onSale

Pros:  Easy access bidding with bidwatch.

Cons:  Lots of research before you bid, but in the end it's worth it!

Full review
I just had to try it once, and if it works out well, we will definitely use it often. This was not the first time I bid on travel, but it was the first time I have WON!
I have purchased several things at onsale and egghead (not travel related) over the past two years and received very good service from this site. I do have to admit that I liked onsale.com a lot better before they combined efforts with egghead.com, they had some wonderful deals and their shipping and handling charges were much lower.
The following will be a bit different from your normal Review.
It will be a pre-travel review on an auction-bought cruise at egghead.com.
There are many people that have never cruised and since this was a strange way (for us) to book a cruise, I thought I would share our experience with you.
We awoke one morning and realized that we had no travel plans for anytime in the near future...........that in itself was strange, we both retired so that we could travel more, but it has been a very busy year for us. We love to travel and always seem to have something either in the planning stages or the countdown stages.
A normal cruise is booked far in advance..........
1)To obtain the cabin number that you want. 2) To obtain the early booking fare. 3) For the chance to save for final payment (normally 60-75 days prior to embarkation).
With both of us realizing that we needed a break..............and soon, I checked the cruise auction sites. There are always dozens of last minute cruises that I feel go at reasonable prices, and sometimes at unheard of prices. I often shop the express auctions at egghead.com so I figured that it was a good place to start. Since I am usually a planner by nature I was a bit skeptical, but we decided to give it a try.
I watched the cruise/travel auctions each day as the new cruises came up for bid, and then again the next day at closing time to see just what the final bids were on the ones that we were interested in.
Most cruises go up for auction several times so you can get an idea of what the price ranges are, and they can really vary from day to day by hundreds of dollars.
I watched two cruises that we were interested in, one from Vancouver to San Juan through the Panama Canal and the other from Fort Lauderdale to the Western Caribbean and then returning to Fort Lauderdale. Each was going for a very good price for an outside cabin. I checked the airfare on United and Northwest (we always attempt to fly on an airline that we have a large number of air miles on). The air for the Panama Canal cruise was OUTRAGEOUS, over twice the price the cruise was going for. The airfare to Fort Lauderdale was very low, so I checked to see if there were any seats still available on the flights that we needed.
I then checked with several Travel Agents that we have used in the past to obtain quotes for this ship, in the category cabin that I would be bidding on.
I made sure to start off the bidding on the Western Caribbean cruise and enabled bidwatch to project the highest price that I was willing to pay. At the end of the bidding, to my amazement, I won! And my winning bid was several hundred less than the price that I had placed in bidwatch. We had just won a cruise for two on Holland America's newest ship the Zaandam, outside cabin, leaving within two weeks, for less than 1/4 the price of any quotes that we had received for that category cabin.
I might tell you that the day before I won this cruise, the exact same cabin, ship and sailing date went for several hundred dollars more. Patience is what it takes, and losing is something that happens often, so you have to be flexible.
I immediately booked the airfare after receiving the conformation that mine was the winning bid, made the hotel reservations and then broke the good news to my husband.
I was contacted within 36 hours by Holland America to verify the names of those traveling and to give us all of the details of the cruise. We were asked to contact them again seven days or less before we leave and we would be given our cabin assignments at that time.
All is going well, so far. Since this cruise leaves within the next two weeks our documents will be waiting for us at the cruise terminal to be picked up on arrival.
Everything was booked using the Internet so that we could obtain added bonuses in air miles.
After sailing on ten cruises to date, this might be the best or worst of them all, it remains to be seen. After we return, I will write a review of this sailing and fill in all the blanks.
WISH US LUCK!