs you that the starting price for each item up for auction is only $0.12. Furthermore, each bid will only increase the price of the item by only $0.02. Immediately a big grin comes across your face, and you decide to give it a shot. You purchase your special auction currency and enter to the auction hall.
As you step through the double doors, you find yourself in a room with about 200 people. You also notice that unlike most auctions, many of the items at this auction are up for bid simultaneously. There are some people committed to bidding on a particular item. They want the item really bad, and will try to win it at all cost. Then you notice something strange. There are some people that are going from one auction item to another, putting in their bids. It seems they don’t care what they win, as long as they win something. When observing the items up for bid, you notice something else that’s strange. The auction house has a large bucket of bidding tokens up for auction, and there is an equal amount of traffic around this item if not more than some of the other fine products. With such madness you decide to sit back and observe to see if anyone actually wins anything. After about 20 minutes you notice a handful of people gathered over one item. One guy makes a bid, and the auctioneer begins the final countdown. The remaining gents casually assumed that someone else would make a bid for the auction to continue. But as it turns out, everyone decided not to bid at the same time. The auction is over, and one lucky guy just scored a huge deal.
Thinking you’ve figured out a strategy, you begin to test your luck. You find an item up for auction that doesn’t have a lot of people around it. It happens to be a product you like, so you decide to start bidding. You figure that if the people around this item have been here for so long, they may eventually leave and give up. You start placing your first few bids when all of a sudden, twenty more people enter the door and begin bidding on your item. After realizing you’ve just blown through a good portion of your tokens, you begin to get really frustrated and walk away from the item you were bidding on. You move to another item and place a bid… you don’t win. You move to another item and place a bid…you don’t win. You look outside and see the sun coming down. Three hours have passed, and all you’ve done is run around in circles throwing away your money. You leave the auction house as you say to yourself “what the hell just happened?” You have just been Swoopo’d.
The real swoopo.com is a bit different than my description above. The biggest difference is that you can’t see who is actually in the room bidding. You can see who has entered a bid, but you don’t know how many eyes are looking at the same item you are. So if you thought going through the scenario I described was insane, just imagine doing it blindfolded. There are two conclusions you will make after experiencing Swoopo: 1. Boy was I stupid for trying this. 2. The people at Swoopo.com are making a ton of money.
Yes, the brains behind Swoopo are just that – brains. I would consider them genius. People that get angry with the site might consider it a scam, but I don’t believe in scams. I believe in stupid people, and yes, I was one of them. I can recommend Swoopo as much as I can recommend Russian Roulette. By no means should you try this site. Do not let greed suck you in. Stay away.
- The Crumb
Rating: 
Visit the website at your own peril: Swoopo.com
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This is true, but couldn’t you argue that if a site like this were brand new and not many people knew about it, bidders could get away with some amazing deals? A brand new site like this, for example, bidfire.com, it seems like the same few people have been winning all the auctions and the items have been going for ridiculous prices.. The company seems to be losing money in it’s early stages and that’s good for the consumer.
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July 27th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
That may be true Harry. But I think when you’re recommending a product or a website, you can’t rely on those circumstances. To tell people to go somewhere because they might score a deal is not fair to the consumer, especially when there is a strong possibility that they may loose their shirts. Let’s say you are right about bidfire. If you tell everyone to go there, and they all do, all of a sudden you are presented with the same problem as with Swoopo – too many people chasing after too few goods; people are going to lose.
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December 15th, 2009 at 8:04 am
Mr Crumb makes a good point. I have used and won on swoopo but for every winner there are a lot more losers and I would advise caution as this is essentially a gambling not an auction site. I have also used several other new sites of this nature and had much more success and gained some real bargains. Unfortunately genuine new sites do stand to lose money at the outset and three that I have used in the past have now stopped trading (one still owes me four items that I doubt will ever now be delivered). Of particular concern however is a site called crazybidders.co.uk who are a new site, but are using virtual bidders to essentially steal from their users. I know this as when the site was recently re-developed the bid patterns changed and on all auctions bids were continuously placed at the same time (7 seconds before end). Anyone who has experience of these sites will realize that no two auctions follow the same pattern so for all the auctions to receive bids at the same time is, not just once but over a period of hours indicates that these bidders are not of human origin. I did question crazy bidders about this but they surprisingly refused to comment. BE WARNED it’s a jungle out there.
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December 22nd, 2009 at 10:17 pm
I didn’t even think of the possibility that these sites may be stealing from their clients. Thanks for the input.
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hi there just read your review on swoopo and I agree that it is scam like. However I have been looking through the swoopo group on Facebook and see that there are a decent amount of winners celebrating their prizes.
If swoopo were more clear about this being more of a ‘prize bidding’ site as opposed to a shopping site then there would be no problems. Had I received the right first impression i would not of called it a scam.
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July 28th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Sure, SOMEONE has to win each product. I’d like to hear from a winner just to get their perspective, and what they did to win. I’m sure if you spend enough time on the site observing all the activity, you’ll increase your chances of winning, but I just don’t have the time or patience.
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check out new penny auction site called: http://www.bidsorbit.com/
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Not sure if Mr. Crumb has any comments on this new site but I’d like to hear them.
The other day I found http://www.BIDZONE.com. It’s an auction site except that the price of the good goes down rather than up like swoopo. The biggest difference that I’ve found when looking at other sites, is that BIDZONE actually reduces the price of the good by the full amount that you pay to bid on the item.
They’re currently offering free registration with 5 free bids to allow consumers to see if it’s something they’re interested in…
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September 16th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I’ll be checking this out. So far it looks like a Swoopo clone with minor changes to market themselves better.
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There is also http://www.beezid.com. Seems more serious to me, I received yesterday the item I won last week
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November 8th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
What did you win?
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i wonder if man-in-the-know has actually used crazybidders.co.uk because i have and have actually won quite a few auctions the latest being a macbook air, anyone who has played the game will know that if you use the autobid function then your bid will be placed in the last 10 seconds, not everyone has time to sit watching their computer screen all day. I have receieved any item i have won without question which is strange if all the players are virtual, i think man-in-the-know should be more concerned by the websites who took his money then when he won pissed off, i think he should change that name to man-who-knows-f**k-all
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