Mike R.

Those of you who refer to "bots" bidding on auctions: every bidder has the option to engage an automated bidder to post bids for them. It's limited at 40 bids and, often times, several bidders on the same auction are using them. Using the auto bid system is one of the strategies of winning on the site. Big Deals makes A LOT of money, that's true, enough that I don't think they need to scam anyone. If you log in, buy a few bids, try to win a TV for $30, of course you'll be out of luck. There are strategies to winning items at a low price and it works for me. I've won a Kindle, a MacBook, several zip drives, etc. Like anything else in life, if you walk in blind and hand them your money, they'll gladly accept it from you. Here's a tip: if you want to win a $600 iPhone, make sure you have $600 worth of bids to fire at the auction. If you win, whoopee, you got a great deal. If not, you can buy the item for the cost of your bids plus shipping. Yes, the retail price is a little higher than regular web deals, but that's the trade-off for taking a shot at a 95% discount, which happened for me the first day I bid, here. PayPal has their revenue gates open to the site (and they've closed them to many penny auction sites). That lends some credibility to their business tactics.