Swoopo Review - Is Swoopo Legit Or a Scam?

In case you haven't heard, Swoopo is a new auction website but its very different to Ebay. The main differences are that Swoopo auction their own stuff, there are not any third party sellers flocking there stuff like on Ebay. The stuff that is sold on there is mostly the latest electrical gadgets, so at the moment you can find the latest consoles, console games, digital cameras and HDTVs.

You have to pay to bid on the auctions, yes you did read that correctly, you have to pay $0.75 or £0.40 for every bid that you place.

According to Swoopo the goods that are sold are 60% less than the high street retail price. This is where the scam part comes in as to how can Swoopo afford to sell these things at such low prices? Its simple, because they charge for bidding, that's what makes up the price of the item.

Let me give you an example, I just checked on Swoopo's site for a recent auction that ended and I came across a Sony Bravia 40" LCD TV which sold for $23.31, RRP on this is $1899.99. but its not as simple as that....let me explain.

The above auction was a penny auction, so what that means is that the bidding will start at $0.00 and it will go up by a penny each time a bid is placed, so $0.01, $0.02, $0.03 and so on, and for every bid placed the bidder will have to pay Swoopo $0.75.

Now if you do the maths, for the price to reach $23.31 there must have been 2331 bids placed at the rate of $0.75 so that comes to (2231 x $0.75) $1673.25, so Swoopo in reality in not losing out, it is still in essence making good money. Granted this amount is less than the RRP, but I am sure they pick up this stuff at wholesale prices and the price shown here is the retail price.

Let me just come back to the buyer again, the buyer placed 295 bids to win this auction, so he spent (295 x $0.75) $221.25 in bidding, he paid $23.31 for the price he had bidded and then a further $9.90 for shipping. So all in all he paid $254.46 for a $1900.00 TV, now I would call this a good deal.