Deep Savings at Swoopo.com
I received a link from a buddy of mine the other day to a site that kind of blew my mind. Swoopo.com is a discount shopping site with lightening fast auctions that seems to work really well.
My first thought in seeing a site like this is to try and figure out the sites angle in how they make money. Usually if thats not apparent, then there is usually something amiss, but Swoopo makes it clear how it operates:
- Register with the site, supply your contact info and purchasing information. (Site uses https, but you may get a flag that not all content is secure. Check your browser)
- Purchase credits in order to bid on items. Each bid costs about $.60 (cheaper if bought in bulk, natch), and every time a bid is placed, a small amount of time is added to the ending auction time.
- There is no ‘reserve price,’ so if you found a rediculously expensive item, like a MacBook Pro or 47″ plasma and you are the winning bidder when time runs out, thats what you have to pay. Could even be $100.
- The average savings are listed across the site as well as the MSRP of the item and it seems exciting.
- Here’s their video:
Ok, so there must be a catch right? How can all these items be let go for so cheap? I am not sure to be honest with you. My first thought is that they are making money on so many people bidding at about $.60 a pop but I haven’t done the math yet.
The other hold back I see is that unless you have budgeted for something specifically, yit would be very easy to fall into the trap of “It’s just too cheap NOT to buy this.”
A few weeks ago, Frank and I went to Harbor Freight to look around and it was the same sort of thing: you had to really be sure that what you wanted to get you knew you were going to get somewhere else any way. Otherwise it was very possible that you would end up coming home with tools that you had no business owning. Deals are incredible there as well…might write about that too sometime.
So take it slow and do lots of window shopping and be aware that this site feeds of the compulsion to buy things you don’t need. For those things you do need, take a look and see if you can swoop in.
Related articles you might be interested in:
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader or email.
Comments
A far less risky way of shopping is http://www.spree4.com – with amazing savings to be had. Take a look, prices only go down, no bidding wars where someone can snipe you – this really is an exciting way to shop!
Hi,
After reading your post on swoopo a couple of days ago, I did some extensive research on swoopo. (two days worth!) I did some analyzing of how their system works and some research on google by typing in swoopo scam or swoopo reviews. It appears to be a very controversial site. Even their facebook page has some unhappy user comments that they don’t seem to respond to. I would be very careful in today’s society about where I would spend my hard earned money. It appears to have great deals but from what I found out a lot of the winners are humanbots not real people. In my research I typed in winner names plus swoopo into google. One of the winners won a side by side refrigerator in from their uk site and the next day won a side by side refrigerator from their usa site. Sounds pretty fishy to me. The analysis of what appears to be a ‘humanbot’ came out that typically their number of bids they placed to win the item came out to around 10% of the total bids coming in on the product. This analysis was on quite a few different winning humanbot users. A humanbot is a computer generated software program that makes it appear a real person is bidding when in reality it is a software program. My time spent researching this site was interesting to say the least. I for one though will not be spending my money with swoopo. Just thought you would like to know.
Well it doesn’t take much to figure how they can sell stuff cheap! The money is in the bid! I just saw a Kitchenaid mixer that goes for around 250. Lets say it goes on Swoopo for 120. OK it is a .02 auction which means each bid can only raise the price .02! To get to $120 there will have to be 6000 bids at .60 each… can you say $3600.00!!!!!
I love all these comments, thanks to everyones input.
@David: Thanks for the other sites (https://www.redbread.co.uk/default.aspx & the other one seems to be for something completely different?) Try not to spam your own site.
@John: Another good one, thank you. Lots of UK sites…interesting.
@Jo: Excellent findings. Yea, I was a little disappointed to see they had BidButler, where there was automatic bidding. And if customer service is an issue…then thats an issue.
@Matthew: Very true…they seem to be definitely covering their costs under the guise of you saving a bundle. Something to watch out for.
I heard that they use bots for this site, so humans usually don’t win, which means it’s a big scam. I wouldn’t recommend this site to anyone, and I kind of wish you’d take it down for the safety of other people.
This site (milkyourmoney.com) is supposed to help people save money, and this scam page is only making people throw their money away. :\
Just to be more clear, I don’t mean the BidButler when I said bots. I heard they actually have bots posing as human bidders, which are there to make sure no human bidder wins.
I’ve been using http://www.Spree4.com grabbed some great bargains so far, recommend it to all.
Agreed that Swoopo is a great website but they are not the only one. The online penny auctions industry is growing at such a great rate of knots. I think this may have something to do with the recession and people trying to pick up a ‘bargain’. Other great websites to definitely consider are redbread.co.uk and pbid.co.uk. I think you will find that more and more people will use penny auction websites once they learn of them.