a b.

After carefully reviewing this site, I have determined that they are not actually an auction site. They actually distribute the cost of products across all users, and unequally to their higher users. The method they do this by is hidden. Each user actually pays 75 cents per bid. The bid increments the bidding price by 15 cents. Following that for each 15 cents of an items price, the company nets 50 cents. That is a 75% markup if you count the product as the bid. So for an item that costs $50, a total of ~333 bids are committed, which is also ~$166 for the company. Although the cost is distributed among each user, it is not unreasonable to extrapolate that any user is going to end up loosing hundreds if not thousands of dollars to this company.

They do allow the loosing bidders to buy the product at the price that they set. Usually they only mark up the price by ~30% over prices listed on Google Shopping. You also get a $1 of discount points for redemption in their gift card section.

Example: Lenovo G550 15.6" Laptop reward. Cost by Bigdeal.com: $599, discounted to $449. Google Shopping price: depending on options(i. E. ram) $339 - $469.

Overall I have to say they have a wonderful business model, but any consumer is going to end up pay much more overall then they would just shopping for the product. The big difference is the cost is going to be distributed over several bidding experiences.