Yes the site is very addictive. Yes the items presented appear to be discounted in price. NO you cannot pick things up for pennies on the dollar. I am a self-pay student, so I am frugal and tried to purchase items that I can use for school or my room The math is: add your $0.01 bid COST which is $0.15 average per bid to the bid total. At the very least you will always pay at least the BIN price or... at the worst (which is seems was always the case for me) more than double the market rate for the item. When something is "won", the delivery time has been (again, my experience only) about one month.
I performed an experiment and followed all suggestions from the "power-players" that have been on the site for a while, researched suggestions from other webpages, and still lost almost $1,000 on the item - and I stepped away from the auction several times over four days. The end price for whoever won was almost double the listed "market" cost. DealDash made a fortune on that one - I truly do not care because they are a business, but come on! (You can do the math on this one - 140,000 bids in total, each costing $0.15 equals.....$21,000 minimum profit on an $800 item PLUS the final auction cost).
When you write to their customer service area, you may or may not receive a response, depending how persistent and bitchy you area. When I email myself - no response. When I email with a stern tone and then follow up with a call to their MN or NY office - I receive a very prompt response and the issue resolution begins.
My suggestions:
Don't pay any attention to the advice listed, such as "just use BidBuddy" or "set your price and walk away" because what will happen is you will lose and your money is gone.
Don't got after anything over $100 unless you intend to pay more than full price,
Don't get excited about the "Free" or "50% off" auctions because I swear they plant moles that bid up the price to way more than the BIN or market price