If you'd like to purchase a new computer or phone, there's no shortage of websites to choose from. If you'd like a bargain above all else, however, one option that you might consider is DealDash.
They offer a wide range of products and if their advertisements are to be believed, it's possible to pay a fraction of retail price.
So how does DealDash work and how are they achieving such low prices?
What Is DealDash?
DealDash is a penny auction website. This is a type of website where anyone can bid on a product and each bid increases the price by one cent.
Penny auctions are popular because the final price paid for products tends to be very low. After all, it takes 100 bids for the price to break a dollar.
Unfortunately, this doesn't necessarily make them a good option for those looking to actually spend less money.
How Does DealDash Work?
DealDash has some pretty confusing advertisements but the website itself does a good job of explaining the service provided.
All products are listed at a starting price of zero cents and there is no minimum reserve price. Anyone can place a bid and you can make as many bids as you want.
Each bid increases the price by one cent. Each bid adds 10 seconds until the end of the auction.
The winner is whoever has the highest bid at the end of the auction.
Is DealDash Legit or a Scam?
DealDash is not a scam. The website is very clear about the service that they provide. And they appear to provide exactly that.
If you place a bid on a product, you have a chance of being the highest bidder. And if you are the highest bidder, you buy the product at the agreed upon price.
This is in comparison to scam websites which promise one thing and then end up delivering something completely different.
DealDash is unusual and most people won't save money on the platform but that's not the same as being a scam.
How Does DealDash Make Money?
DealDash doesn't make money from selling items. The average price that items are sold for simply isn't high enough for them to make a profit. Instead, DealDash makes money from selling bids.
At the time of writing, a single bid costs $0.12. This means that by the time the price of an item reaches $10, people will have placed 1000 bids, and those bids will have been sold for up to $120.
The exact price of the bids varies because the winner gets all of their bids for free.
This allows DealDash to be highly profitable regardless of how much products are ultimately sold for.
Is It Possible to Save Money by Using DealDash?
If you're thinking about using DealDash, it's important to understand how it works. It's not a scam but it's not a smart way to find discounts either.
DealDash is best described as entertainment, although some critics have also described it as a form of gambling.
If you place a bid on DealDash, it's possible that you'll be able to buy something for a fraction of what it should cost. But at the same, each auction can only have one winner.
This means that there's a much higher chance that you'll end up paying for bids and getting nothing in return.
Why DealDash Should Only Be Used for Entertainment Purposes
If you try to use DealDash exclusively to save money, it's easy to end up in a negative situation. Let's assume you've spent a hundred dollars on bids without winning anything.
If you're using DealDash as a form of entertainment, then you've gotten your money's worth. But if you're using the platform to save money on a purchase, you will obviously have failed.
At this point, you might be tempted to avoid failure by placing more bids. If the product is worth enough, you could keep doing this and then potentially come out ahead provided you win.
But it's also possible that you can continue bidding indefinitely, spending more on bids than the product even costs, and still not getting the chance to buy it.
DealDash provides a detailed explanation of how their auctions work but this is unlikely to prevent some users from doing exactly that.
The similarity between this scenario and that of a gambler on a losing streak is also hard to ignore.
Is DealDash Advertising Misleading?
If you watch an advertisement for DealDash, it's easy to believe that the platform can be used to pay less for popular products. The actors talk about the low prices that they've enjoyed but nobody talks about paying for bids.
DealDash is allowed to make such advertisements because they include small print and because many users do, in fact, save money.
The catch is that with some auctions having hundreds of participants, the users who get such deals are very much in the minority. The rest have also paid to play but don't receive anything.
If you want to get a more accurate understanding of how the platform works, the advertisement does provide it but you need to read the small print.
This isn't illegal and DealDash certainly isn't the only company to use small print to explain important information.
Should You Try DealDash?
DealDash is a legitimate website. And it is possible to sign up and purchase products at significant discounts.
But remember: you need to pay money to enter each bid. And due to the amount of participants in each auction, the odds of a single bid winning a discount purchase are very low.
In other words, in order for some people to save money on the platform, the vast majority have to lose theirs. This makes DealDash a potentially entertaining website but not a smart option if you only want a discount.
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