Its different than ebay and other online “auction sites”. On ebay when you win you pay but if you lose you dont pay.
Its actually more like a chinese auction or buying lottery tickets where you select a prize deal to bid on or like a gambling sale site where you buy chances to win and not your standard auction site, although its presented in an auction format style like an auction site kind of like a school or church’s ” chinese auction” where you buy tickets and drop them into the bowl next to item you are trying to win.
Every time you bid you’ll lose money spent on your bid packs~ every time unless you beat their odds ~ or those using auto bidder, Since they advertise so much on TV always expect there will be other bidders there trying to win like you 24/7
With DealDash you “buy bids to spend”,meaning you prepay and every time you bid you have spent a bid , like buying a lottery ticket but with no guarantee of winning anything.Current deal is to pay $19.95 for a bunch of bids at ($.15) each time. Normal bid price is $.60 each, so if you bid 10x on and item you have spent $6.00 and someone else wins so you not only lose the “auction” but your money as well.
The lure to want to win a bargain & keeps you bidding, is that the price only goes up by $.01 every 10 seconds while the “auction” is kept live seemingly indefinitely as it remains live as long as a bid is placed every 10 seconds.
Only way you can win, is if you are the last listed bidder and the 10 second clock runs out.
Then you win for the last posted price [plus how many bids you already spent to win] and there is that chance that you will get a great deal, depending on what you bid on.
Some Gift cards may actually cost you more than their face values if you get caught up in gambling fever and keep trying to overbid someone else.
If you are careful and follow an ‘auction’ and see that the names frequently change , that may indicate there are no auto bidders- maybe- and then you can try to place a bet at perhaps a 5 second before interval and catch a win. 10 seconds gives others a chance to bid behind you so you can more easily loose than win.
If someone has an autobidder on [that means they bought several bids to be applied to that particular auction] they go through at the 1 second left time and you would not have time to place your bid behind them, so would also lose as its last bidder who wins.
I can only hope & assume their auction software programming is not set against the bidder. as that might enter into legality issues, but only time will tell. How many actual winners they present to entice or ensure new bidders that they can possibly win an item at a discounted price, compared to paying full price in a store for the same item.
One consolation is that if you lose, you can choose “Buy It Now” and they will credit back what your bids on that item were against the final price, which isn’t too bad except the item is then full price.
Paying full price minus whatever your bids were isn’t exactly a good deal, but is more like paying a non-refundable downpayment.
Its also very unlikely that you will win anything at up to 90% off like the TV commercials assert. If anything those who they show as winners may be the only ones to have ever won those type of items at such values and there’s no telling how many bids they paid before they won!
New bidders are also barred from many of their items, This may not be fair, but it kind of gives an edge to those who have joined and bid before you and to make sure you have had your invested in spending “alot of bids” before your even become eligible to bid on items that you might want and could win..
New items are listed to whet your appetite, but also that of many others perspective new bidders, which of course ensures them that they will have lots of people bidding at the same time, even if they have to set their alarm clock for an odd hour, Unfortunately that doesnt guarantee any greater chance at winning as there are 1000s more out there with the same idea and time to spend on bidding as well.
The average auction continues at 10 second intervals, rather than having an actual closing time as on ebay and other auction sites.
That does put higher profits in their favor and does make it so that you have to hope no one else bids during that last 10 second interval to enable you the chance to maybe win. It also makes it so the seller can ship free which is something we all like.
Since its an online site and all computerized and they do offer automatic bidding, allowing you to put multiple bids on any one item, as its price rises, if an item gets to last 1 second, your auto bidder will bid for you until you run out of bids or until the number of bids you bought are played out.Now if there are even a few others using the auto bidder feature, you may all just be wasting your bids and merely increasing the price for the ultimate winner.
Bad thing or possibly bad thing, is there is no way to tell if they shill or not. Shilling is a practice where there is a ringer bidder who outbids last bidder to drive up prices or to win so the item is retained by the owner through someone posing as a bidder. It looks like they possibly could shill, but cant just assume they do.
Before bidding its perhaps best to watch and follow a number of auctions to see if anything looks repetitious or slows down, but then again there may not be time enough to bid and someone could win right before your eyes.its always a gamble at 10 second intervals.
So far in watching the auctions, there is almost always another bid placed before the 10 seconds is up.
It makes me wonder if they have an internal threshhold similar to a slot machine that perhaps after so many bids have been made where they’ve reached their profit level that then they let someone win,maybe, which would be hard to tell for sure.
If you manage to “get lucky” or time it just right, you could possibly find something to win, even if it isnt in the category which you originally were seeking a specific type of item such as a gift card or computer or flat screen TV
New Bidders often are not allowed to bid on certain items, although there are some low value gift cards you might be able to bid on, I have seen the winning bidders end up paying more than the value of the card, which kind of defeats the purpose of using the auction, as you then are not getting a deal
I have noticed that Walmart Gift Cards, which are a popular item have a ridiculous bid price over $1000 for a $25 card ! This makes no sense to be so inflated although I see the bids continuing every 10 seconds which supports my suspicions of the game possibly being rigged because who would pay $1100 or more for a #25 card? Who in their right minds would be bidding so high for so little unless they are perhaps mechanical shills? {their own bidders to keep it all in the family or to prevent winners below a certain threshhold from winning]??
For now I have joined, have my bid bank ready to use but have not seen anything that I would be allowed to bid on that is within the realm of a deal to me, as the few that could be like a $10 mini flashlight that’s similar to one that is advertised on TV. as bright and indestructible, has its bids raising every 10 seconds no matter when I look at it
If you go to figure that if bids are raised by $.01 at a time,that $6.51 would equal 651 bids (x) the cost per bid at ($.60 ) each, unless you bought into their “special” sale with bids costing ($.15) each which also as a New Bidder, prevents me from bidding on the majority of the more valuable items available.
So if you are an auction shopper like me,this style and type of auction is not your typical auction where you could sweep in and bid last moment and hope to win at a closing soonest auction as your hopes are dashed every 10 seconds
I will continue looking and studying their boards and see just what it will allow me to bid on but I suspect with their ($.15) that their computer program will not allow for many wins unless like at the Carnivals maybe so many will pop the balloon per hour while the rest of us have the weighted dull pointed darts for bids.
I will update when I catch my first win ~ but wont hold my breath 🙂
Ave 