Tried SWOOPO for the first time last night. probably wont try it again. Will cut my losses. Things I noted which concerned me:

1. there is a rule that all bidbutler bids cant start until £1- past current level but they showed winners on less than a pound that were bidding with bidbutler. Whats that about????????????

2. If you want to make a last seconds bid just check to the right of the screen. 'In front' of the bid history list are little 'men icons' standing as if they are watching the list. I think they are there to let you know how many people are on-line watching the auction. If in the last seconds there are a few there, it means someone may have the same idea as you and whack a last second bid on which puts the clock back 10 seconds. I think the secret is to make sure no-one else or as few as possible are there with you when you bid (which is unlikely) so you effectively take your chances when you bid.

3. The clock going back isnt a con, its the equivalent of an auctiuoneer saying 'going, going, come on, anyone else bidding...gone!' This principle is fair enough if you weren't paying for your bids and being beaten is no loss to yourself but when you have 'invested' many 50p bids it makes it become a gamble!

I shall watch SWOOPO for a few days I expect just to see if I can catch something un-expectedly, but I doubt it somehow. As soon as an auction (which can be linked to several other items runing concurrently) hits 10 seconds a 'little man crowd' seems to appear blowing your chances!

Hope this heads up helps someone out there. Good luck.

Con Con Con

made the mistake of going on this site paid £17 made 8 bids then logged off, couldnt get logged on again then when I did they said I had no credit have sent 10 e-mails to find out what is going on just bet a standard e-mail reply

AVOID AVOID AVOID ITS A CON

Hey Anna

Don't be sorry, nothing wrong with your brain it's the idiot who can't read that's got the problem !

do you really think you can win with 20 bids? There are many guys who invested much money, and won many items to win now a tv with just 20 bids. Or some have luck. But mostly you have to pay 30% or 40% ! But therefore you have to use analysing tools like bidfight.net . Only then you have a chance, because every good player has his information platform. And this is what you dont have!

Is there a way that a company can apply exciting auctions like what Swoopo, Madbid and Exceet offer, and still not cross over into an area where users feel duped or scammed? Personally, I don’t think that it’s possible if the operator of the auction is also the one listing the products. When this happens the operator has the exact opposite interest to their client. In other words, Swoopo only wins when their client loses! And I can’t see around this issue when the operator of the auction is listing the products.

It would be the same as Ebay only auctioning products listed by them…of course no one would trust them! And fair enough. I believe it is only when the operator can impartially operate a market that they can truly be trusted. In this instance the operator of the auction only wins when users are happy and keep coming back.

Note: This post has been moderated. Please ensure you read the moneysupermarket.com Content & Community Standards before posting. Thanks.

i *** you not. I waited four weeks for my tv to arrive. I complained nearly every other day but it arrived. I paid £149 for it and im chuffed to bits.

Swoopo is a SCAM, keep clear. Before I joined I seen an auction for a DSLR Camera for under £25 so I joined and bought £10 worth of bids, then bought the camera. 4 days later I get an email saying there was a "software glitch" and they were not selling it for that amount so withdrew my sale...what a surprise!

Also watched an auction for a TV, it went to 5secs so i started bidding, then bidbutler put on 20 bids to increase the timer just as people started bidding. I went out, came back 3 HOURS later and the auction was still running, just below the 10 second mark....what a rip off. I was lucky as i only bought the minimum amount of bids before I realised it was a con.

They attract you in with low priced items but YOU will never win them. If you have any sense you will keep clear.

If it looks too good to be true, that's because it is!

yes, i won some things with swoopo. its cool, it takes just a few days or a week.

opscon did you every receive the items from swoopo? If so how long did it take, cheers

hi, i was wondering has anyone had problems with items not being delivered on time from swoopo?

I've had success at spree4.com on Amazon vouchers. Also keeping my eye on the PS3 that's on a guaranteed £10 auction. It's pretty low now and I will be the one to win it!

Great info - thanks.

I've never bothered going onto Madbid - it just seemed too good to be true. They seem to be very creative with their advertising. Have you noticed to get people hooked, all their past winning items on display are for pennies - literally. I know that is not the case cos if you watch the site are ending for a lot more than the advertised past winners shows. So I guess if you only use that page to calculate the success of the site then the figures will not add up!!

As for the sites that close at certain times of the day, the site I used and won on :) was simplybids. I must admit I saw it the opposite to you in that I felt that maybe they had to close cos there are real people/site and didn't leave it to the computer to set bidders etc... Also if they have limited members as a small site, even those members can't keep buying bids ALL the time. Even though I bought a lot of bids and won, which is a great incentive, you've still gotta control the urge to keep buying and run the risk of not winning again for a while!! I'm happy with my win, and will go back to simplybids after I've enjoyed the pleasure of winning a bit longer!

Hi,

Some great threads re Swoopo here.

I think the online penny auction business is one that seems to be growing at a blistering rate of knots both in the UK and on the other side of the Big Pond. I personally have used a few UK penny auction sites, some are great but some have HEAVY question marks against them. I can only comment on the sites I have used and for fear of legal retaliation I have refrained from commenting certain things about some sites who, when scutinising closely have massive flaws in their busines model that simply would not afford them to be sustainable or trustworthy. If anyone does find an ounce of information from my comments that helps them then this has been worthwhile.

1. Swoopo.com - Probably the largest site of all. No problems with the authenticity of this site at all probably just a little too difficult to win on for my liking. Nice clean website though that appears like a candy shop for shopaholics like myself. Recommended

2. Redbread.co.uk - Great auction site. Not sure how long they have been operating but like Swoopo they offer a huge range of products to be won and more often than not the latest gadgets as they appear on the high stree. I have won a few things on Redbread and they arrived promptly. Nice user friendly website. Recommended

3. Madbid.co.uk - I have used Madbid without success thus far unlike those lucky people who have won cars and motorbikes. How do Madbid do it? I spent a few minutes calculating Madbids potential revenue figures based on the prices (that are in the public domain) that the items sell for and I have to say I was somewhat startled. These guys appear to take huge huge losses overall which gets me thinking straight away. Nice clean website and easy to naviagte around it but really there are too many question marks about Madbid to make it attractive to me.

4. Plbid.co.uk - I think this website is relatively new and does not offer much by way of product range but I am sure as time goes by it will increase its product range.Worth a dabble!

One point that you may wish to consider when deciding what auction site to use is this. If auctions continue to run by people placing bids, why on earth do some auction sites pause auctions or only allow auctions to run up until a certain time of the day? Surely if people are placing bids at say 10pm why would you want to 'close the shop'? This has always baffled me. Is it because the owners of these websites need to keep a watching brief on the auctions and couldnt possibly do this if they are running for most of the day? Interesting thought and next time you are reviewing auction websites why not take a look and see which sites close down at certain times of the day. I dont think their is a need to close or am I missing a point?

Good luck!!

Sara

I tried to follow your advice and checked out some of the other sites. It does seem to take a long time to win an item that only goes up a penny every 3 mins. Not only that, but when bidding against so many others you need nerves of steel. I bought some bids and placed them on one item only, but to be fair, you need to buy so many bids to be with a chance. One hundre bids may seem a lot but it's only worth a pound whilst bidding.

So I found a new site simplybids that isn't big yet and bought lots of their bids and just placed all my bids on one item only. I wasn't the only one with that plan though and there were about 3 other "big" bidders against me. I was bidding something worth nearly £800 so to use a quarter of that in bids seemed value for money. The other new aspect as in the point made by the above author, is the fact that the item was going up at10p a time.( I saw the other night they had some going up a pound a bid) which meant I didn't use all my bids up just to get it to a few pounds.

I think the strategy of having high bid increments means that users can very quickly make a decision to either keep going or end as the value of the item goes up quicker. So for example, In a minute duration auction it takes one hour for a penny auction to get to just 60p, whereas it can get to £6 in the same time if the increments are 10p a minute. this seems to make the auctions end quicker.

I think Swoopo is far too big to have any real strategy that will work and so it is pure chance as to how you will perform. Try the smaller newer sites with varied bidding options. simplybids unlike swoopo has a smaller user base as it only launched in the last month from the info on it's website.

The site is basically a gambling site although you do have the option to use your bids as money off if unsuccessful.

However I have spent a thousand pounds and have only "won" a camera - This has still not been delivered !! Be very wary