When we shop on DealDash.com we have a choice of three different purchasing options:
- If we win the auction item, we can choose to pay the selling price of the auction to claim our winning product and shipping is always free:
- If we win the auction item, we can choose to simply exchange the winning item for a specified number of bids – based on the BIN value of the product we win. On rare instances the option to exchange the winning product for bids might not be available to us, however, DealDash will post a note to let shoppers know about this exception before the bidding begins; or
- If we do not win the auction product we are shopping for, we can use the Buy It Now (BIN) option. This means we can pay the BIN price to purchase the item and get all of our bids that we placed in the auction back to use in other auctions.
I decided to explore some things to consider to make our choice a little easier.
Winning products we need
Did we shop for this auction product because we really need it or want it? Would we actually use it? If we were not shopping for this product on DealDash, is it something we would go to a regular store to buy? If our answers are“yes” to these questions, we should pay the closing price and keep our winning item. If our answer is “no” to these questions, we should exchange our win for bids instead. If we do not win the product but would buy this product in a regular store, why not use BIN and buy it from DealDash to get our bids back free to use in another auction. I think the best time to use this option is when DealDash offers a sale price to the second place runner up. In these cases, we could get a better deal on the product by choosing to use BIN.
Exchanging products for bids
We might want to exchange our winning auction for bids in the following situations:
- If we only placed bids on the auction product to win our daily free bids. Sometimes we place 30 bids on some random items to qualify for our daily bids free. As long as we place 30 bids a day, we can get 30 free bids back every day. If we place 30 bids one day and place at least one bid again the next day, we can get the 30 bids we placed the previous day back again. If we placed only 15 bids one day, we can get those 15 bids back the next day by placing at least 1 bid. However, we cannot get back more bids than we placed the day before. Once we work our way up to getting 30 free bids a day we must continue to place 30 bids a day to get them back the next day. In this case, we are more focused on the bids than we are on the product.
- If we just want to move our green time-line to the end to collect a large bid pack of free bids, we might want to exchange a winning product for free bids to get our time-line all the way to the end a little faster.
Other things to consider
Will this product go up for auction again? Some auction products close at an extra high price and sometimes the same auction product will sell at an extra low price. If an auction product sold at an extra high price, we may want to exchange it for bids and bid on it again later. However, we must keep in mind that we are usually restricted from bidding on the same winning products only once every 30 days. This gives other shoppers a better opportunity to win the item we just won. However, if this product will go up for auction several more times in the future, we could bid on it again after our 30 days are up. Perhaps next time will be able to win it for less money.
This sponsored blog post was submitted by: Barbara L. Sellers. Barbara was compensated by DealDash for this blog post. Blog posts are written by real DealDash customers. The opinions and advice here represent our customers’ views and not those of the company.