Myself and a few friends/colleagues have won great auctions on both the UK sites of swoopo and redbread so both 10/10 in my book. Both genuine companies who deliver what you see and what they say. Yes they may make money out of the bids placed on auctions but there are many opportunities for lucky normal punters like myself. So my advice in an ever increasing penny auctions industry is stick to proven websites like swoopo and redbread. The other sites, mmmm, not so sure, repetitive names, limited variety of products make it a no no for me personally.

Swoopo is a pretty genius idea imo as far as a business model! Get people to pay for every bid, continually increasing auction times with each bid as well the shear competitive nature of people in general really helps drive their revenues.

As for Luckberry.. it seems to be reliable. I’ve tried it several times, they have suchlike rules and offer decent items..
their young age turns out to be pre-eminence in this case. the fewer participants bid, the more chances of winning everybody has! close reasoning, isn’t it?;-)
i succeeded in winning lcd 65′ for eur 107 and saved eur 300, so i’m mightily pleased!! soon i gonna spend the left bids trying to win xbox for my son ;-) i’m more determined than ever!

ps. by the way no problems with delivery occured

These sites do indeed seem to be on the increase - I've been watching Swoopo for a few months (placed a few bids but no wins) and I've recently become aware of MadBid.co.uk and Bidwiz.co.uk, which seem to follow pretty much the same formula.

The most frustrating thing about these sites is that not only does the price keep going up, so does the length of time left on the auction! I agree with redbull, it is a great business model for Swoopo and their ilk, but feels as though it could be a little more fair to the consumer. Still, Luckberry sounds like it might be worth a look... :)

Not meaning to cause offence, but you feel stupid because you were stupid! I have never used Swoopo because, like the sensible (nothing to do with intelligence) initial poster, I decided to check out reviews of the site and get advice before I went and spent my hard earned cash having a go.

Yes, people can become addicted to all sorts of things, gambling, drugs, alcohol, but it takes FREE WILL to try these things in the first place - Swoopo is not forcing anyone to use their site. People should take some personal responsibilty for their own actions.

It really beggars belief that with the internet full of forum sites like this one, things on TV like Watchdog and Builders from Hell and the like, that people jump blindly and without thought into things like Swoopo.

At the end of the day, you do your research, you make your choice and you live with the consequences...it's called life!!

On the subject of other sites which may give you a better chance of winning - I just found one called doublebid where the timer doesn't keep jumping about and the prices come down with each bid! I think it's a new site because there doesn't seem to be a lot of activity but according to one of the earlier posts in this thread that could be a good thing as there are likely to be less people bidding.

And no, I haven't had a go yet - but I'm going to keep an eye on it... :)

Wow this debate is BIG! lol. Well I probably have a really good opinion to add as I have used quite a few of these sites.

How does it work: Well the formulas mentioned before are absolutely correct, the companies running these auctions are probably making a fortune, if all the math is correct which I believe it is. You pay for "bids" and then each time you press the bidbutton you lose one bid and the timer increases by a set amount (depends on which site you are using). The price will also increase by 1p. Last bidder when the timer reaches 0 wins and the rest lose the bids they invested in the auction!

I'm sure all posters on this will agree that the business model is nothing short of excellent.

This can be seen as gambling rather than auction but if you are interested in the concept who cares what it is classed as? Whether it is gambling, auction or entertainment shopping is really not a factor, lots of people like shopping, lots of people like gambling and lots of people like auctions. Either way they are onto a winner!

Now the sites are all different but Swoopo in particular caters for the international market rather than the UK only market. Obviously if you choose to use UK only you are going to have a much better chance of winning! The catch for the UK sites is that they do not tend to run into the early hours, probably not enough users, and so protect their losses they either pause all auctions or do not enter new ones to finish at those times. Another valid argument I've come across is the possibility of the "scam" element where the system can create fake users so the company does not make any losses, there is only one UK penny auction site that has attempted to remedy this argument and because of this is the one that I currently use!

I have not won on Swoopo in particular before but I have won on different UK penny auction sites, namely madbid and doobids. There is an obvious choice out of the two now due to the "scam" argument. Now let me delve into that argument some more so you can understand it better.

On ALL these auction sites you never know the details of who has won. This is because the sites will all say (quite fairly) that if users knew the details of other users they could form partnerships and/or groups that could form an unfair advantage to all other customers. Fair point, but it also leaves the "scam" argument open and active. Now knowing they cannot give out user details some are attempting to find other ways to re-assure us that they are genuine. One site has some pictures of previous winners and has the users location for all users to see, I personally don't feel this is enough. Another new site goes one step better and instead of attempting to give out some details, instead they say, upload your photo, preferably with your won products. Now I felt myself that this showed a commitment from them that they are attempting to respond positively to the "scam" argument. As such I have used them for the past 2 weeks and have won a number of products, they are new too so there is also as mentioned before a much better chance of winning.

At the end of the day you need to be interested in this to be logical in a discussion, people not interested will say "scam, stay away" others who have won will say "i won come see this site" which is pretty much spam as you do not know who wrote it. Other will be genuine customers like me who will give you both sides of the argument and include personal experience and lets face it, that is what this forum is all about!

The main players at the moment are: Swoopo (German company with International bidding), Madbids (UK company with UK only bidding) and Doobids (UK company with UK only bidding). There are smaller sites but to be honest are not worth the mention. Out of those 3 above I have my favourite but if you are interested I suggest you look at all three, Swoopo has been around the longest, madbids has been around 2nd longest and probably had the more UK press coverage mainly due to their mini cooper auction, Doobids is brand new....My opinion:

1. Stick to UK only sites therefore less users, more chance!

2. Find one that you believe in, does the site offer something that others don't? Is it listening to us?

3. Has the site attempted to respond to the "scam" argument? (This also ties in with No:2)

4. Do not bother with the last second bidding, the timer is going to increase whether you bid early or not!

If anybody has got any questions or wants to talk further post after this or mail/pm me directly. As mentioned above I've been around quite a few of these sites and am still a customer so have earned my stars! Hope this helps

Here is my view on all this jazz.

Penny auctions are here to stay so they somehow need to be regulated. Like the above user, I have used many of the sites as I was recommended by a friend who made at least £2,000 from winning stuff and selling it on ebay.

Here is my review of all of the sites I have used:

Swoopo - Pros - Cheap bids, exciting : Cons - Hard to win since they expanded to loads of countries

Madbid - Pros - UK only and big products : Cons - Expensive bids, also has become hard to win, add VAT and delivery, bit boring

Redbread - Pros - UK only, cheap bids : Cons: Slow delivery, rubbish website

Doodids - Pros - UK only, still unknown so easy to win : Cons: Slow customer service

Readysteadybid - Pros: Cheap bids, still unknown so really easy to win, no VAT or delivery : Cons: took 10 days to deliver, need to refresh page every now and again

Crazybidders - Pros: None : Cons: Crap website, timers jump back again and price increases even when no bid placed

BiddingMart - Pros: loads of products : Cons: Expensive bids

There are plenty of other sites but none to take note of. My rule of thumb is I will never use a site unless they have a telephone number and details of their address.

At the end of the day there is no point saying its a scam, blah blah blah, its not. It's just a very good business model. If you watch and play it well, you will win. Don't spend £10 and then complain you haven't won anything. You need to invest some time and money but it is well worth it if you do.

GL!

I have tried out a number of these penny bid sites, the best ones thus far i.e. those that don't prolong the auction offer decent goods are Swoopo and Madbid, I have had wins on both sites getting real bargains ( example £200 watch for £7 including postage). I received goods quickly and without any problems, so I have some experience of penny auctions.

I have also tried another on the advice of a member here. After trying this particular site I am under the impression that they are involved with it. The site I refer to is Doublebid. The idea on this site is you bid for items each bid lowers the price which is already 50% below market value.

On registering you are given 15 free bids to start with, however the clock counts down, there are no bidders, I found on a number of occasion's on placing bids in the closing seconds that suddenly another name will appear ahead of mine, Now I know people will say this is sour grapes as I did not win, but remember I am using free bids, so have nothing to lose.

I have even placed bids in the last second auction ends with my name, yet when I check the winners list there is another name. The other reason for mentioning this is that the winners names always tend to be the same 4 names. Now my reason for mentioning this that i have complained to Doublebid about this, their excuse is that these people placed bids a split second after me on every occasion. I mentioned snipe software, they confirmed it is not possible to use them on this site. So my question is how is it these same people can win bids in the last second every time. Is anyone here aware of winners from this site? Or is Doublebid a scam? How can they make money if there are no bidders?

I've been bidding on swoopo for quite a while, and yes it can be profitable, fun as well as frustrating sometimes. Of the imitation sites that have sprung up, the majority are frauds (see www.pennyauctionwatch.com for some good writeups), but not all. If you find an honest one, it can be a goldmine. The key metric is the relation of the bid price to the bid increment - the higher this is, the more money the site is making out of its userbase. On swoopo bids cost 50p and increments are between 1p and 10p. If an item went for near its retail price, users would have collectively spent between 50x and 5x the price.

There are sites that offer cheaper bids, but usually have only 1p increments - this means they are more like lotteries and less like auctions. I prefer to find sites with a better bid/ increment ratio. The headline prices may be higher, but you have a far better chance of actually saving money after cost of bids and of actually winning.

Ideally, you want to pick a site that hasn't grown as big as swoopo yet - you will not have as much competition. Every now and then these pop up and the time to bid is before they get big. Madbids was fine, although their bids are expensive relative to the 1p increment (it's basically a lottery). A nice one that's recently popped up is jingobid - they sell bids for below 40p and give lots of free ones as well. They don't seem to have as much traffic (or auctions) as swoopo yet - let's see how long they can keep that up!

I found a similar swoopo clone, FeeltheBid, I was wondering if they would have less people than swoopo, so in swoopo is so difficult to win...

And there's one think I don't understand, "express auction". Do you know what's this?

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

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.

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

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!

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!