How Zwaptz works
Photograph something, find out what it is worth, and swap it for something you would rather have. Here is what happens underneath, including the parts that are not finished.
- Where does the valuation come from?
Three steps. A model looks at your photograph and works out what the thing is — brand, model, edition, the details visible in the picture. A search stage looks for what comparable ones have actually sold for. A third model turns that into a range.
The middle step is not connected at the moment. Nothing is looked up, so every valuation is produced from what the model already knows about that market rather than from sales it checked. Each one says so, shows no comparables, and is capped at medium confidence. It is a considered estimate, not a market appraisal, and the difference is real.
- What does the confidence figure mean?
How much the valuation should be trusted, on the evidence behind it. A wide range with low confidence is the honest answer to a thing whose price depends on condition and timing. It is never a sales figure dressed up — when nothing was verified, confidence is held down deliberately, whatever the model thought of its own work.
- It has identified my item as the wrong thing.
Tell it. Every valuation you get offers “That is not what it is”, and your vault offers “Not right?” — name the item yourself and it is valued again from your answer, without looking at the photograph a second time. A model reading one picture gets this wrong in ways you will spot instantly: the wrong edition, the wrong colour, sometimes the case rather than what is inside it.
- Who can see the things I appraise?
Nobody, until you put one on Explore. Appraising saves an item to your vault and publishes nothing — not to the site, not to search engines, not to people nearby. An item you have not listed is visible only to you and to anyone you are already swapping with.
- What do other people learn about where I am?
A rounded distance and nothing else — “about 4 miles away”. Never your postcode, never an address, never a map. Your postcode is used to work out who is near you and is not shown to anyone. Leave it blank and you simply do not appear in, or see, nearby results.
- How does a swap actually finish?
You agree it here, then meet and hand the items over. Both of you confirm that the handover happened, and only then does it count as completed — neither person can claim a completed swap alone. What you received lands in your vault, off Explore until you list it again. Meeting safely covers the part that happens away from the screen.
- Can I delete my account?
Yes, from your account page, and it is immediate. Your email address, password, postcode and items go, along with their photographs. Swaps you already completed stay on the other person’s trades page, shown as being with a deleted account — that record belongs to both of you, so it is not ours to remove on one side’s word.
- Are the items on Explore real?
Some are seeded. Zwaptz is new, and an empty marketplace tells a visitor nothing, so a set of example items was created to populate it. Every one is marked example value on its card and says plainly on its page that nobody appraised it. Anything without that mark was valued for real.
- Something is wrong and I need a person.
Use Report at the bottom of any item, any profile or any swap — it reaches an administrator, who can read the conversation and suspend an account. There is no support email yet, which is a real gap rather than a policy: if your problem is not about a specific item or person, there is currently no route, and saying otherwise would waste your time.