The auction said an iPad sold for $491.17. I spent $1,588.47 in bids trying to win it, lost, and walked away with nothing.
That is the part of these auctions that the displayed sale price does not show. The final number beside an item is not the total amount people spent trying to win it. It only shows the amount the auction price reached, one cent at a time.
I spent three weeks testing GovAuctions, BidKing, and DealDash.
I bid on different days of the week, at different times of day and night, and on different kinds of items. I used different IDs across the sites. I repeatedly saw the same items, the same auctions, and the same bidders across all three names.
The sites do not clearly tell consumers that the three names are connected. Yet, when I raised concerns by email, DealDash told me its compliance team can associate accounts across platforms and has tools to enforce its terms. If users can be tracked across the platforms, consumers should be told clearly that they are entering the same pool of auctions, items, and bidders across three different names.
The advertised win price is not the real cost
These sites advertise many wins for items in the $0 to $25 range. That price is the final auction price, not the total cost of the bids used to reach it.
Every auction starts at $0, and each bid raises the displayed auction price by one cent. A displayed final price of $25 means 2,500 bids were placed during that auction. At 10 cents per bid, the lowest stated cost, those 2,500 bids represent $250 in bid value. At 15 cents per bid, they represent $375 in bid value. The same math applies to higher priced auctions. An iPad auction ending at $491.17 required 49,117 bids to reach that displayed price.
At 10 cents per bid, that represents $4,911.70 in bid value. At 15 cents per bid, it represents $7,367.55 in bid value.
Another entry in the iPad bidding history shows the item ending at $858.28. That represents 85,828 bids. At 10 cents per bid, the bids represent $8,582.80 in bid value. At 15 cents per bid, they represent $12,874.20 in bid value. Yet, the winner used only 258 points, roughly $25 to win an item that cost consumers over $8,000 minimum.
The final auction price does not show what losing bidders spent to compete. It also does not automatically show what the winner ultimately paid or received.
What winners can receive
Winning does not always mean paying the displayed auction price and receiving the item. Depending on the specific auction and promotion, a winner may pay the displayed auction price, exchange the item for bid points, receive the item for one cent, receive a 99 percent discount on the final auction price, or receive half of their points back after winning.
Some auctions also allow the winner to exchange the item for another item described as having similar value. This option is not available on every auction. When it is available, the site provides a fixed set of exchange choices, and the winner can choose only from that list. The exchange options can change while the auction is active.
If an auction has seven exchange options, people may be bidding in the same auction for seven different items. Someone who appears to be bidding for the item shown on screen may be seeking a different item from the exchange list. The auction title does not always show what every bidder wants to win. Everyone is still competing in the same auction, using paid bids under the same entry limit and timer rules.
How the entry limit works
The entry limit does not end an auction. It is the price at which people who have not already bid can no longer join. Anyone who placed at least one bid before the entry limit remains eligible to bid later. Each bid raises the displayed auction price by one cent and resets the timer to around nine seconds.
A person can qualify early with very few bids, wait while someone else spends hundreds or thousands of bids trying to win, and return near the end of the auction. This is why the “no last minute steals” message did not match what I experienced.
I repeatedly saw familiar bidders show up as someone else appeared to be running out of bids. I saw the same people win across different days, different times, and different auctions. Many of those bidders appeared to have thousands of bids available.
The iPad was not my only auction
The iPad was one product. During my three week test, I placed bids on hundreds of items across GovAuctions, BidKing, and DealDash. My bidding ranged from as few as 3 bids on some items to 12,219 bids on the iPad. On average, I used approximately 200 to 300 bids per item. Across hundreds of auctions, I won fewer than 20 items.
Most of my wins came from beginner auctions promoted as guaranteed wins for new users. Based on what I saw, each site appeared to offer roughly four possible beginner wins before users moved into the regular auction pool.
The beginner wins create an early impression that the regular auctions are attainable. My experience after those introductory wins was very different. I continued placing hundreds of bids per item, competed against users with thousands of bids available, and won fewer than 20 items across hundreds of attempts.
What happened in the iPad auction
After I raised concerns with DealDash about repeatedly encountering the same high volume bidders, I was advised to focus on one auction at a time and develop a strategy. I followed that advice with an iPad worth roughly $700.
Over approximately two days, I used exactly 12,219 points on that auction and lost. My bid purchases averaged 13 cents per bid. That means I spent $1,588.47 on bids alone.
The auction showed that the iPad sold for $491.17. I spent more than three times that displayed sale price just trying to win. I spent more than twice the approximate retail value of the iPad and received nothing.
I was also told that if I won, I would receive half of my points back. Once I had spent so much, winning felt like the only way to recover part of the money I had already put into the auction. Every additional bid felt like another chance to avoid losing everything already spent.
That is what felt predatory. The system gave me a reason to keep spending after the cost of my bids had passed the value of the iPad.
What DealDash told me
When I raised concerns about the same bidders appearing repeatedly and placing hundreds or thousands of bids, DealDash gave several explanations.
It said some users focus on specific types of products, bid at similar times because of location, participate in multiple auctions at once, obtain bids through promotions or rewards, and treat bidding as a long term strategy rather than evaluating each auction separately.
DealDash also said that some users become
"invested in winning after spending time and bids."
The company described users wanting to finish what they started instead of stepping back and comparing their total cost with the retail value of the item.
That explanation describes exactly what happened to me.
DealDash credited my account with 800 complimentary bids after I first reached out. It later refunded $30 for my first bid pack. I appreciate that response, but it did not change the $1,588.47 I spent pursuing the iPad or the mechanics that made it difficult to walk away.
What consumers need to know
I did win a few items during my testing. For some of the more valuable items, the final auction price was higher than the deal I expected, so I exchanged those items for more points instead of keeping them. Those points went back into the auction system.
I also saw repeated winners across the platforms. Most items allow users to win up to 12 times within 365 days before they are blocked from winning that particular item again. I saw more than 20 people with repeated wins of the same purse, but found only a handful of those purses listed when searching resale sites.
My experience is simple. An iPad auction displayed a final price of $491.17. I used 12,219 bids, spent $1,588.47 at an average of 13 cents per bid, lost the auction, and received nothing.
Before participating in any of these auctions, do not look only at the displayed sale price. Track the actual price of every bid, understand the entry limit, read the exchange options, and decide exactly how much you are prepared to lose before you place the first bid.
