BigDeal

This is one of the most exploitative and misleading sites I've ever seen.

1. For every "big deal," most people lost money, sometimes quite a lot of it. The key difference this site and a legitimate auction site, like Ebay, is that it costs you money JUST TO BID. Every single time you bid,. 75 cents out the window. As a result, that $50 bargain they promote, well, it took 5000 penny bids to get there, at a cost of 75 cents each, so a lot of people lost a lot of money.

2. The site is astonishingly misleading, verging on fraud. Those boxes that proclaim "75% off!" Do not account for the money the person had to spend bidding just to get there, nor do they reflect the often staggering amount of money people other people lost who did not win (I've seen people spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars and end up with nothing.)

They claim that, oh, no worries, you just can buy it now. Well, you frequently cannot buy it now on some of the more desirable items, and it takes hours, even days on some items, to get to a winner.

They also say, oh, you get these loyalty bucks for giving us your money that you can use for big discounts!

Hardly. You can get about 5% off a bunch of items you wouldn't even want. Some deal.

For the love of God, don't throw your money away with this site. You'd be better off in a casino.

Sure, some people are incredibly lucky and actually do get good deals, but the portion of people who come out having not lost money is vanishingly small. This might not be such a problem if they portrayed themselves as the lottery, but they don't. They are woefully misleading about the risks and real chances of actually saving anything, or, just as likely, throwing a lot of money out the window.

The people who run this site should be ashamed of themselves. Despicable.

LOL http://bigdeal.com/auctionid/electronics/ipad-3g-64gb/*******

If that doesn't give it away I don't know what does.

Please Read this review!
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All those that are complaining about it being a scam or not getting their money back are suckers because they failed to open their eyes and read the terms and conditions.

It took me less than 10 minutes to figure out how this site works, plus you can google it and find out many break downs of this site, it's pretty simple people, if you don't get it, than I have no sympathy for you.

I'm not going to say if this site is a scam or not, but I want to make you AWARE, that unless this site is being monitored by a legit third party program, so company induced bots aren't taking advantage of real people than I wouldn't venture going to this site. Who cares if New York Times did an article on it? Are they monitoring it, making sure were not being scammed? LOL

I have to hand it to the creators, this is an amazing business model hands down, getting other people to help pay for the item. If you wanted to buy a $1,000 item and asked 999 people for a dollar, you only had to spend a dollar! Isn't that somethin!

Proceed at your own risk, and I would say to not "play" until they have a third party company not only check their software, but also monitor the site to keep bigdeal from doing exactly what people are saying.

This site is completely ridiculous as a shopping/auction site, unless you see it as a gambling site. I did some research ahead of time, watched other people play a bit and thought this doesn't look too terrible. However, I wish I had done some simple math before starting, and here is why -

First of all for all the $0.01 increases per bid in an auction, I soon realized that bigdeal.com is getting $0.75, so if an item goes for say $5.00 to a user, bigdeal.com made a profit of $375 just from the users' bids!

The Loyalty Bucks you can only use to purchase other items at a slight discount, they cannot be used for more tokens or to redeem your money.

Realized Savings / Potential Savings section isn't shown anywhere until you make an account. It appears that you can only win so much based on how much you spend either on tokens or in the loyalty store, so pretty much you can't win big dollar prizes unless you spend money even if you win extra tokens/bids at a low cost in an "auction".

The only way to win "auctions" is by pushing people around with a lot of tokens, which costs more money and I cannot imagine you will make back what you put in! In a couple auctions that once the clock initially turned zero it took over an hour to get to the final winner, and a few of the people trying to push everyone around spent nearly as many tokens as they were bidding to win and had to give up. This just promotes people being reckless bidding and bidding to get more turns to bid to try to buy this or that item.

I personally am glad that I only spent $22.50 + $0.02 on 40 tokens, realized what a scam this is and how dangerous it is and deactivated my account. I feel a little stupid that I didn't think "if it sounds too good to be true than it probably is" before I spent any money at all!

Use bigdeals.com with caution and don't blow your money on this site, even if you win, think of all the people out money and how much bigdeals.com made on your win - it is just stupid!

First off if you are bidding on a tv that is selling for $1.200 by DigDeal and you get outbid then the money you bid (lets say 500 dollars) is really lost. You have the option (in some cases) to apply what you spent to buy the item at their inflated retail price; so your $500 would be applied to the $1,200 TV. The second option is you can use that money to buy some other inflated items (but not all of it). An exampe, you are out $500 bucks, but if you buy a inflated price toaster oven from them they will credit you $10.00 of the $500 bucks you lost. Great... only $490 more dollars to use up buying thousands of dollas worth of overpriced junk. But wait there is more good news, they say you can exchange the money you spent on gift cards! Great but not dollar for dollar. You will have to but $5000 dollarts in gift cards to get a value back on you $500 dollars. In most cases if you can't afford to buy anyyhing (as that's why you were trying to get a deal in the first place) It's better to just let them keep your $300 dollars, lick your loses and warn your friends to stay away from the site. Originally I thought if I don't win I will just convert my bid amount into Gift Cards at a dollar for dollar value, buy more bids and try again. Not so. Also some of the items you bid on are not available as a buy now option, so you have to purchase something else like junk jewelery, tuppperware, overpriced cameras.,... ect and my name used to be Lucky: ((

I've read so many other reviews that I'm just to the point where I laugh when someone calls this site a scam. If you think this site is a scam, you're stupid. Here is why... YOUR TAKING AN EDUCATED RISK WHEN YOU DECIDE TO BID. The part many people have trouble with is the whole EDUCATED part of the educated risk. Would you ever jump into a poker tournament without knowing how to play poker? Probably not... How is this much different? If you know how to "play the game" so to speak, you actually can win stuff and you won't have to tell the entire world that you got scammed because you're a moron. You can win stuff for a great price on this site. I personally always reach my maximum amount of wins per month (10) before the month is even up. I haven't won every item I've bid on, but since I actually RESEARCHED BEFORE I BID (I KNOW?!?! What a strange concept?!?!), I knew how to take the site's setup and work with it. I probably win about 75% of auctions I enter, and the rest of them I use the "Buy it Now" feature. If you are going to bid on an item, be prepared to pay retail for it. It's funny how that works... If your prepared to pay retail, you can only be pleasantly surprised at best (if you win a good deal), and just content at worst (if you don't win). However, if you go into an auction thinking your going to snag a $500 item for a few quarters, you will most likely be extremely pissed when you start to see how your overconfidence has cost you money. "But that couldn't possibly be my own fault, could it? NO! This site must be a scam!"... Come on now people... they don't even have hidden fees on this site. Everything is right in front of you! If you can't figure out how numbers work, you can't blame the site. I will admit, you can end up spending a lot of money on this site. But if you know how to turn that money into merchandise, especially merchandise at a huge discount, how is this a scam? Overall I guess I am just saying that people should quit calling this site a scam. If you have ever bid on any other "penny" auction online, you have taken a bigger risk. This is by far one of the safest and fairest penny auctions out there...

Seems like a penny auction site is being reviewed almost daily here, so I thought I'd chime in. First off let me say, I think a lot of these reviews are being done by competitors or paid for. Who signs up for SiteJabber to review one site out of billions? Shady is all I'm saying.

I hear a lot of complaints about people spending so much in bids it doesn't make sense for them to do that and that the site must have "bots". Or that they use all their bids and win nothing. Well, some people do know how to game these sites. How? Well instead of going right for the shiny consumer electronics, they spend all their bids and money getting more bids. They concentrate on "bid auctions", that is, gettiing bids for cheap. Swoopo and Beezid do 500 and 1000 bid pack auctions. So when it comes down to a person who has 30 bids at a buck a piece and a guy with 500 that he paid less than $100 for, guess who is going to feel cheated, and guess who is going to be watching his HD 3DTV in 2 weeks? If you are going to use these sites, bid horde! Bids are the most expensive part of the game, use them wisely. If they didn't send products, or scammed you, you need to get in touch with law enforcement.

What is good about BigDeal is that you can buy it now using the bids you used if you lose the auction. So basically you paid for a chance to get an incredible deal. If you did win, you got something for a great deal. Claim it, pay it. However I will say that for the amount of money these sites make, they go to very little effort to explain to their users how it all works. It's not a scam, it's not equivalent gambling. If you can find a way to game them, go for it. According to Swoopo they lose money on about half of their auctions. But the big auctions make up for the losses. To be fair, I'll say the same for the other two auction sites mentioned here. I would say Beezid, Swoopo and BigDeal have the best products and the best sites in this industry. If you're going to try out penny auctions, bid horde, and use one of these three.

The "Royalty Bucks" at this website is a total deception! Here's what site's advertising says:

Every time you buy Bid Tokens on BigDeal.com, you get the equivalent amount of Loyalty Bucks. For example, if you buy $25 of Bid Tokens, you get $25 in Loyalty Bucks. Loyalty Bucks can only be used to get large discounts on popular items in our Rewards Store. Please check out our Rewards Store at http://bigdeal.com/rewards to view the discounts available for use with your Loyalty Bucks.

Here's how it works: At any point, click the "Redeem Loyalty Bucks" link located under the orange "Buy Bids" button. You'll land in our Loyalty Rewards Store. Select an item that catches your eye. You'll be able to use your Loyalty Bucks to get the stated discount on that item. For example, with $25 in Loyalty Bucks, you can get a $100 item for about $75.
Here is a clever way to use your Loyalty Bucks: buy $25 in Bid Tokens then use your $25 in Loyalty Bucks to buy a $100 item for $75. You've spent $100 and you have a $100 item + $25 of Bid Tokens. Your Bid Tokens are basically free!

You get an impression that you can spend your tokens' bucks for merchandise - not true - they only give you a discount (15-18% on average) off inflated retail prices - you can find their "discounted" merchandise for less at amazon or other online stores - total fraud and deceptive advertising.
P.S. - I've just checked my bank statement and found an unauthorized charge on my debit card from this site. Beware, Do NOT give them your credit card number!

Anyone having a problem with this company can file an online complaint with the California Office of Attorney General. Here's the address:
http://ag.ca.gov/contact/complaint_form.php?cmplt=CL

I started bidding on Big Deal the end of February. At first I would bid a few times on different products and never had any luck. Once I realized I was throwing money away by bidding on things I didn't really want (I didn't have enough invested to Buy it Now) my bidding strategy changed. I researched the products I wanted and the ones I was willing to pay their retail + shipping are the items I bid on. I WON! I didn't get the 27" iMac for nothing but I certainly got a good deal. Even if I hadn't won and clicked the Buy it Now it would have been a good price because Best Buy was selling it for $1999. 00 and Big Deal had it for $1699. 00. Also, my state charges sales tax which I didn't have to pay.
The loyalty bucks are free. For every bid you purchase@ 75 cents you get $1 in loyalty bucks which give you a discount on items in the rewards store. The only items I was interested in were the gift cards. A $100.00 Amazon OR Walmart gift card was $80 after the rewards points with free shipping so I figure... I buy 5 $100 Walmart cards = $400 for $500 card value and Big Deal ends up GIVING me $100. Sounds good to me... LOL
The only thing I can say is NO ONE wins every time. Many times I have seen 2 people bidding within seconds of each other and it goes on and on. This is called a bid war. It does not mean Big Deal is using bots. You would have to check every auction ( and you can because ALL the details are on the website but it would take a long time) and prove that the suspected bots didn't lose an auction. The powerbidders win because no one else is willing to pay retail. You know who they are by researching.
My advice for any auction is to be prepared to pay the retail or do not bid. The chances of getting anything of value dirt cheap is slim unless you have the reputation of a powerbidder and for them to get their reputations it costed them thousands of dollars.

No way of telling if this is a complete scam or just a big scam. Yes, it's legal, but the morality is questionable Few items that can be purchased directly are of much value, and how many Amazon gift cards can anyone need. The "list price" is often exaggerated on the auction items (see IPAD prices > direct from Apple)
What is more puzzling is that there is an A- rating from the better business bureau. How can the BBB possibly rate such an internet operation without knowing the specifics of who all these bidders are who are running up the bids. The BBB usually works on the basios of complaints that they receive, but it is almost impossible for anyone to give a documented complaint to them, other than if an item arrived damaged.
A few days ago I watched bids on an IPAD, wherew someone named "Spitra50" placed 1,943 bids and then dropped out of bidding. Was this a bot, or was this simply someone so stupid that they didn't know when to stop.
Another strange policy is that if you make a bid "after the auction is over", your bid is consumed, even though you didn't win. You have thus paid for nothing. They claim that it might take a few seconds for your bid to get thru their servers! So "you should always place your bid with 3-4 seconds left to be sure it will be accepted"! I guess that that would always allow them to supply a bot bid if they haven't reached a satisfactory price.
With such rules, the BBB would have to closely scrutinize their entire system to be able to give it any kind of trustworthy rating, and I intend to contact them about this. Perhaps they could simply review shipping logs from the company to show that the transaction actually occurred.

I stumbled across this web site "BigDeal.com" while looking for a Sony camera, and low and behold there are three of them up for bid. This is a $1,200.00+ camera and the bids are at less than $5.00 with one sitting at $0.60. I decided that I would investigate the site a bit further, and reviewed their previous winners section. I have always been a bit of a skeptic, but seeing winning bids at up to 97% savings, including the camera that caught my eye and was now active in three seperate ongoing auctions, having just been won at auction for about 25% of the retail price. My first reaction was "sign me up", but my skeptics' inner voice whispered " HEY KNUCKLEHEAD - IF IT SOUNDS TO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT'S NOT TRUE soooo... DON'T BE AN IDIOT! So I did a little more digging, and came across this review site which has led me to believe, once again, that I am best served looking through a skeptical eye than a blinded eye. I've read a bunch of the reviews, and even the 'favorable few', after writing about how you have to know the game, made it sound skeetchie at best. I would not be surprised if the 'favorable few' are the decendants of those that wore the shiney suits in bygone days. While plying their "Bussiness Plan" trades in pool halls, back alleys, & Used car lots.
I want to thank you all for doing what needs to be done to Keep the Snakes out of Ireland.

It's difficult to believe anyone has success here. The setup is geared toward bidder's failure (and of course maximum profit to BigDeal). It's not enough to want an item. You can't set a bidding limit so you have to sit by the computer for days. To make it worse, unlike other sites where people search for what they want, BigDeal is set up for items to (slowly) inch forward so that everyone can see. This means people bidding on one thing will suddenly see your item and because the items are so deceptive in pricing - will inevitably place random bids. They rarely win but succeed in driving up the price and dragging out the time. I'd love to know the longest running member's subscription because the process will beat you down real quick. Contrary to their claims - all items can NOT be purchased as "Buy It Now". You can bid $500 for a $500, not win and end up with nothing but "Loyalty Bucks" which are only good for so called "discount" on OTHER items you probably don't want. The discount is about 10% (or the amount BigDeal items cost over other places) so you are really getting nothing!
If we forget BigDeal's obscene profit markup and chalk that up to free enterprise, fair enough. Good for them. It's no different than buying a lottery ticket. I don't begrudge them that. What I DO object to is they intentionally set things up to be as clear as "double talk". When you buy a lottery ticket, you know the chance you are taking. When people are told their bidding money can be applied to a "buy it now" - only to find out after bidding that it can not - that's dishonest and they know it.
BigDeal capitalizes on people's natural lack of skepticism. To say they are not illegal is technically true. They are however, a scam just as the old carnival people and "con artists" profit by making one thing look like another. Magicians do it and people are not stupid because they don't go through life expecting everyone to rip them off. BigDeal knows this and at least for now, is ripping off good, honest people intentionally.

BEWARE. It's like living with a liar and a thief. You can do it if you are willing to spend at the energy to scrutinize every little thing but in the long run, who wants to do business with a company like that?
You've been warned. I wish I had.

Idea - perhaps we should exchange BigDeal usernames so we can communicate and eliminate the bots.

This site is essentially a gambling site to see who wins the item. It is slightly better than that, as any "bids" spent on an item that you did not win are credited toward a purchase at the retail price of the item.

The basics of how it works have already been described, but essentially each bid costs $0.75, and each bid on an item typically raises the price of the item $0.15, however depending on the item each bid may raise the item price by less, down to as little as $0.01 for each bid.

For example, I just watched a bidding war on a Kindle DX Graphite. Each bid was worth $0.01, and the final price was $7.94. That sounds like a really good deal, until you realize how much money was spent to get the price to that point. $7.94 at $0.01 per bid means there were 794 bids made. Each bid cost $0.75, which means a total of $595.50 was spent on the item, well above the $379.00 retail price, but it is not actually as bad as it sounds.

In a worst case scenario, there were only two bidders and each bidder spent $297.75 bidding on the item. Whichever bidder won gets to buy the item for an additional $7.94, for a total cost of $305.69, or about $73 less than the retail price.

In all practicality it's not the 90+% off they claim by a long shot (closer to 20% off), and I believe it is a very dishonest tactic, but it is still a good discount for the winner. I think it is ok as long as you fully understand the rules.

For the loser, they get the opportunity to recover their loss by buying the item at retail minus the cost of their bids. That means the person who spent $297.75 in bids and lost can purchase the item for an additional $81.25.

There is a catch though - not all items allow for a retail buy. If an item does not have a "buy it now" option, STAY AWAY! You will not be able to purchase the item at retail, and you will lose your money if you do not win the bid. The chances that you will be the one who actually wins on a bid on a popular item are very low, so you will almost certainly be giving your money away to bigdeal.com.

I think the site can be useful if you cannot find anyone who sells the particular item for any cheaper than retail, AND you are absolutely sure you want to buy the item, even at retail prices. In that case you have a chance to get a big discount. I frankly think you would need to be daft to bid on an item on bigdeal.com that did not have a "buy it now" option. There is no way to recoup your losses in that case, it is sheer foolishness.

If you did not understand what I wrote above DO NOT USE THIS SITE! You will in all likelihood lose a lot more money than you save if you do not understand what is going on. If you did understand what I wrote, then good luck to you.

YOU CAN ADD ME TO THE LIST OF IDIOTS THAT SUPPORTED THAT SITE. I DECIDED TO PLAY BECAUSE I WAS GOING TO BUY A KINDLE ANYWAY AND THEIR BUY IT NOW PRICE WAS THE SAME AS AMAZON, SO WHAT CAN YOU LOSE, RIGHT. PLUS YOU CAN BUY GIFT AMAZON GIFT CARDS WITH YOUR LOYALTY BUCKS. SO WHEN THE KINDLE COMES UP I WAIT UNTIL THE AUCTION SLOWS DOWN AND THEN START BIDDING, I WAS PREPARED TO SPEND ALL THE BIDS THAT I HAD AND WHATEVER MONEY I NEEDED TO UP THE BUY IT NOW PRICE TO GET THE KINDLE. MY THINKING WAS THAT I WOULD BE SPENDING THAT MUCH ANYWAY AND THIS WAY I COULD ALSO BUY DISCOUNTED AMAZON CARDS. SOUNDS PRETTY GOOD. WELL AFTER SPENDING SOME OF MY BIDS, I HIT THE BUTTON TO BID AGAIN AND IT SAYS MY BID WAS REJECTED, AUCTION ENDED. I COULDN'T BELIEVE IT, BUT THOUGHT OK, I JUST DIDN'T PAY ATTENTION AND MESSED UP OR SOMETHING. SO I WAITED FOR ANOTHER AUCTION, THEY HAD CHANGED IT TO A PENNY ACTION WHICH IS ANOTHER TOTAL RIP OFF, AND A HUGH MONEY MAKERS FOR THEM, BUT I STILL HAD BIDS TO SPEND. I START WITH THAT AUCTION AND THE SAME THING HAPPENS AGAIN. WELL STILL HAVING BIDS THAT WERE ALREADY PAID FOR, I WAIT ON ANOTHER AUCTION. AS I WATCH SOME OF THE OTHER AUCTIONS I NOTICED A PATTERN HAPPENING WITH BIDDERS, NOT CERTAIN NAMES OF BIDDERS, BUT PATTERNS OF BIDS AND BIDDERS THAT KEEP THE AUCTION GOING. BIDDING ALL HOT AND HEAVY AND THEN ANOTHER BIDDER FROM NOWHERE POPS UP AND THE AUCTION APPEARS TO BE HANDED OFF TO THAT BIDDER. YOU JUST HAVE TO WATCH TO SEE WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT ITS HARD TO EXPLAIN. ANYWAY I STILL HAVE BIDS SO I START AGAIN THIS TIME DETERMINED TO WIN THIS ONE OR AT LEAST SPEND ALL MY BIDS AND THEN PAY THE DIFFERENCE FOR THE BUY IT NOW PRICE. I BID SOMEWHERE AROUND 50 BIDS AND THE PATTERN IS ALREADY GOING, BUT I AM STILL DETERMINED TO SPEND MY BIDS AND BE DONE WITH THIS SITE. THE SAME THING HAPPEN AGAIN! NOT ONLY HAVE I NOT BEEN ABLE TO SPEND MY BIDS AND WIN THIS KINDLE, BUT NOW THE % OF LOYALTY BUCKS I CAN USE ON THE AMAZON CARD HAS GONE DOWN. SO IT COST ME MORE OUT OF POCKET TO GET THE AMAZON CARDS. SCAM ALL THE WAY AROUND!