Swoopo

[[GSV]Trig]

Wtf is this thing, seems a bit dodgy to me but noticed the ad at the top of the screen and clicked on it....


http://www.swoopo.co.uk/


Does it sound dodgy to anyone else or is it legit?

[IBM]

The fact that the landing page counters just reset every time you refresh the page makes me a little suspicious.

[Stinga]

Definitely looks Dodgy to me

[directhex]

It's a legit pyramid scheme.

1) You pay per bid
2) You are bidding globally
3) Items may not exist (i.e. listings are placed for items not held, the item is bought using the huge profits from the sale)

[MadduckUK]

i just got two canon 450d's and a nikon d90 with enough change from £200 to pig out at mcdonalds.....

nope - not really, what is this? one of those "pay something even if you don't win" things?

edit: well according to dirhexy yes, yes it is

[Vroomparrot]

"eBay's (more) evil twin", apparently.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01...oopo_startrup/

[finlay666]

It's not new

There was a big thread about madbid.com and similars in the retail therapy board recently

[Whiternoise]

Yep evil evil evil..

Of course you might win at £2.04 for a Wii, but at 50p per bid for each penny, they make a copious profit on every auction..

Oh and if you watch the auctions, notice that the time jumps back up when people start bidding at the low <15 second mark.

[Pob255]

Yes it's a cleaver scheem to make *them* money.
you bid at 1p per time, each bid can cost up to &#163;1 to make depending on the site and each bid increases the length of time the auction is on for.

Tradeing standards were looking into these sites, to determin if they are actually class as "gambling" under uk law. (cannot rememberthe outcome)

[SourceQuench]

Does anyone know anyone that actually won anything off this site? Seems like they make a lot of money off it.

[MadduckUK]

i dont even know anyone that's used it :/

[Zak33]

Swoopo is perfectly explained here

[0iD]

You deserve a pimpslap for that young man!

[MadduckUK]

Swoopo is perfectly explained here

oh now i understand it! all about the HA0 's!!

[cptwhite_uk]

You bid, your bid does three things:

Adds a small amount of time to the remaining left on an auction (say + 3 seconds)
Costs you 50p to place every bid you make
Your bid adds 1p to the cost of the auction

On popular items you'll see the bid time go down to 2 seconds, then 30 people bid on it at once, the price goes up 30p, the time left increases to 1min 30 seconds, and Swoopo makes &#163;15 profit. This then repeats continuously until the bidder fall off because the price eventually isn't a bargain anymore and some sod whos been at at there PC for 5 hours trying to snag a bargain has actually paid &#163;26.50 in bids + the price of the item they won, which is probably &#163;3 cheaper than what they could have bought it for in a shop at the point they won it.

What fun.

[Zak33]

You deserve a pimpslap for that young man!

was hoping for Agent to fall for it