Swoopo.co.uk - I need your help

michael1983l

I originally asked Martin to take this on but I think he may be a bit too busy at the moment as I have not heard back.

Ok I will do a quick overview of swoopo.co.uk for those of you that don't know what it is. It basically is an auction site by their own description, where you buy bids at 50 pence a bid and hope to be the last person to bid on that item in order to obtain it at a knockdown price.

Take my own experience for example the swoopo auction I entered had 13,450 bids placed against it totalling £6715 and a final price of £127.73 totalling £6842.73 for an Item that usually retails at £749.99. A complete scam - heres the link to my auction if you want to take a look yourself

http://www.swoopo.co.uk/auction.html?cm_re=Homepage-_-Grid-_-1%2f2%2fPicture&aid=189447

Now apart from the obvious scam here is my complaint, they have apparently been cleared by the gambling commision as not being a gambling website, however judging by the rules stipulated on the Gambling Commissions own website I tend to disagree completely

The rules of which are met by swoopo taken from your definition of a lottery

A complex lottery is where:

• Persons are required to pay to participate;
• One or more prizes are allocated to the participants;
• The prizes are allocated by a series of processes; and
• The first of these processes relies wholly on chance.

You will see that all of those rules are met whilst participating in bidding on swoopo, I will explain how.

Firstly you have to purchase your "bids" at 50 pence a bid.

Secondly the "auction" that I place my bid on will contain the "prize"

To win this "prize" you must be the final person to make a "bid"

No matter how many "bids" you "purchase" you cannot guarantee being the last person to "bid" before you run out of "bids" yourself.

here is the link for your own reference

http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/Client/detail.asp?ContentId=259


Now what I want to do is stop people being scammed out of their hard earned cash just like I was, I want to start a campaign against these people starting with getting the authorities to treat them as a lottery. I splashed £700 on nothing, which was my own stupid fault, but I originally only expected to spend £200 or so to win judging by history, once this went I got desperate to try and win my money back.

What I need is a bit of expert advice, legal hopefully and possibly a lawyer to volunteer to take this case on as I cannot afford to pay for one and this is for the good of the people.

I am happy to go public against these people in order to stop people having their cash stolen immorally in my opinion by Swoopo.

Can anybody help?


Thanks


Mike

4743hudsonj

i know what your on about but its not a scam at all and its nothing to do with chance, just timing.

if you go on at busy times then you will be outbis and the timer will never get to 0. so you need to go on at low peak and concentrte on one item and whenever you are out bid you need to re bid immediately to improve your chances o winning.

i personally bought 20 bids and won 50 bids at like 4am in the morning and then went on to win a slr camera for a total cost of £60.40

and another lucky sod near me won a mini cooper (new stlye) fully modded so it was worth thousands and he got it for under.5k

michael1983l

4743hudsonj wrote: »

i know what your on about but its not a scam at all and its nothing to do with chance, just timing.

if you go on at busy times then you will be outbis and the timer will never get to 0. so you need to go on at low peak and concentrte on one item and whenever you are out bid you need to re bid immediately to improve your chances o winning.

i personally bought 20 bids and won 50 bids at like 4am in the morning and then went on to win a slr camera for a total cost of £60.40

and another lucky sod near me won a mini cooper (new stlye) fully modded so it was worth thousands and he got it for under.5k

People win on the lottery too, good luck.

soolin

There are threads about this and other similar companies all over MSE usually with warnings to steer clear.

4743hudsonj

michael1983l wrote: »

People win on the lottery too, good luck.

well the lottery decides a winner independant of the players

swoopo requires activly bidding in order to win and it enables users to choose what to bid on and when all of which alter the chances of winning

in this sense it is simply an auction

in the same way ebay doesn't guarantee a win

so thats why its classed as an auction and not gambling

as for staying clear, i advise just using with caution

its good in small amounts and if you bid on smaller items at off peak times but if in the wrong hands its crippling.

michael1983l

4743hudsonj wrote: »

well the lottery decides a winner independant of the players

swoopo requires activly bidding in order to win and it enables users to choose what to bid on and when all of which alter the chances of winning

in this sense it is simply an auction

in the same way ebay doesn't guarantee a win

so thats why its classed as an auction and not gambling

as for staying clear, i advise just using with caution

its good in small amounts and if you bid on smaller items at off peak times but if in the wrong hands its crippling.

It is gambling because you have to buy a bid or a ticket, just like in a raffle. You can bid as much as you like and more bids will increase your chance of winning but never guarantee it. Trust me it is gambling, as stipulated by the gambling commisions own guidelines.

4743hudsonj

michael1983l wrote: »

It is gambling because you have to buy a bid or a ticket, just like in a raffle. You can bid as much as you like and more bids will increase your chance of winning but never guarantee it. Trust me it is gambling, as stipulated by the gambling commisions own guidelines.

no because it doesnt meet the criteria of chance. IF you bought a bid and then entered once, then a computer selected a winner at random (lets say the payment system worked similarly) THEN it would be gambling, as you say it would be like a raffle

but at the end of the day, this is not chance at all, you are making a bid, and that bid garuntees you a win providing you are not out bid, that makes it an auction, and therefore not gambling

where are you getting this idea of chance

for example, an exaggeration of your piont is that you are gambling in the eyes of the law when you go to the shops in town. Wou make a clear, active decision to purchase an item but that does not garuntee someone will beet you to the last one and you will return with nothing

i know its a far fetched idea but as i said its an exaggeration of your point and the fundamentals of where chance comes into it still applies. Its an auction, same as ebay but with a different bidding system.

Littlemiss27

There was an article on the BBC news last december about these sites.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7793054.stm

4743hudsonj

Littlemiss27 wrote: »

There was an article on the BBC news last december about these sites.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7793054.stm

like i said i see where people are coming from and it does resemble gambling but ultimately it is not as there is not an element of chance that is required for something to be classed as gambling

michael1983l

4743hudsonj wrote: »

no because it doesnt meet the criteria of chance. IF you bought a bid and then entered once, then a computer selected a winner at random (lets say the payment system worked similarly) THEN it would be gambling, as you say it would be like a raffle

but at the end of the day, this is not chance at all, you are making a bid, and that bid garuntees you a win providing you are not out bid, that makes it an auction, and therefore not gambling

where are you getting this idea of chance

for example, an exaggeration of your piont is that you are gambling in the eyes of the law when you go to the shops in town. Wou make a clear, active decision to purchase an item but that does not garuntee someone will beet you to the last one and you will return with nothing

i know its a far fetched idea but as i said its an exaggeration of your point and the fundamentals of where chance comes into it still applies. Its an auction, same as ebay but with a different bidding system.

There is a large element of "chance" as the website gives no indication of how many people are watching the auction and how many bids these individuals have. Meaning I could have a million bids and still lose by chance that there is a person with a million and 1 bids in reserve. This is gambling and I will not stop my quest until I get results with or without peoples help.

michael1983l

Littlemiss27 wrote: »

There was an article on the BBC news last december about these sites.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7793054.stm

I think the fact the gambling commision has said they will keep an eye on the situation is a givaway that there is some element of gambling present.