Swoggi penny auction site or scam?

scarynix

So glad I came here to check as just found it advertised on the promoted stories section on sky news app on iPhone from money expert. Phew lucky escape.

Pritam

I was the loser of !03 pounds they explain me info below 50p is one credit as a one bid is one pence 10 bid is 5 pounds 100 bids are 50 pounds 500 bids 250 pounds 1000 bids are 500 pounds as an example I phone is sold for 10 pound calculate 1000 pence is 50000 have your 500 pounds made, guess how many bidders will be on line or computer set bidding.

I never win the goods was bidding for apple mac laptop was sold for approx 178 pounds
pls see the information below reply in my argument i that,s how i calculated the information unfortunately this info is not in the term and condition
so this is scammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm



Reply from Swoggi To be able to participate to auctions on Swoggi, you just need two things. You need an open account with Swoggi (or Bonus) credits on it. You can get these by buying them with our secure payment process. You can chose Credits pack from £15 and above. To be able to participate to these auctions you will need to get credits that will appear immediately as soon as you buy them.
The credits allow you to bid on the products of your choice. One credit is worth £0.50 and allows you to place an offer on our auctions.
The credits are deducted from your account every time you bid.
One bid will raise the price of the product by £0.01, and each Credit you will spend on bidding is not refundable but you are given as many Premium credits as the Swoggi credits you have spent on auctions.
Each time you will purchase other Swoggi credits, there will be as many Premium credits that will be converted into Bonus credits as the number of Swoggi credits you have purchased.
If you win an auction, you will be allowed to purchase the auction's product through PayPal at the amount you have won it.
We draw your attention to the fact that Swoggi credits can never be used as a means of auctions' payments.
Unfortunately, in accordance with our T&Cs, we apply a £15 for any refund.
We cannot make differences between our customers.
Please let us know if you would like us to proceed to a £32.00 refund or if you would rather have your account re-activated with 20 bonus credits.

This will help to understand how this scammmmmmmmmmmm works

Stoke

There's nothing to understand. There's a simple phrase to sum this up:
"if it's too good to be true, it probably is". There's no such thing as a free iPad or a Mini Cooper for 30 pence. These sites are absolutely !!!!ing deplorable. I wouldn't lose any sleep if they burnt to the ground with everyone inside (and i haven't been scammed by them) but at the end of the day, the reason they continue to exist, is because people continue to use them.

Billesleygriffo

Let me tell you a story I know many of you have heard before, but think it's worthwhile as a warning for new comers (like me)...................

I feel annoyed at myself, as I was hoodwinked into creating a Madbid account on Saturday 30 January 2016 after seeing a sponsored ad on Facebook, which directed me to a Daily Mail article extolling the virtues of such a "wonderful discount auction site where you can get iPhones for £60!!" Can't remember if there were just two or four exclamation marks - but hey, I was drawn into the spider's web with starry eyes.

So, after depositing £34.99 of credits, plus then bidding and winning an extra £14.99 of credits for the sum of 1p (plus £1.99 delivery????), I was poised to bid for my first item of a Murphy Richards Food mixer valued at £499.99 the following Sunday afternoon, with bidding starting at 15.00hr.

I now know what you're all thinking - SUCKER!!! But I was already beginning to think I've made a big mistake here. As "bidding" starts at 1p and only increases by 1p every minute, I was in for a loooooong wait to see if I'd win it. 7 hours later bidding had reached £48ish and I was feeling a bit smug as the last food mixer had gone for £55 and I'd set my auto bid to kick in at £54.

Bids were incremented in units of 10 credits (so, 10p for each bid) and now having over £80 of credits (including 300 extra credits for completing a survey on my sexual dating activity - even though most of my answers were "No" as I've been happily married for 28 years!) I felt fairly confident the missus would be soon baking Victoria Sponges for the neighbourhood with our new kitchen gadget.

Imagine then my complete dismay when upon checking my pc screen after nearly 8 hours of bidding, the item sold for £48.67. Wounded, I then started to clear my head and think logically on how this site works.

The credits you buy are NOT an indication of the final price of the item you bid on. They are purely bidding credits. So for my 80ish pounds, I would have only 800 bids usage at 10 credits (10p) a bid. Then if you win, you have to then pay for the item - in effect paying twice.

And then on just the time it takes to "win" an item. Can you imagine the cars that are sold for thousands of £'s going up by 1p every minute!!

So on the Monday morning I logged into my account, started a web chat dialogue box with one of their customer service guys, and in simply explaining the auction site was not for me, and I realised it was beyond my ageing brain (honest!!) I was offered a full refund of the £34.99 and £2.00 for the extra credits I'd bought, with them seeing from my account I had not bid and actually won anything.

The refund was processed within 1 day, but the galling thing is that it took almost a week for the money to be credited back into my Paypal account (could see the refund being "processed" from my Paypal activity window, but it was not deposited until today - 8 Feb)

If you're not asleep by now, I can only offer one piece of sound advice - DO NOT JOIN MADBID UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Thank you and goodnight my friends :T

happyandrew_2

Yes I too fell for Swoggi, I thought I was reading an article from the Guardian news paper (although I am now starting to think it could not have been!) The reason I went and tried it was it said each bid was 0.5 cent, when actually it is 50p!!! But I found that out too late. You are right, it is a form of gambling, and they have thought this through. You will notice that no bids will end in the small hours of the night when most will be asleep and the bargains to be got, to make sure of this, at 11.00 each night, any bids with a few minutes to go will have "extra time" which is 10 hours, bringing it back to when everyone is awake again.

I think that there might also be an illegal part to this too, as some bids go over the actual value of the item!!! And how an iPad sells for £1.50 and not have a bid.... I have never seen one go for that.

Really Paypal should take some responsibility here, it should be more fussy with who it goes into business with.

Trickie_Dickie

I'm new to MSE and don't wan't to sound like a sanctamonious b******, but it should surely be pretty obvious to most folk that there is "no such thing as a free lunch".

I kept seeing amazing discount links, web tricks, tips etc to buy Apple branded kit for circa 10% of price. Tonight, out of boredom, I clicked and read on, to see where/how the con worked. It's quite clearly a con and nobody should ever be tempted to send SWOGGI any funds with any realistic hope of getting anything sensible back in return.

Reason I'm posting this here now is I was surprised to see a tab open in my browser purporting to be "Money Expert" it's really a scam look-a-like site (or in the legal jargon a case of "passing off") trying to trade on the reassurance and good advice found on this MSE site. Morally it should be stopped and perhaps MSE might look into attempting to limit their similarities via legal persuasion?

Clearly folk need to be beware of imposters, don't click unknowingly, try not to be too greedy seeking unrealistic bargains and generally remain a bit skeptical. Ask why anyone/website etc really wants to help you in particular? Ask what's in it for them and consider how they make their money? How do they fund their website and skeleton staff? For sure it isn't by selling Apple kit at 10% of market rates, because Apple as the Worlds wealthiest company don't/won't ever offer kit at anything like that discount to SWOGGI or any number of other scamsters. That just leaves one other principal source of revenue - unwary, naive punters prepared to send them money.

Best advice: stay safe, remain a little skeptical and try not to let greed overrule sensible judgements.

Run the numbers and the answers are usually clear!

Please don't get me started on the lottery.....

Granny_Sue

I received an email about this and thought it sounded quite good and I initially thought it was from this site as I only glanced at it. When I read it properly it wasn't from here, but 'Money Expert'.
Thank goodness I didn't rush into it.

makeyourdaddyproud

Trickie_Dickie wrote: »

I'm new to MSE and don't wan't to sound like a sanctamonious b******, but it should surely be pretty obvious to most folk that there is "no such thing as a free lunch".

I kept seeing amazing discount links, web tricks, tips etc to buy Apple branded kit for circa 10% of price. Tonight, out of boredom, I clicked and read on, to see where/how the con worked. It's quite clearly a con and nobody should ever be tempted to send SWOGGI any funds with any realistic hope of getting anything sensible back in return.

Reason I'm posting this here now is I was surprised to see a tab open in my browser purporting to be "Money Expert" it's really a scam look-a-like site (or in the legal jargon a case of "passing off") trying to trade on the reassurance and good advice found on this MSE site. Morally it should be stopped and perhaps MSE might look into attempting to limit their similarities via legal persuasion?

Clearly folk need to be beware of imposters, don't click unknowingly, try not to be too greedy seeking unrealistic bargains and generally remain a bit skeptical. Ask why anyone/website etc really wants to help you in particular? Ask what's in it for them and consider how they make their money? How do they fund their website and skeleton staff? For sure it isn't by selling Apple kit at 10% of market rates, because Apple as the Worlds wealthiest company don't/won't ever offer kit at anything like that discount to SWOGGI or any number of other scamsters. That just leaves one other principal source of revenue - unwary, naive punters prepared to send them money.

Best advice: stay safe, remain a little skeptical and try not to let greed overrule sensible judgements.

Run the numbers and the answers are usually clear!

Please don't get me started on the lottery.....

Good ol' fashioned capitalism: compelling, deceitful, avaricious - there will always be subscribers.

salop

Nevertheless Swoggi are pushing their luck masquerading as Money Expert to con people. So complain to Advertising Standards if Swoggi have angered you. I did.


Thank you for contacting the Advertising Standards Authority.

You may be interested to know that we are currently conducting research into sites such as Swoggi, with another site, Madbid, being the focus. As such, we will not be taking action with regards to individual complaints at this stage, and instead we are conducting broader research, which will include your complaint. We hope to have a clearer resolution in the near future, which will help advertisers such as Swoggi to comply with our Codes, which in turn will benefit consumers on a wider scale, as swiftly as possible

Alecj1950

extrapole wrote: »

I feel foolish to have fallen for this but cannot un-do what I have done .
Attracted by what appeared to be a good way to get high tech goods for a bargain basement price,I became a Swoggi Member and had to buy credits in order to bid for the items I wanted .Foolishly,I bought £250 credit because I thought I might have to go that high to get my hands on the iPad I wanted .
I started bidding and soon grew tired of having to bid constantly ,only to be outbidded at the last second .So,I decided to call it a day and cancelled my account .
And this is when the problem started ! I asked for a refund of the money left on my now closed account and was told by their "customer service" ,the matter was now in the hands of their refund department and that I would get my money -minus- £15 for admin - within three weeks .That was on the 2nd of May and now more than three weeks later ,I still do not have the funds refunded and worse ,they do not answer my emails .
I wonder if I am ever going to have my money back ?
Is Swoggi a scam or a genuine online auction site ?

Yes i"m another mug who fell for this clever scam.£28 down the drain. Be warned!