BigDeal

The site really does sell the items you are bidding on so from that perspective it is not a scam. It also really does offer 10% discount on gift cards for Amazon, walmart so you can get 'some' of your $$ back. The site works by keeping each auction open (recycling 30 secs) whenver anyone puts another bid in. It gets you to 'gamble' and and even bid on auctions for that sell their bid tokens - each time you click, it costs you. 75cents and the bid only goes up by. 01 cents. Yes, it sounds cool right, one cent auctions (but remember you paid. 75 cents for each 1 cent bid) -- Put that into perspective of someone bidding 146 times (multiply by. 75 - $109) on something that is worth $179 and it sounds pretty good right? But now add up all the other people (and all the other auctions you lost) all the auctions you bid 111 etc times and stopped because someone else was still clicking each 15 secs left. You then understand why their business model works for their company -- they are making a fortune. The analogy of Vegas is a good one - have fun and know what you are getting into this for. Gambling
I did buy minor things that nobody wanted (video games) as well as three sets of 50 bid tokens and have now cancelled my account. Since I am not a gambler and more of a logistics person (I love ebay) this site is not for me at all. This is a gambling website.

I have been shopping on big deal for almost six months now. I have spent several thousand dollars on this site and have gotten some ABSOLUTELY AMAZING DEALS! I won a 52'' Toshiba TV for over 90% off including the shipping charges. I have won numerous Macbook computers as well. This site is the real deal auction site. You are even able to purchase products at a discount using your loyalty buck from member benefits that other sites don't offer this as a feature. Thanks Patriots

I have bid on a number of penny auction sites and I can tell you that BigDeal.com is one of the better ones. I have always gotten the items I've won in a timely manner.

If you are looking to score a $200 item for pennies then forget it - not that it's impossible (I've won a Kindle valued at $259 for only $58.55) but don't count on it. Winning takes time and patience.

There are three types of bidders in my view: 1 those that think they will win with 3 or 4 bids and leave disappointed and feeling cheated; 2 - those that were planing to buy the item from the store and figured they would take a chance and try to win it at a discount and 3 those that know what they are doing and plan to sell the item later for something they really wanted to buy. Each auction has a mix of all these types and the ones who only placed a few bids hoping to strike it rich leave disappointed.

As to how much money BigDeal is making; one has to figure in that almost every item has a buy-it-now option and only BigDeal knows how many people are taking advantage of it (I use it all the time when I lose an auction). With a buy-it-now option one can't count the bid price and multiply it by. 75 to figure out the profit margins (the 300 bids I place on an auction will go towards the buy-it-now option).

I will admit that as more people discover the fun and excitement of BigDeal.com the more crowded the auctions are becoming making it harder to win but not impossible.

I have also taken advantage of their rewards program to buy gift cards at a 10% discount. I will combine a 10% Macy's gift card with a Macy's promotional discount to save big (it was even better when BigDeal was selling Macy's gift cards with a 25% savings... if you are reading this BigDeal please bring back the Macy's cards that were $75 for $100 card!).

In summary: BigDeal is legit (I have gotten every item I won or bought); I have won things at deep discounts so I seriously doubt that they are using bots. I will continue to bid with BigDeal.com.

I signed up for this site in good faith, thinking it was actually an auction site. What it is is nothing more than a disguised casino, which uses the good name of Apple, Dell and others to disguise its consumer fraud practices. It's the very worst of what the Web has to offer and people need to be forwarned about this service.

The investors in this company should be ashamed of themselves for having their names associated with such a service.

NOT A SCAM IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR DOING! YOU DONT EVEN HAVE TO WIN TO WIN:

I need to get a big screen TV and an xbox for my apartment. Big Deal has a 50" plasma in its rewards section for $237 dollars off so all I have to do is buy $237 worth of bids use them (win or lose) on the xbox and I essentially get the TV and xbox for the retail price of the TV. But with $237 in bids and a little common sense I really can't lose. Ill report back when I do it.

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.

I wonder if all the people claiming scam are doing so simply because they did not happen to win their bids... sure, you are taking a chance when bidding on anything, but that does not make it a scam. They do not guarantee you will win and they give you the chance to apply the money you bid against the retail purchase of the item so worse case you take a chance, lose the bid and buy it at retail. Then they also give you loyalty bucks for the full amount you have spent on bids to apply toward other purchases to get some great deals.

I'm curious, too, how many Las Vegas losers scream fraud at the casinos (a highly regulated industry). It is a gamble, but there are winners.

I just found this site a week ago and so far have won bids on a DSi game for $5 (retail $30), wine aerators for $6 (retail $50), an Xbox 360 for $60 (retail at $300) AND an iPad retailed at $819 for only $250 (all of these include the the cost of bids placed)! These are all items I was in the market for and would have spent $1200 retail for and I got them for under $350 (and I still have bid tokens left).

If I don't receive the items in 2 weeks as promised I will be back with a "shame on me" post... but for now I am a FAN of bigdeal.com.

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.

Actually, I think Bigdeal.com is exactly what they say they are. Capitalism at it's finest. Sure they are making tons of money... So What! If you read the tutorials with out rose colored glasses you will see that the bidding is nothing more than gambling at a slot machine. I have won several items all below 80% below retail and had a great time doing it. It was fun. My winning products Nintendo DSI XL, Xbox 360, Games etc. all shipped as promised and were factory sealed in perfect working order. My only complaint is I would like to be able to redeem a larger percentage of "Loyalty Bucks" off a product. Instead of $10 Loyalty Bucks off a $100 gift card... It should more like $30. Then I would have no issue buying more bids.

Go to the casino. Play roulette. Put $100 on red. Wait for the spin, and see if you won. You have a better chance of winning at the casino than you do at this place. There are bots everywhere on this site. You will not beat them. Maybe 1 out of 20 people will win something just to keep people coming back (kind of like at the casinos). This is just gambling, the creators of the site are laughing all the way to the bank. Sure you can end up buying the product for MSRP, which is often more than you'd pay on Amazon. Don't think you will get that iPad for $100, it's more probable that you win it at a raffle. It's easy to get carried away, especially if you aren't very smart (and/or bad at probability and statistics). There are a lot of stupid people in the world which help sites like this exist. You have a better chance of getting the inheritance from a Nigerian prince than you do at winning a product with the website. So just contact the first advanced fee wire fraud Nigerian scammer, and he can help you out. AVOID THE WEBSITE.

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.

Hey, you guys really need to do your homework before you start calling bigdeal a scam. It's a penny auction site, if you're not familiar with penny auctions I would suggest you take a look at the forum at http://www.pennyauctionwatch.com there are tons of sites like bigdeal but I think bigdeal is one of the honest ones out there, they let you apply your full bids to buying the item. What's unfair about that? And their prices are competitive with current market prices on most items, do your research, check Amazon first before you bid and be prepared to pay retail if you don't want to lose $30 here and there. I have won items on there, an iMac in the beginning for $300, an iPod for $30, plasma tv for around $50+shipping, or so then there are times where I've had to pay retail on items, some that I didn't really want but I did anyway just to not lose my money because I started bidding and bid a lot. So yeah, check out this article http://www.pennyauctionwatch.com/2010/04/bigdeal-auction-competitive-shopping-reviews/

And post a review there and get educated about penny auctions before you call them all scams, the ones that need to be called scams are the ones that are really scamming with their bots and shills. Bigdeal.com says they have capital and they know what they're doing, they even let you have minimal risk, a lot of other penny auction sites won't do that, you'll walk away with nothing if you don't win & only one can be a winner.

The real scammers need to get shut down, IMO bigdeal.com isn't a scam.

I was shopping for a laptop for trips and bid on one. I didn't win it but I bought it anyway since they let you use your bids you lost towards the purchase price. I got it for what I would paid for it anyway and then used some of the loyaltybucks to buy my mom a thermal coffee maker for Mother's Day. It does take a long time, I'll give you that, but its fun. If your looking for something for nothing then you won't like this site. I liked it!

The site isn't a scam. They were featured in a New York Times article and is indeed legit.

What so many people fail to realize is that this type of site (Penny Auctions) are flat out gambling. If you aren't prepared to lose money, don't play the game. People that pay more are not bots, they're just hardcore. They have a lot of money and are willing to pay more to make a point. I am a frequent bidder on more than one Penny Auction site, and a frequent watcher of others, and there are people like this on ALL OF THEM.

As far as Penny Auction sites go, Big Deal is a pretty good one with much lower risk than many.