|
|
Review 11/25/2010
|
|
I used to bid on Swoopo for nearly a year and then they allowed the entire site to be overtaken by a large group of bidders that worked together to win auctions. Once other people saw this large group working together then they too began using the same techniques and Swoopo did absolutely nothing to stop it from happening. In fact, their customer service basically just blew me off until I threatened to spread the cheating technique around the internet so at least everyone who bid on the site would have the same level playing field. After six months of reporting the cheaters every time I saw them cheating they finally escalated me to Jehnna Koch who is the supposed customer service manager at Swoopo. She took the list of users that I provided her that were cheating and she closed some of the accounts for fraud, only to have a number of them reopened inexplicably by the German office. I found this suspicious and began to think these accounts were actually Swoopo accounts, but it wasn't until they began questioning how I knew people were cheating that I became fully convinced that Swoopo is a scam site that either bids on their own auctions or that at least one of their German employees has a group of friends that they work with to win auctions. When they asked me how I could verify if people were cheating I explained that everyvtime a bidder reset their bid butler it would go off so it was easy to tell when they were turning it on and off to allow the single bidder they were working with to win the auction. The next day the bid butler was changed so a bid would no longer go off. I thought this was either a very strange coincidence or they changed their system so I could no longer tell when people were cheating. I thought I would test my theory that they were involved so when Jehnna, the customer service manager, asked me how it was that I was able to provide them with lists of auction numbers and bidders who were involved in the auctions I explained that I would search Google for the bidder names so I could see what auctions certain bidders would be on together, showing that they were working together because there would be a long list of auctions that would come up in the search. I figured by telling them this if the auctions no longer showed up when I did a Google search it would confirm that Swoopo was in fact making changes on their end to assist the cheaters and make it more difficult for me to know when people were cheating. It wasn't a week after I told them about my Google search technique that the auctions were no longer showing up on Google, validating my belief that they are involved with the cheating on their website. There continues to be a large number of individuals who cheat on auctions at Swoopo, and even though I have provided them with a large number of auctions showing the overlap and collusion of bidders and somehow this isn't sufficient to prove cheating to Jehnna Koch. Swoopo is a shady business and their business practices are highly questionable and unethical. I asked Jehnna directly to explain to me how these changes were made to their site shortly after I had explained these techniques to them and she never bothered to respond to my email. I am sure she didn't have an explanation for it, other than that Swoopo participates in this cheating!
A large group of users continue to work together to win by having one person have the bid butler and then one single bidder bidding later and later when the auction gets to 1 second. Eventually others will stop bidding because they think the single bidder is going to continue bidding at 1 second and when they don't the bid butler wins. Watch how late people bid at one second - that's the dead give away. The other tactic is to have the bid butler and then have a single bid as well and then they shut the bid butler off letting the single bidder win. Their tactics are constantly evolving so you just have to watch and pay close attention to bid patterns. When you are skilled enough you can see it from a mile away. Unless you are Swoopo - they have no idea, mostly because they only look at data. None of them even know a thing about the auctions and they don't have anybody even watch the auctions as they are going live. I highly recommend finding a different penny auction site, as Swoopo is not a fair auction site and is getting worse all the time. In my opinion the site is a total scam, but that is just from my experience.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|