Comments on: Is Swoopo Nothing More Than a Well-Designed Gimmick?

By: Richard Nuemayer

Richard Nuemayer — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:55:12 +0000

There is a new game in town, makes swoopo look like a pile of crap, has a very interesting bid system that isn’t a rip like swoopo engineered theirs, and lots of other lame gimmicks. It’s called eMaja and it’s pretty nice, and not so mickey mouse as swoopo, has a pretty fresh approach, and a novel bidding system. http://www.emaja.com

By: great2bme2

great2bme2 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:20:17 +0000

There’s a lot of these sites, such as Swoopo, popping up a lot now. Most, if not all, don’t comply with federal gaming laws but are so under the radar that it takes years for prosecutors to catch up to them and make a case.

One of copycat sites, 500DollarBid (http://bit.ly/500dollarscam), theoretically evaded prosecution by totally changing their format to comply with gaming laws. In fact, it was more of an MLM in appearance – plus they focused on a voucher system instead of physical product. It looks like the site content is changing frequently, so I’m still not sure if it’s even still in the same class as Swoopo, but it’s origins are the same. If it is working for them, perhaps others will follow suit.

We’ll see… for now, it sounds too good to be true still.

By: roadmax

roadmax — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:25:36 +0000

Did anyone ever watch the “Recently Sold For” price? It always seems to be just a little less than the current price. It continuously goes up as the the auction goes up. I love this new trend in America. Screw people as much as you can as fast as you can until the courts make you stop. Does any of the money actually get returned when the company finally does get shut down? We’re being taken advantage of.

By: MG

MG — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:46:18 +0000

SWOOPO IS NO DEAL!

After spending $75.00 to make bids, I realized too late that Swoopo likely should be regulated like a casino or lottery. Its not a scam, however, swoopo’s algorithem appears to continue to loop even after a reasonable person would believe the actual time counter would begin incrementing down. When one reads something like “the 10 second counter will start once $999.00 is reached” and, in fact, all that did was start a new counter with a different algorithem. – Ugh! I am sure someone eventually wins but like momma said, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Also, Swoopo is a major time and money suck.

In addition, and maybe its a coincidence, however, after registering at swoopo, I have yet to receive their invite email; however, my previously sanitary email adress/inbox has been flooded with spam.

I wish there was a way to pay them back for the fun I paid to have.

By: rhonda clark

rhonda clark — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:42:26 +0000

i had been trying to bid on a laptop on this web site.they have you buy bids from them and they must have bots bidding as well because when you get close the bots pop uo bids and you wind up losing alot of money and not even winning a thing.it is in fact a rip off and they should be ashamed of what they are doing. i am contacting the democrat gazette and the BBB. the way i figure they must have bots winning these bids is for one if you look they say somebody(yea sure thing) won an kitchenaid brand new commercial mixer for around 10.00. there is no way they could afford to sell an expensive top of the line for such a price.they are using kitchenaid to trap people and get them interested,acting like all of these people are winning these things and in the end they are stealing peoples money and keeping the merchandise.i am very angry. when i sent an email to ask them about loosing money just by bidding on an item it took over 2 weeks for a reply and the guy who wrote me back was playing dumb…i am very pissed and plan on taking this further.they deserve it.anybody can email me if you like i dont care who sees my email. im not the one ripping people off. rhondaroo65@hotmail.com

By: josh rosenthal

josh rosenthal — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:49:44 +0000

auctionshopper Says:
October 24th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
The people who slam on Swoopo for being scamming scum and then say they wish they’d thought of it slay me. Yeah, that’s something to shoot for, being a dishonest d0uch3b@g.

I’m surprised no one mentioned the shipping policy. As stated in their own terms: “An invoice containing the auction price and shipping costs will be sent to the user by Swoopo once delivery has been arranged.” So you don’t even know what the shipping costs will be until after you “win” the item and agree to have it delivered. Bet they really nail you on that, too.

IN RESPONSE: THE SHIPPING IS LIST AT THE BOTTOM OF ALL AUCTIONS. THE PRICES APPEAR TO NOT BE INFLATED AT ALL. I DO NOT THINK THEY “NAIL YOU ON THAT TOO”.

By: auctionshopper

auctionshopper — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:43:43 +0000

The people who slam on Swoopo for being scamming scum and then say they wish they’d thought of it slay me. Yeah, that’s something to shoot for, being a dishonest d*******g.

By: auctionshopper

auctionshopper — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:42:35 +0000

The people who slam on Swoopo for being scamming scum and then say they wish they’d thought of it slay me. Yeah, that’s something to shoot for, being a dishonest d0uch3b@g.

By: juruman

juruman — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:37:46 +0000

You forgot to mention that you can also bid on free bids. so technically you could just buy 20 bids and start bidding on a bunch of free bids, bringing your total bid price way down.

By: Greg Kennedy

Greg Kennedy — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:08:26 +0000

This semes to me like a variation on the “Dollar Auction”, which was put forth by Martin Shubik around 1971. You can read the specifics on the Wiki page – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction – but the gist of it is that while the winner takes the item, _every_ player has to pay in their bids as well.