DealDash

DealDash is a bidding fee auction website. It was founded in 2009, and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Users buy "bids", which are credits priced at 13 cents each, which increase the listed price of the item by one cent. If no user places a bid after the previous bid, by a time specified (nine seconds as of 2024), the last user to bid wins the item and must pay the listed price. The user has already used bids, meaning they have used more money in total in the auction for the item than the listed price, potentially more than the manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP). Users that lose the auction lose their bids, unless they choose a "buy it now and save your bids" option, with the buy-it-now price being higher than MSRP. DealDash, as with other bidding fee auction websites, has faced criticism for misleading advertising and marketing, from consumer organizations such as Consumer Reports and Truth in Advertising. The criticisms state that the prices listed on the DealDash site, and in their advertisements, are the vastly lower-than-market price the successful user pays for the item itself, excluding the amount they paid for bids. In certain cases, even in DealDash's own advertisements, the amount a user has paid for bids placed plus the final price is higher than what would have been paid in a regular retailer. The criticisms state that bidding fee auction websites operate as an unregulated form of gambling. DealDash's own terms of service formerly told users that they are unlikely to win auctions using the service, and are likely to spend more money using the service than the retail cost for any products they might receive. The terms stated that the "entertainment value" of using the service made the higher prices "fair"...