Overbidding on Bid Packages

Yes, the sale price of bids has now gone up, which might have caused an even greater interest in bidding on and winning those 2,000 and 5,000 bid packages now going up for auction.

Overbidding on bid packages

I do not know about you, but overbidding on bid packages is a huge problem for me. Why? If I do not manage to win the bid packages I bid on, I will never use the BIN (Buy It Now) option to get all my bids back. Why? It would make no sense to do so when I could buy more bids on sale for less money.

Why would anyone do a BIN on the bid packages and pay the full 60 cents per bid? It would only make sense to do that if bidders invest maybe 15,000 or more bids to win a package of 2,000 bids. In that case, it might be worth it to do a BIN.  In most cases, however, bidders would be able to replace all of their lost bids for less money by simply buying more bid packages on sale. 

The full retail price for the 5,000 bid package is $3,000 and the full retail price for the $2,000 bid package is $1,200. How many DealDash.com customers can afford to pay that much money to do a BIN and get all their lost bids back?  Not me!  That is why I (and other customers) might be motivated to overbid on bid packages. We know the only way we have a chance to get any of our bids back is by winning.

How does this happen?

This is what happens and I am sure I am not the only one who experienced this. I recently started bidding on a 2,000 bid package. I noticed the bidding was down to only a few customers and it looked like it was a good time to get serious about winning this auction because it looked like it was about to close early.  Unfortunately, I was wrong!  At first "Lawtongal" was my main competitor, but I thought I had plenty of bids to out-bid her. Then along came jumpers  "Cleonard9" and "Twinkels548" and I still thought I had enough bids to outlast them, too. Every time one of the early bidders dropped out of the bidding and I thought I was about to win the 2,000 bid package, another unwanted, irritating, late jumper got into the bidding war -- "Silverwolf," "Allpro225," "Bigbrowneyes," and "Only1Traxton." Yes, the same bidder who himself complained when other "late jumpers" got into his action, was doing the same thing to me, which was wrong, wrong, wrong! Afterall, this was "my auction" because I got there first and I already invested more than 1,000 bids in an effort to win this auction. What right did any bidders have to jump in this late in the auction when they only had one bid invested before the auction had already hit $50 or more?  At this point, I was getting really angry, frustrated and even more determined to win ... even if I had to invest more than 2,000 bids to win a 2,000 bid package. I had to teach these "late jumpers" a lesson that they could not jump in this late in the bidding and "steal" the win away from me. Since I already lost more bids than I could win, I could not stop now. I was in over my head and I was committed. If I won, I could at least get most of my bids back. In the very least, I did not want those "late jumpers" to be rewarded by winning without paying a hefty price, too. When I finally realized I could not win this auction, however,  all this experience did was leave me (and probably others as well) feeling stupid for getting so caught up in this bidding process to such a ridiculous level in the first place.

Does this sound familiar?

"I am an intelligent person. I will control my emotions and not allow my emotions to control me. Whenever I am tempted to overbid to build up my injured ego, satisfy my frustrated desires or dull my senses, I will remember that even when I do not stop bidding in private, sooner or later,  it will only make me waste my own money and make me feel stupid for allowing it to happen. From now on, I will remember it is better to lose 1,000 bids than to lose 2,000 bids and I will stop losing bids before it gets to such a ridiculoous level." 

Actually, I got most of those words from the TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) pledge, replacing "over-eating" with "over-bidding" instead. It appears to fit very well in this case, too.  Perhaps some of us simply have addictive personalities. Regardless, all addictions must be controlled or before long, they will control us.

Many DealDash.com customers comment in their bio information that "this is addictive" so I know I am not the only one to feel this way. Not all addictions are bad addictions, though, as long as they are kept under control. Control is the key word here, and having a shopping addiction is nothing new. Women in particular, often have this problem and it is a problem most women enjoy. DealDash.com makes shopping online fun and entertaining and that makes it worth it, even if I lose a little money sometimes. To continue enjoying this online shopping experience, however, we must know what our financial limits are and stay within them.  

Whenever I see bidders write "I am in it to win it" I laugh. Stating the obvious just seems so funny to me. Sometimes I am tempted to write "I'm in it to lose it and can hardly wait to give it away to you!" Sometimes, if I have to leave an auction, I do give it away, but I refuse to give it away to the late jumpers. Just yesterday, I gave a 300 bid-package away to "ed3164" by cancelling my bids at the right time to set him up for the win. If someone else had to win it, I wanted it to go to someone who was in it from the beginning.

Possible Solutions

Whenever I encounter problems, I look for solutions.

From a customers perspective, one solution to this problem of overbidding on bid packages would be to plead with +DealDash.com to lower the retail price of the bid packages to the sale cost of the bids at the time of the bidding. Then more of us could afford to do a BIN and get all our bids back.

Another suggestion I would make to DealDash.com is to set additional limits, if possible, to the "no jumper" auctions. To me, being able to place one bid before the $2 $3 or $5 limit and then be able to jump in after the bidding has gone as high as $50 or $100 should be stopped. Any bidder who has not invested a minimum of 100 bids by the time the auction has reached $50 should be prevented from jumping in and winning it over other bidders who have already invested a lot more.

Lessons Learned

I know that even long-time DealDash customers who did not used to jump are now doing so because it might be the only way to win since DealDash got such a large number of customers. Even "nice" customers have probably jumped in later on in some auctions. It has become a "winning strategy" for many customers to save their bids for later in the auction. To know when the auction will close, however, is getting even more difficult to determine.
For example, if we look at the closing costs of the 2,000 bid-package winners, one customer (screen name "Magics") got lucky enough to win it May 1 for only $7.86.  When I bid on that same 2,000 bid package, the closing cost was $88.95.  I also noticed that "Rainbowgirl" got an even better deal on April 26 when she won the 5,000 bid package for onlly $3.74. That same 5,000 bid package cost "Aboveretail" $434.28. So it is not always easy to predict when an auction will close. Often times, it is just a matter of being lucky enough to be bidding in the right auction at the right time. 

For myself, I need to pay attention to my own advice. As long as I only bid on products I know I can afford to buy, I cannot lose. I know I will use gift cards for Applebees, Olive Garden and Home Depot, and I know I will always use gas cards, too. Therefore, it makes sense for me to bid in those auctions. Whenever I bid on bid packages, however, I usually end up losing a lot more than I win.  Even a bid package of only 80 bids will sometimes close at a ridiculously high cost. One bidder appeared to spend several hundred in bids in her effort to win 80, which makes no sense at all. Like I explained earlier, it is easy to become overly committed to winning an auction and we must learn when to cut our loses and bow out.  We only have ourselves to blame whenever we do not do that.

I also learned to pay attention to screen names of bidders to avoid. I know the screen names of most of the non-stopping, competitors who have a reputation of winning most of the auctions they enter. Screen name "Lailamar" is one I try to avoid for two reasons. He never enters an auction unless he's serious about winning, and he has such an ugly icon that makes me sick whenever I see it. LOL!!! Each bidder should have their own list of competitors to avoid. Waiting for the next auction could save us a lot of money.

Any Suggestions?

If you have any comments or concerns about "over bidders" or "late jumpers," please feel free to leave your comments and ideas. I would be interested to know if you have had similar experiences. What would you do to fix it?

Visit me here:  https://plus.google.com/111941944154930718258/about?rel=author Barbara Sellers