Swoggi penny auction site or scam?

soolin

marcusjr wrote: »

It is misrepresentation according to many reviewers. This should be REPORTED to TRADING STANDARDS UK. Go to there website and report them and they will investigate and shut them down for fraudulent misrepresentation if necessary. If criminal activity they will have their ill-gotten gains taken away by HM Government.

This thread has been running since 2014 and swoggi have been reported to a number of official places on many occasions with no significant action taken against them. The easiest way to stop them is for people to use a bit of common sense when signing up to these sort of sites, if no one signs up then they will be forced out of business.

titch2k6

RHemmings wrote: »

BTW: I haven't fallen for the penny auction site scams.

Penny auction? This is what it is sold as. However, each click to place your 'penny' bid actually costs you £0.50 and in all fairness to Swoggi, they do clearly state this on their site:



So, let's just put this in prospective. A 2p bid on an item actually costs you £1 - a 10p bid will cost you £5.00 and so on. On Swoggi currently there is an iPhone 7 up for auction with a retail value of £719.00 stated by the site. Its current 'bid' value is £39.60.

In TOTAL bid value, participants have already currently paid £1,980 for the item to Swoggi! Just an 80p bid on the item by one individual would actually cost you the current auction price value in real money terms......

Is it a scam? I do not believe so under the definition of a scam. You are bidding against others on an item, therefore defining an auction. It will come down in the end to how many active bidders are on an item as to how much you pay through number of bids.

Is it 'gambling'? Yes:

Gambling is the wagering of money or something of value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning money or material goods

ANY auction you participate in, whether online or in an auction house is gambling by definition. You are 'gambling' on having the lowest high-bid to win an item.

I guess the main issue is the morality of these auctions.

A Nintendo Switch was recently sold for £221.56 on the site. As already pointed out, each 1p bid actually cost the bidder £0.50. That meant that (if you do the maths) Swoggi actually pulled in £11,078 for the item (retail value £375.00)!!!! How much did the highest bidder spend on winning the item, we will never know. It may have been only £2.00 (four bids) - it may have been £50.00 (100 bids), but to that person, it WAS a bargain.

At the end of the day it comes down to common sense, knowing your limits, understanding how the site actually works and good timing on the final bid.

RHemmings

titch2k6 wrote: »

Penny auction? This is what it is sold as. However, each click to place your 'penny' bid actually costs you £0.50 and in all fairness to Swoggi, they do clearly state this on their site:

Is it a scam? I do not believe so under the definition of a scam. You are bidding against others on an item, therefore defining an auction. It will come down in the end to how many active bidders are on an item as to how much you pay through number of bids.

I think I posted the bit you quoted years ago. BTW: I haven't ever used a 'penny auction' site. I personally was aware of the 50p (or however much it was in 2016) charge per 'penny', as were others on the thread. Hence, this isn't new information.

Having checked a dictionary entry for 'scam', Penny Auctions seem to be a scam to me under some of these meanings.

scam
skam/Submit
noun informal
1.
a dishonest scheme; a fraud.
"an insurance scam"
synonyms: fraud, swindle, fraudulent scheme, racket, trick, diddle; More

I would classify penny auctions as 'a dishonest scheme' even if they are legal.

There have been claims (which I have not checked out nor am I able to check out) that some penny auctions use bots to keep auctions going longer than they would otherwise do so. If this is true, then that would ramp up the dishonesty even more.

Some of the auctions have been promoted by a site that tried to imitate moneysavingexpert.com using a similar name. A number of people were deceived and thought that Martin Lewis had supported these schemes. I believe this did happen, and I think I saw that site myself. If so, that ramps up the dishonesty of the sites in my eyes.

There have been 'reviews' of these sites, sometimes with the 'reviewers' winning items at total costs that were a fantastic bargain, and winning auction after auction. I personally do not believe that these reviews were genuine, nor do I believe that it's realistically possible to win auctions in the way that is described. I also believe that these 'reviews' are planted by the penny auction sites. If this is correct, then that ramps up the dishonesty even more.

In total, my impression of these penny sites is that they stink more than a barrel of pickled fish that has been left outside for a week at the height of summer. I feel that they are incredibly dishonest, and for me that matches my definition of a scam. And the dictionary I consulted agrees with me. That doesn't prove I'm right, but is, in my opinion, enough to justify my usage of the word 'scam' as reasonable.

AndrewJeffers

So why is MSE peddling this fraud?

soolin

AndrewJeffers wrote: »

So why is MSE peddling this fraud?

They're not.

AaB_2

I thought I was following a link in a blog on MoneySavingExpert from a search, but it was actually an infomercial with a very similar name.
I do think this is a gambling site, and a scam.
I carefully read the T&C before I started and the 50p per bid charge was not in the T&C. It IS stated, but somewhere in the help menus.
I spent £166 on credits to bid for an iPad which eventually sold at £95.94 to someone else after I dropped out, not being able to bid further.
I still thought I would be able to refund my credits with a deduction of the £15 handling charge promised.
The infomercial said she won the goods for £70, but she must have paid more because of the 50p per bid charge.
At 50p per 1p bid, swoggi has taken £4797 from various mugs (clients?). They have told me they need to take my money to subsidise the cheap price they charge for the items!! and that I have used all my credits and am due for nothing, but as a goodwill gesture, they will credit me with 20 credits to bid again!!!

ballisticbrian

Perhaps complaints would do better by finding out how to complain to the Gambling Commission that the site is not clearly advertised as a gambling site?

Cardiff_f

I just almost fell for this scam after seeing it via a link headed money expert.

Thankfully I stopped just short of paying over any money and came on here to check Swiggi out.

RHemmings

I see that the confusingly named site with the, in my opinion, deliberately misleading review of Swoggi is still up after all these years. Shame. People are obviously being misled.