This is outdated, read the new article for a more in-depth guide on the real Deal Dash scam.
Dealdash.com is a penny auction site. Penny auctions work differently than convention auctions in many ways. For one, the price of the item increases only one cent for each bid. This leads to much lower prices for items, however, you have to pay money ahead of time for each bid you make. Each placed on DealDash increases the auction timer to 10 seconds and the auction price by one cent. Whoever the last bidder is when the auction timer reaches zero is the winner of the auction and will be able to buy the item at the bid price.
Before you can start bidding on auctions you will need to purchase bids ahead of time. There’s usually some sort of sale going on each day where you can buy bids for a few cents each. A 300 bid back at 13 cents a bid will cost $39, sometimes bids are priced a little more or less. Once you buy the bids you will be able to place them at auctions. The bids you bought are only good on DealDash and you will not be able to get that money back. You can only use those bids to try to win products on auctions, or more likely: you will spend all of your bids and end up with nothing.
DealDash does allow you to have your bids returned to you if you lose an auction by purchasing the item anyway at their Buy It Now (or BIN) price. In this way, you can use DealDash as a store to purchase items at their full retail price and you won’t have to worry about running out of bids. This can be a good idea if you want to try to win an auction for an item you were already planning on buying. If you win, you’ll get a good price. If you lose, you can still get all your bids back and get the item at retail price. Often the Buy It Now price is significantly more expensive than what you could have bought the same item for on Amazon or Ebay, sometimes by hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Let’s look at an example of bidding on an auction. There is a brand new Apple IPad for sale on DealDash you are interested in bidding on. The auction ends in 5 minutes. You will only be able to place a bid during the last 10 seconds of the auction. The auction gets down to 3 seconds and you place your first bid. The auction timer resets to 10 seconds and for 9 of those you are the winner of the auction. Then in the last second someone else places another bid and replaces you as the winner.
If you are in a bidding war with one or more people, it makes more sense to use a tool provided by DealDash: The BidBuddy. Use BidBuddy by putting in the number of consecutive bids you want it to make for you. Think of it like the Ebay maximum bid option. If the auction ends before your bids are exhausted then you win, otherwise the auction will continue with other people bidding against each other and all your bids will have been depleted. The BidBuddy is optimal to use since it will queue your bids strategically against everyone else bidding so you won’t waste bids unnecessarily. Let’s say you’re bidding on an that IPad against 3 other people. One bid will be placed, then it will wait for the 3 other people to go through their turn to bid, then you will bid once again. This is better than bidding immediately after every other person and you will see the typical bidding pattern emerge:
You bid $0.01 OtherPerson1 bids $0.02 OtherPerson2 bids $0.03 OtherPerson3 bids $0.04 You bid $0.05 OtherPerson1 bids $0.06 And so on…
Use your BidBuddy. It’s guaranteed not to bid more than your fair share and the auction will never end with someone else winning as long as you have bids queued up.
Also keep in mind there is a threshold on auctions preventing new bidders from entering an auction. Typically, it is $5.00 but it can change from day to day and auction to auction. If the current bid is over the threshold, then you can’t bid on that auction unless you already placed a bid earlier before the threshold was reached. For popular items it’s common for people to place one bid at the very beginning of the auction and then start more actively bidding after the auction has been active for some time. In this way you can “save a seat” on auctions you may be interested in bidding on later. Blocking new people from bidding on an item after the threshold is reached limits the bid price from climbing too high with new bidders joining in and bidding up the item to perpetuity.
For our IPad example, let’s say you queue up 100 bids in bid buddy for the IPad auction. Against 3 other people you’ll likely run out of bids when the auction gets over $4.00. If the 3 people you’re bidding against each will give up after 80 bids, you should win the auction on your 81st bid. Then you could buy the IPad at about $3.20. But if you include the cost of your bids at $.13/each the total price you are paying is about $10.53.
While it is possible to get very good deals on DealDash you shouldn’t be deluded into think that is the norm. High-end electronics are typically only won after days of bidding with the winner typically putting in thousands, if not 10s of thousands of bids, with the final price not being that much lower than retail. Keep this in mind as you start bidding and try to win some of the lower priced easier auctions before getting into the big games. Gift cards, jewelry, and clothes are all great areas to start where you can find winnable auctions.
Once you know how to bid and don’t set your sights too high you should be able to start bidding and winning auctions on DealDash. Just don’t take it too seriously, don’t spend too much on popular auctions, and have fun!