I was very confused the first couple of times I went to the BFT site. Here are the steps I take:
Go to the home page of BFT. Scroll down to the hotel listings. Under the hotel listing you will find a listing for New York State-New York City. Click on that listing. On the very first line under Topic will be a listing: New York Hotels. Click on that and scroll down to the area you are interested in staying in. It will list the hotels and their star rating. You can also click on the member reviews for a specific hotel. I like to do that first to figure out what Area & Star Rating I'm going to be bidding on. Then go back to the bid listings and read what the successful bids were for the hotel and area you chose.
Hope this helps.

Yes, I have to agree that BFT's website is confusing. Took me a while to find everything that I needed. But it's worth the effort!!!

So here are your answers (for hotel bidding specifically):
1. The hotel FAQ link is in the very 1st paragraph of the BFT website (before you get to the Forum section). Read the 1st topic "Hotel FAQ". Then if you need bidding assistance, read the 2nd topic "Bidding Assistance Form".

2. On the home page for BFT, if you scroll down to the Hotel forum, click on the area you want to bid. The 1st topic(s) that show up contains a list of hotels in that area that are used by PL under each * rating. Therefore, you (sort of) know which hotels you'll be bidding for (which you cannot find out on PL). Each hotel listed is linked directly to the hotel's website (for you to check their rates), and also, if available, BFT users review of the hotel.

3. To post on BFT, you have to register with ezboard. Once you have registered, just type that you want "bidding for travel" forum and that will take you to BFT.

I agree it is one of the least user-friendly websites, but once you've get a hang of it, it gets easier.

Hope this helps.

kittycatangel-

BTW, Manhattan is one of the most confusing area to bid on PL because there are so many different zones. If you still want to go that route, your best bet is to fill out the "bidding assistance form" on BFT and let the experts come up with a bidding strategy for you. But you will still need to do a lot of homework on your own (looking up rates for each hotel listed in each zone that you want to bid). If this is too much effort, then it might not be for you.

Just my own observation, I find BFT has more traffic than betterbidding.com. Therefore BFT is more helpful for me to figure out how much I should bid as it gets a lot more winning bids posted.