swapitshop.com > Reviews > Swapitshop - IMPORTANT NOTICE

Author's product rating:   

Layout & Design	Excellent
Navigation	Excellent
How fast is this website?	Satisfactory
Quality of the Content	Good
Range of Services / Products	Good selection

Advantages:	get rid of old stuff, easy to use site, the middleman
Disadvantages:	young children, reliability   -  is now closed

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Please read bottom of opinion for update...

I have been using Swapitshop for a while now, have experienced both sides of the site, so here is my story...

Firstly, you must register. You log-in with your email address and a password, but your bids are shown by a nickname. Good, do not want people having my email address, although it is on Ciao…different. Two minutes later you must start thinking about what you can do. Well, not a lot really. If you start looking for things, you will find that you cannot have much! So, what you must firstly do is look through your CD rack, bookshelf, toy box, card collection etc. and put it up for auction if you do not really want it anymore. Well, before you do that, have a good look round the site, and get familiar with it. Why? Because you will need to know where to go to do certain things, and the more familiar you get with the surroundings the better it will be for you. Second thing to do is to look at similar items to those which you want to put up for auction. This will give you some indication about the number of swapits (more on them later) that you will need to put your items up for.

The thing is about swapits is that, fair enough that the site does not operate in cash, no problems with that, but new members will have no clue about the system. That is why I strongly advise you go around the site and have a gander. There is no clue about swapits value. You do get fifty swapits for joining, so it is not like you cannot go straight ahead and start bidding, but you will probably only get to bid for small items like posters for example with that amount.

The real bidding can only begin when you yourself have swapped something. To put something up for auction you simply go into the section, click on the appropriate category, then click on ‘add an item’. The main categories are:
Bookshop,
Cardtrader,
Gameszone,
Musicspace,
Sportscene,
Toybox and
Videostore.
You must then enter what the item is, e.g. "Dookie by Green Day" give a brief description e.g. "Fantastic album by American rockers, includes hits such as Longview and Basketcase." You must then add a starting price bid and a final price. The starting price is the lowest anybody else can bid at, and the final price is the price which will automatically close the session, and the product is no longer up for auction. If nobody chooses the higher price, but bids near the starting price, the item is still up for swapping until the seven days from when you originally put the item on the site is up, until the highest bid is accepted. If nobody bids for your item, you will get an email telling you that you have a seven day extension, and you can then edit the starting and final bid prices.

If you have just swapped one of your products, you will get an email straight away telling you that somebody has just won the bid for your item. You will get told the amount of swapits that the item went for. What you must then do is post the item to Swapitshop. This is a huge advantage, as the control of each swapped item can be monitored. You then have to write your member number and the transaction number on the envelope/package, and send it off. You will be credited with the swapits three days after swpaitshop have sent your item to the winning bidder. The advantage here if you have bid and won an item is that you know that Swapitshop will prevent you losing your swapits if the item does not arrive. Although this would be disappointing, you will not lose your swapits. That is the advantage of having the middleman.

The likelihood is that you will receive an item you have bid for a few days after you have done so. If Swapitshop have not received the item from the sender within a few days they will send them an email, a couple more days ‘a stronger email’ as they put it! Not me, I was waiting for someone else to send an item. So, the whole swapping process is pretty simple, and is relatively easy to do.

Well, tell a lie, this is easy to do if you are (not being rude) capable of this. By this I mean younger children who may just put things on the web, and not fully understand the whole concept of the website. It has been advertised on TV recently (I think) and looks to be aimed at the younger people in this world. My worry is that they will join the site (no problem) put items up for swap (no problem) but not fully understand how the swapping happens. (problem!) If you are under thirteen years of age, you must get parental consent. You can lie I am sure. If you are under thirteen and reading this, do not lie, you can get thrown off the site. Ducking out of a deal will not get you punished though! I think you should be docked of some of your points if you fail to send in an item, as it is unfair on the bidder.

Not being a parent so this does not apply to me, but a child could easily bid for items which they should not really bid for! Eighteen/fifteen certificate films for example, or CD’s with parental consent stickers. There are not any porn magazines (that I have seen, not that I have searched…) or anything on the site, but a parent should still monitor what is being bid for.

The website itself is very…attractive…particularly to young people! It is all very colourful, very easy to navigate, and the links are all big and easy to click on etc. The site is easily mastered after you have used it for a while, with all the items you have up for swaps having a link, the items which you have a bid in, and other hardly used links in the ‘your account’ page.

My one main disadvantage argument point is that not everyone puts a clear label on their swaps, and so sometimes you are not always 100% sure about what you are bidding for. But in this case it is probably best to not bid. Only bid if you are sure. I recently won a bid on a CD…well, I thought it was, but it was a mini-disk when it came through the post. I am currently trying to sell it for cash to a mate! I have bid for other items, and then had people bid higher. Swapitshop will send you an email notifying you of this which is very useful.

Gaining swapits can be done another way as well. The site has this competition every day at seven o’clock, where they will ask you questions about the site (never entered so details are limited) and then the winner gets one-thousand swapits. At the moment you can also collect five labels from Sunny-D drinks, send it to them and gain fifty swapits. They recently had an offer with Wotsits too. They can give as many swapits away as they like as it does not affect the site, which is good as more swaps are likely to take place.

The FAQ section is OK, not overly filled in with info, but you can search this section as well as the whole site to find products. It is quite hard to contact them though.

So, I do not have any major quarms about this site…apart from the fact younger people may mess the system up a bit, and that some items are not always clearly labelled, children can bid for things they shouldn’t really bid for and there is no penalty for unsent goods, so, not a high rating, but there could be improvements on this site. Worth a look if you have a lot of items you want to get rid, although you generally have to gain items to if you want to make use of the swapits you gain. Three stars maybe high for the amount of disadvantages I have listed, but in general the site works well as the concept is generally a good one.

The site is found at swapitshop.co.uk as well as swapitshop.com.

Ta.

DAN

Update - I have just discovered that you gain 25 Swapits for every item you send within 7 days. I made over 800 on this offer - a great idea to give people an incentive to send quick, and to get more Swapits onto the site.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Swapitshop has ceased to trade as from about two weeks ago or so. I believe that, like in Germany with their currency after the First World War, there is too much supply and not enough demand, and hyperinflation occurred. This meant that many swaps were occurring, up to and over five-hundred a day, which meant that postage costs were high, and with not a lot of advertising money, the site had to close.

I received two CD's after the site closed, and I felt guilty, as somebody else had suffered really, but with well over 4000 Swapits in my account, I lost out.

I received an email today saying that they are currently exploring ways to enable myself and other holders of 100 or more Swapits to trade out your Swapits. But, they said that at this stage they cannot say whether or not this will be possible, and promised to send me an email with more information.

I will update this opinion during the next week or so to keep you up-to-date maybe.

Ta again

DAN