Swoopo Review - Glam or Scam

Depending on who you are, Swoopo is either

1) the greatest thing since sliced bread,

2) the biggest scam since the pyramid scheme or

3) a business model that's pure evil genius.

Swoopo is considered an online auction site that's pretty much everything eBay is not. Swoopo is a place where authentic, warrantied, in-the-box items like laptops, video game consoles, HD Tv's, washing machines and other products that would otherwise cost hundreds or thousands of dollars, end up selling for a fraction of that price.

Example = Playstation 3 Console $299 Retail can sell on Swoopo for $27.16

The main difference between Swoopo and eBay is that items on Swoopo can be found for a fraction of the regular retail price. The bids - which raise the price of the item by 15 cents - cost the bidder $1 each time he raises his/her virtual paddle. It doesn't sound like much - but when bidding wars begin over hot-ticket item, Swoopo (and its investors) turn out to be the winners - $1 at a time.

Swoopo, which initially launched in the U.K more than 3 years ago, has been in the U.S. for about two. The timing may prove to be surprisingly wise, considering that economy has consumers scouring for a bargain at the same time that the best known online auction site - eBay - is seeing some rocky times in the auction business.

You might be asking, "Why is there a price if this isn't an auction?"

The funny part is that for a lot of the "auctions" there is no price! These auctions have fixed prices, (the "100% off" have a fixed price of $0.00), and you can see from these that the price displayed is, more or less, just a counter for how much Swoopo is pocketing!

Take for example a high end digital camera with a fixed price of $79 plus $12 for shipping. The "price" on this "auction", which I am looking at now as it is still active, is $828. This number is completely irrelevant unless you are interested in how much Swoopo is making. Since that number increased one "bid" at a time by $0.15 and each of those "bids" costs someone a dollar, that means there have been over 5500 bids!

$5500 in Swoopo's pocket and the game is still going! You can see how it is no problem for them to send the lucky winner a $1500 digital camera for less than $100 when they made so much money from the game.

Some of the games are not fixed price, and so the winner of the game wins the item but has to pay $0.15 for each "bid" that was placed. On these games there is, I guess, (and I am being generous here), some semblance of strategy, since each subsequent bid is worth a little less. For example, the first bid on a $300 XBOX 360 is a chance to get a $300 item for $0.15, but the 100th bid is a chance to get a $300 item for $15.00, which is worth a little less. I guess the strategy is to wait until the price is high enough to weed out a lot of players and thereby increase your chances, but PLEASE keep in mind you chances are still SLIM!

In conclusion, Swoopo is not a scam. If it were, it would have been shut down long ago. I would simply prefer you refrain from the word "auction" when talking about Swoopo. Swoopo is basically like scratching tickets at the convenient store. You put a few dollars down at a time and hope to win. If you don't, it's not the end of the world. You DO have a chance of winning something hot for a very low price. Just be careful when bidding on an item, and down spend your stack too quickly!

Gambling is fun. (No real need to elaborate here)