Best deal websites?

[rudeguy]

hot deals is dead, fatwallet is ok and slickdeals is meh...

I really like the deal a day kind of websites. What are some good websites to check into on occasion?

 

[MotionMan]

hot deals is dead, fatwallet is ok and slickdeals is meh...

I really like the deal a day kind of websites. What are some good websites to check into on occasion?

These are the ones I use the most:

Woot!
Deals Woot!
Moofi Woot!
ThingFling
1 Sale a Day

MotionMan

 

[Jadow]

alaways liked slickdeals, techbargains, and bens bargains.

pretty much just check slicksdeals occasional now.

 

[bbhaag]

My FIL swears by Bens Bargains so he got me hooked on it. I like Woot to.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ebay is often a forgotten one. If you look good enough you can find pretty slick deals sometimes. I recently scored myself a 24port gigabit Dell switch for like 200 bucks after shipping. Those normally go for at least 500 bucks used, and a couple grand new. At first I thought it was only 10/100 with a few gigabit interfaces (lot of switches are advertised as gigabit but it's only 2 gigabit uplink ports) but it's full gigabit. Can't wait to get it!

There's always the risk of getting scammed on ebay though, but so far it has not happened to me. Watch this I get some 4U 8 port hub now because I said that.

 

[Farmer]

You guys remember Pricewatch?

Wow that was a long time ago.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

lol i used to go to all those sites until i had a whole room and half full of "bargains" that i wouldnt ever have time to use. now if i dont have an immediate use for it, i dont want it. if i have it and i dont need it it goes on the freebie shelf at work

 

[rudeguy]

I figure with Christmas coming soon, its time to start keeping an eye out for deals.

Thanks guys...keep 'em coming! (that's what she said)

 

[Svnla]

Half Price Depot has some good deals sometime.

In the last few weeks, I were hooked on SD with the FAR items from TigerDirect.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

FatWallet
SlickDeals
CheapAssGamers
AT HotDeals
HardForum HotDeals

 

[DesiPower]

You guys remember Pricewatch?

Wow that was a long time ago.

it still exists and has the same content, but newegg has made it meaningless...

 

[DesiPower]

I like deals2buy.com

 

[OBLAMA2009]

it still exists and has the same content, but newegg has made it meaningless...

ha ha i remember that from the old days, that was where everyone looked in the...90's? occasionally they would have pricing mistakes where some seller would accidentally post wholesale prices and disappoint the enitre internet when they canceled

 

[Cuda1447]

marked

 

[DrPizza]

Since the OP has been here for over a decade, I suppose I can break the news... It's not that those hot deal sites are getting "meh." It's that because of the proliferation of such sites that companies no longer have to have such steep discounts to encourage new buyers. That, coupled with the realization that customers aren't loyal. Selling them things, while taking a loss, doesn't lead to lifelong customers, it leads to you going out of business (see dot com collapse.) Though, in the late 1990's, very early 2000's, it was great while it lasted.

Hell, I still remember having to fork out money for a large shelving unit just to hold groceries. If I recall correctly, if you bought 10 items of a particular brand (betty crocker, or something like that - there was a large variety of qualifying items) you got a $20 or $25 gift certificate good for your next shopping trip. Well, the next day, out of curiosity, I bought 10 more items to see if that gift certificate was good to use on those items. Son of a bitch! I got another gift certificate! Free* groceries - all I had to do was go back and forth from the car, 10 items at a time.

*Actually, I think for the combination of qualifying items I got, it cost me about $1 each trip. And, it might have been 15 items. Regardless, I spent 10 times more money on shelving than I did on groceries. I had enough cake mix and frosting for what seemed like a lifetime. "Bake sale? I'll bake some cakes."


Or, Staples: a scanner, plus about 6 other particular items added up to $150. You used a $30 off $150 coupon, and after the rebates rolled in, you netted a $12 profit from those items.

Or, the Dell computer right around Thanksgiving, I think it was 2000, else 2001. They used to have all sorts of separate rebates. If you bought a computer with a particular hard drive, you got a $100 rebate. If you bought a computer with another particular thing, you got a $200 rebate. On one day, all of the rebates over-lapped. If you were a student, you got a $2000 computer for around $100. Dell shit bricks, but honored most of the rebates, provided people could verify they were students. IIRC, most people got back the majority of their rebates, resulting in a net cost of under $500 for the system.


*sigh* HOT deals are mostly a thing of the past.

 

[rockyct]

www.camelcamelcamel.com is a great Amazon price tracking site and www.camelegg.com is the Newegg price tracker version.

 

[gevorg]

I used to browse hot deal sites like fatwallet and slickdeals daily, but now I just set email alerts for items I specifically want to buy like 256GB SSD or some digital camera. Once email notification comes in, I checkout the deal and decide if I want to buy it or not. This helps to avoid buying crap I don't need. I do tend to check the hotdeals section on AT since the deals here are more cherry picked.

 

[kranky]

Oh ValueAmerica, how I miss your ridiculously generous offers. I can't even remember how much stuff I got there at 50% off, including a TV with free shipping. Ain't no deals like that today.

But DrPizza is right, consumers have proven great deals don't create loyal customers, and sellers don't see a need to offer blockbuster deals. When online sellers analyze the results from past great deals, they see a large number of orders from new customers who never order again. It's pretty easy to see that isn't helping the business.

 

[JEDI]

this year i notice that ALOT of stores are releasing thier black Friday ads early this year.

i remember a time when these same stores treated the ads like a national secret and threatened to sue sites under dmca for posting their ads.

What a change.

and of course the deals got less hot year after year.
this year isnt an exception

 

[Exterous]

this year i notice that ALOT of stores are releasing thier black Friday ads early this year.

i remember a time when these same stores treated the ads like a national secret and threatened to sue sites under dmca for posting their ads.

What a change.

and of course the deals got less hot year after year.
this year isnt an exception

I think the 'less hot' and the more open ads go hand in hand. Also - its less about the day and now about the week of. I feel particularly bad for the retail employees that work at places that are now open on Thanksgiving

 

[DrPizza]

this year i notice that ALOT of stores are releasing thier black Friday ads early this year.

i remember a time when these same stores treated the ads like a national secret and threatened to sue sites under dmca for posting their ads.

What a change.

and of course the deals got less hot year after year.
this year isnt an exception

It just goes to show you: marketing majors are morons. It took a few years before they realized, "wow, these sites create a lot more hype for the stuff we're selling, and we don't even have to host the images ourselves!" Sadly, I think that the increased hype (Black Friday wasn't this busy 20 years ago) has drastically increased the number of people shopping that day - so like the hot deals, they've also finally figured out that "hey, we really don't have to drop the prices quite as much to get people through the door.) - Again, it took marketing majors quite a few years to figure that one out as well.

 

[Juddog]

Since the OP has been here for over a decade, I suppose I can break the news... It's not that those hot deal sites are getting "meh." It's that because of the proliferation of such sites that companies no longer have to have such steep discounts to encourage new buyers. That, coupled with the realization that customers aren't loyal. Selling them things, while taking a loss, doesn't lead to lifelong customers, it leads to you going out of business (see dot com collapse.) Though, in the late 1990's, very early 2000's, it was great while it lasted.

Hell, I still remember having to fork out money for a large shelving unit just to hold groceries. If I recall correctly, if you bought 10 items of a particular brand (betty crocker, or something like that - there was a large variety of qualifying items) you got a $20 or $25 gift certificate good for your next shopping trip. Well, the next day, out of curiosity, I bought 10 more items to see if that gift certificate was good to use on those items. Son of a bitch! I got another gift certificate! Free* groceries - all I had to do was go back and forth from the car, 10 items at a time.

*Actually, I think for the combination of qualifying items I got, it cost me about $1 each trip. And, it might have been 15 items. Regardless, I spent 10 times more money on shelving than I did on groceries. I had enough cake mix and frosting for what seemed like a lifetime. "Bake sale? I'll bake some cakes."


Or, Staples: a scanner, plus about 6 other particular items added up to $150. You used a $30 off $150 coupon, and after the rebates rolled in, you netted a $12 profit from those items.

Or, the Dell computer right around Thanksgiving, I think it was 2000, else 2001. They used to have all sorts of separate rebates. If you bought a computer with a particular hard drive, you got a $100 rebate. If you bought a computer with another particular thing, you got a $200 rebate. On one day, all of the rebates over-lapped. If you were a student, you got a $2000 computer for around $100. Dell shit bricks, but honored most of the rebates, provided people could verify they were students. IIRC, most people got back the majority of their rebates, resulting in a net cost of under $500 for the system.


*sigh* HOT deals are mostly a thing of the past.

Sad but true. I remember back in the day, Dell had a sale on it's servers, where you could sell the Xeon chip from the server on ebay for more than the cost of the server from Dell, but of course you had to buy a particular package, with a particular coupon code.

Another time there was a reseller for Dell, based out of India, that was having their contract terminated. People were posting in fatwallet about emailing this third party retailer directly for deals, so I thought what the hell and gave it a shot; I ended up buying my TV for literally about $900 less than it cost on any online sites and it was shipped to my house right from Dell's warehouse.

 

[Svnla]

dp.

 

[Svnla]

Oh ValueAmerica, how I miss your ridiculously generous offers. I can't even remember how much stuff I got there at 50% off, including a TV with free shipping. Ain't no deals like that today.

But DrPizza is right, consumers have proven great deals don't create loyal customers, and sellers don't see a need to offer blockbuster deals. When online sellers analyze the results from past great deals, they see a large number of orders from new customers who never order again. It's pretty easy to see that isn't helping the business.

I still remember the print ads of ValueAmerica in USAToday Newspaper way back when. Good time.

I do agree that more and more sellers are putting their BF ads on their own sites earlier and earlier every year plus push back the open hour for BF earlier and earlier.

 

[Triumph]

I loved Value America. They didn't have much selection, but if they had what you needed, it was gold. Bought a Voodoo3 3500 w/ TV tuner for $50, at that time it was the top of the line video card.

True hot deals are very few. I grabbed a Canon camera/lens bundle this summer off of a SD at Amazon and ended up getting a $450 lens for essentially free after I craigslisted the other stuff I didn't want. And that's probably how it is now, if you want a really slick deal, you'll have to work for it. I had to sell 2 cameras and 2 lenses on CL in order to get the 1 lens that I wanted for free.