DealCent.com Reviews – Legit or Scam?
DealCent.com is a penny auction website that claims to sell brand name, factory sealed items at up to 95% discount, including in demand electronics like HD TVs and iPads.
Penny auctions are becoming more and more popular, with new sites and new users popping up everyday. Especially in a tough economy, the idea that a new TV or computer could be purchased for a fraction of the price is very attractive to people.
But if you have never used a penny auction website, you should know that there are many differences between penny auctions and regular auctions that new users should be aware of before they bid.
What to Know About Penny Auctions
First, every bid you place during a penny auction costs money. Bids at DealCent.com range from 50 cents per bid, if you purchase the largest bid pack of 500 bids, to 70 cents per bid if you purchase the smallest bid pack of only 75.
This means that if you lose a penny auction, you lose money as well. Because of this, many people have said penny auctions are more like gambling than like a traditional auction.
Another important difference is that every time a bid is placed during a penny auction, the clock is extended by a certain amount of time. This means penny auctions can go on for much longer than traditional auctions.
Make sure you have the time to participate; otherwise you may have to walk away from an item you have already invested a lot of money in.
More Concerns About Penny Auctions
With the large number of penny auction websites online, there are a wide number of complaints and issues that have arisen. These websites have been accused of everything from having bidding bots to raise prices to auctioning off merchandise they don’t actually have.
Before you commit to any penny auction website, you should search online to see what kinds of problems their customers are experiencing, if any.
What About DealCent.com?
DealCent is a very standard penny auction website. Whether or not they provide good customer service or have issues with merchandise delivery has not been established.
However, if you win an auction at DealCent.com and need to request a refund for any reason, you must do so within 7 days of receiving your item. DealCent.com will refund the final auction price you paid for the item, but the cost of the bids will not be refunded.
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May 13th, 2012 at 5:10 am
This is a perfect scam guys it doesn’t have bots to bid but has people from company I’ve observed this site for about 2months everyday there is someone outbidding you but then again you may win by fluke and bidding at last sec is not recon by me and if you truly believe this site then use a non flash devise like iPhone to bid it is safer
April 29th, 2012 at 3:11 pm
This is a super scam site.
I won a lot of actions in other sites but I lost 52$ on it.
Those who say they won are faking you into this.
Reason: Only bots play till an actual person enters so every items are sold at same range every time.
When i played an auction ,after 15 bids or so my page refreshed itself and i was logged out by itself. U should know how frustrating it gets when u are participating in auction with timer ticking less than 10seconds and you need to login to continue your auction.
I managed to login in time and this happened 4 times. By the time I logged in for 4th time the item was already sold to a bot i guess.
Support: I was in a rage and called support team to ask money for rest of my unused bids. A machine answers asking you to leave your name and number so that they contact you back but it never happens.
Hint 4 u: If u seriously want to get into this website. First call the customer care . U will never get support from them, which explains how genuine they are.
April 28th, 2012 at 9:04 am
Shame on this company but God will pay for this to take money from other people by setup automatic BOT….. SHAME ON YOU….. DEALCENT.
April 23rd, 2012 at 1:35 am
I have one question.
I keep reading in these blogs that you should wait until the last second to place your bid on DealCent.
But I know that whenever anyone places a bid, the timer gets reset to 10 seconds.
So why do you have to wait until the last second? In a REAL auction, the timer does not get reset. In a REAL auction, you want to to be the LAST bidder, so it is good to bid at the last second.
But these are not REAL auctions. The auction isn’t REALLY ending in 1 second. The timer just gets reset when you bid at the last second.
Does anyone follow me?
Or maybe I misunderstand. Is there a certain random point when the website will let the timer run out and bidding stops?
Confused…
April 21st, 2012 at 3:19 am
i bought a pack of 75 bids for 50$ and tried for an i-pod touch and i got it for 9.98 dollars but it is not delivered till now…….i paid the amount but its around 2 weeks now
April 19th, 2012 at 6:02 pm
I tried a lot and found out how to bid……and i made about 15 accounts and bidded with different accounts. And guess what I won an iPhone 4s for 10$ but nothing to go happy. the said it waz just a trial and i needed to buy bids for 60$. so i thought what if they r fake and i never bought it
April 14th, 2012 at 9:50 am
I would like to add myself to the list of those who fell for this site.
My burn was 150 bids for $90. I was going for an iPad.
Everything mentioned above happened to me.
I watched about 20 – 25 auctions pass to formulate a plan.
Plan was to only bid at 1 sec remaining to conserve my bids.
In all the auctions I watched, the only ones that seem to freeze at 1 sec were the ones I was involved in shutting me out.
Very rare did the same names pursue the next auction for the same item.
Bots are in play. Clincher – I was put out of first place by the name that already was winning. How could a bidder put a bid in on an auction that he was aready winning?
I have a limited one time buy in experience but like I said, I have watched about 20 – 25 auctions, all for iPads, and trends did appear. Including ALL auctions starting the same and ending roughly $10 – $12 of each total value.
REMEMBER WHAT YOUR MOM SAID:
“IF ITS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT PROBABLY IS”
VERY TRUE HERE IN MY OPINION
STAY AWAY – TELL YOUR FRIENDS
p/s Shipping is free in Canada. I certainly hope this is not a case of Canadians ripping off Canadians.
Tiger955 says:
April 14th, 2012 at 10:00 am
I forgot to mention. I did not receive a confirmation email or receipt for my deposit.
April 12th, 2012 at 5:28 am
thank you for your advices!
April 11th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
Hi, I am complaining here about the online bidding website www.dealcent.com. I have tried this website and lost 380$.
About Dealcent: is a bidding website where you have to buy bids and bid on things like ipod/iphone/ipad/psp etc. You can buy around 150bids for 92$. Each product starts with a fixed price and people start bidding online. The bid is active for 10secs and each bid will add an extra 10secs, so whos ever is the last bid when timer becomes 0, is the winner.
Here is my story -
a) When I first saw the website I was really attracted to it because I saw that an iphone could be won at around 11$. In fact whenever I saw the website an iphone would be sold in range 10-13$. The bid starts with around 8$ for an iphone.
I bought bids and started bidding only after the price has crossed 10$. The idea of bidding is to bid at the last second. So I started bidding at timer=1sec, after a certain number of bids, my bid at 1sec was not taken and the guy before me won. This repeatedly happened. Then I started bidding at timer=2sec, again my bid at 2sec was not honored more than once and the guy before me won.
b) Then I though I should bid at either 4 or 4 sec and it should be a safe time. With this I went till around 150bids in one of the attempts and the price of iphone kept going on till 18$, and again I lost when one of bid at 1sec was not honored.
I again purchased more bids and tried, once again I reached around 150+ bids in one attempt and again the price of iphone went till around 18$ and I lost as bids got finished.
Now there are 2 things here,
a) my bids at timer=1sec and timer=2sec were not honored consistently.
b) The price of iphone went till 18$ only I was bidding around 150bids, otherwise everytime it is in the range of 10-13$.
Why I think they are cheating -
a) Bids at 2sec, 1sec are dishonored in a random manner. This cannot be a technical flaw. This is a randomly generated cheating mechanism.
b) The iphone bid starts at 8$ and always sells in the range 10-13$. When there is no limit over how many people can bid and how many times will each bidder bid, and when people from around the world are bidding, how can a product sell consistently in the same price range? In fact this is true for all the products in the website, all of them have a very very consistent selling price range.
People do win in dealcent, once in a while, this helps them show they are legit. I think what they do is, to have their own fake bidders, who keep outbidding each other and always settle at a fixed price range, so that whoever sees the site will be sure that he too can win in the same price range. But when a real bidder comes, the fake bidders donot stop and price keeps going on and on, and obviously the real bidder runs out of bids and a fake bidder wins again. I am sure whenever a bid at 1sec or 2sec is not honored and bidder before you wins, he is a fake bidder from the company itself.
As a proof, I have attached a excel sheet which shows the selling price for 3 products on their website. I have sampled around 30 won auctions for 6 days. You can clearly see the unbelievable consistency in selling price for all 3 products. Bidding is a highly random probabilistic scenario and this kind of consistency cannot be real.
Dealcent is letting win 1 in N bidders and this keeps them safe because there are real winners too. They also claim that there is no average selling price which is a clear lie after looking at the attached image.
March 25th, 2012 at 10:34 pm
Impossible to when win they got automatic bidders. SCAM ALL THE WAY
March 14th, 2012 at 5:56 am
Dealcent add:
To see how safe the system was, I started off by bidding for an item that was going for about $1.5. I did doubt as the product I choose went for around $300 in the stores. To my surprise, I won the product after 20 minute of bidding and the total amount was $15.56. How about that! I walked home with a new play station 3 and I was able to save as much as $285 on the product. The product was delivered to me after seven days.
You have 1556-150=1406 bids x $0,5 = $703 on three persons about $251+$15.56=266.56!!!
Were is my saving?
What happen if just two persons …? WOW!!!
February 6th, 2012 at 2:46 pm
its a complete scam!! beware guys!! they are making a fortune with our money!! i’ve tried in vain… they use bots to out bid us!!
January 29th, 2012 at 4:56 pm
I have won an iPhone from DealCent.com. It cost me a few hundred bucks to win but I still managed to save some extra cash. I think most people who are complaining probably only spent a small amount and expected big things.
psycwave says:
February 6th, 2012 at 2:44 pm
if u’ve won an iphone, temme how much have you spent so far?? i mean how many bids did you buy totally and how many did you spend for one???
psychwave says:
February 6th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
hey buddy.. i’ve given a try.. but failed… i was outbid by another user or bot… i got 150 bids for 90$ and wasn’t successful… can u mention how many bids u bought and what was the final price u bought it for?? and when was it that u have won?? pls reply…
January 26th, 2012 at 12:42 am
This site is a scam. They have automated BOTs that actually prevent you from winning any prices. If you carefully observe the trends of the timers after you have placed your bid, you will find that that a bot automatically out-bids you within a fraction of a second before the entire bid is timed out. All the other users place bids against you are usually repetitive. In conclusion even if you have infinite bids the bot will have infinite+1 bids and it will always beat you. This is a SCAM!
rattijb says:
March 31st, 2012 at 11:53 pm
I agree. This site is a scam designed to rip you off. They do have automated BOTs that prevent you from winning. Once in a while they may allow a non-bot bidder to win, just to show that they are legit. The winning price is a complete deception. Just imagine twenty bidders bidding hundreds of bids at 50 cents each bid not knowing that they are bidding against BOTs. Company is cheating you and making huge profits.
The automated BOT outbids a bidder in a fraction of the last second whereas the genuine bidder has to bid well before the last count otherwise he will loose. Want to save your money, get away from this site. Better, send a complaint to the regulators.
passer by says:
February 12th, 2012 at 10:10 am
I totally agree with you