PayPal sent out a business newsletter at around noon today promoting their special offers with participating merchants, and it did not take long before all the deals got re-posted onto OzBargain! Thanks for those who have relayed the deals, as PayPal-Offers.com.au became quite unresponsive later in the afternoon, when a large number of visitors trying to go to that site as the result of the newsletter.

Here are some of the hot deals posted:

• Free Shipping at Deals Direct — use coupon code pp23424 to get free shipping at Deals Direct + free Korloff branded perfume worth $49.

  

• Free Gift at OO.com.au, when you pay with PayPal and use coupon code PPGIFT. Value at $15.

• Free Gift at CatchOfTheDay.com.au, when you pay with PayPal and use coupon code ILOVEPAYPAL. Valued at $100.

• 10% Off at iSubscribe.com.au, when you pay for magazine subscription with PayPal.

• 25% Off Xmas Centrepiece or 10% Off Sitewide at FastFlower.com.au, when you use coupon code paypal.

• Free $20 voucher from DesignerOnline.com.au, when you spend $100 or more, use PayPal and this coupon code — PAYPALXMAS

• Free Shipping at TopBuy.com.au, plus free tie + cufflink, plus 5% off voucher for your next purchase when you pay with PayPal.

  

• $5 Cashback at EzyDVD, when you spend $30 or more and pay with PayPal.

• Free Shipping at Chaos.com, when you pay with PayPal Express Checkout.

  

Wow. Lots of deals for December and I am sure more will be coming later this month. Stay tuned.

Christmas came early this year at Deals Direct.

And I am not talking about their Christmas spotlight sales. But instead, check this out — 10% Off Discount Coupon for Deals Direct! Yes, 10% off marked price when you check out. Here is the coupon code:

46378

Thanks to barguy who posted this deal on OzBargain. What I wasn’t sure is the source of this coupon code so I asked where it was from, and it was apparently from another forum.

I guess it could have been from Buckscoop which is another good source of Australian bargains. nod posted it at 10:03PM AEST (Buckscoop runs on UTC+8 WA time), where as barguy posted at OzBargain at 10:05PM AEST (OzBargain runs on UTC+10 timezone as DST is just too confusing)! Well done for publicising the deal first! Or it could have been RetailMeNot.com? Too bad that you can’t know the exact time when a code was posted on RetailMeNot.com, which is one feature I would love to see. It also got relayed to other Australian bargain sites like TopBargains which was posted 14 hours after the code came live on Buckscoop and OzBargain…

I still don’t know where is the coupon code originated.

Some of the best bargains posted last week:

$5 Caltex StarCash WhatsOnSale.com.au Promotion

A new website is launching in spring 2007 (which is only one more day to go) — WhatsOnSale.com.au is offering 500 $5 Caltex StarCash vouchers to those who have signed up membership before its launch. Yes we love freebies! Thanks to barguy for posting this deal.

Now I am wondering what “WhatsOnSale.com.au” is about. Aren’t subscribing to OzBargain enough to keep you aware what’s on sale? :) Anyway, here is the small snippet from the promotional website:

At whatsonsale.com.au you’ll be able to find all the sales, retailers, catalogues and vouchers you want to make your shopping life easier.

We’ll see.

Cheap Flights — Jetstar vs. Tiger Airways

War between budget airlines continues this week.

• Tiger Airways: $19.95 All Flights Routes, 23 Nov Only
• Jetstar: $19.95 Flight Sale 24 Nov
• Tiger Airways: $2 Singapore – Bangkok; $35 Perth/Darwin – Singapore + Taxes
• Jetstar: 3 Destinations at 2 for 1 Price (Take 2)
• Tiger Airways: $19.95 Melbourne to Sunshine Coast 27 Nov ($49.95 Melbourne-Perth)

Let me declares the victory to Tiger Airways this week as they get more votes. Most importantly, unlike Jetstar, their servers actually stand the Attack of Sales! More fights is expected this week. Interestingly VirginBlue seems to have kept themselves out from this battle. Maybe they have smartened up and don’t want to be the loss leader.

Myer Christmas Shopping Event

Thanks to jdoung for posting the long-awaited Myer Christmas Shopping Event for Staff Family and Friends! It is from 24-26 November so it has already expired.

While it gives very good deal, don’t forget the whole “friends and family” thing might just be Myer’s effort of viral marketing! I know at least a few friends of mine took the bite (again) this year, thinking it is something “exclusive”. Well, it is a good deal, but definitely not exclusive. It seems half of Sydney is a family or friend (of friend of friend) of a Myer staff…

Silverlit PicooZ Minature Helicopter from Big W

Thanks to simon.sch for posting this deal. Big W is having a sale at the moment, and this genuine PicooZ Minature Helicopter can be yours for $19.76!

I am not a remote helicopter fan so I have no idea what’s the right price for these. However from the comments where someone bought out the entire stock of PicooZ helicopters in a Big W store this morning, you know it is cheap!

I blogged about Getmac over here more than 2 years ago, when it wasn’t even known as Getmac. It was the cheapest authorised Apple reseller in Australia that I could find back then, and it probably still is although I have not been tracking the price lately. An EDU discount can probably still be cheaper, but when you are not a student, these guys are probably the cheapest you can find (unless you start shopping for Apple stuff overseas). However, unlike Apple Online Store, they do charge for delivery. Still cheaper than buying from Apple directly though.

This morning these guys posted a deal at OzBargain — Free Australia-wide Delivery with PayPal so you can get your discounted Mac delivered to your home/work for free! Not just desktops and notebooks, it also works with iPods. For example according to Shopbot, the cheapest iPod Touch 8GB is $395 (as of 28/11/2007), but they are $393.86 at Getmac.

Deal expires on 20 December 2007.

For the latest PayPal deals, check out PayPal-Offers.com.au. They must be fighting hard against the banks trying to win over merchants by offering these deals. Well, consumer wins :)

Thanks to Charmaine from OO.com.au and dansor who posted this deal at OzBargain, OO.com.au is having free delivery on all items this weekend, when you pay with PayPal.

Offer ends 10pm Sunday 25 November 2007.

With free delivery you will probably get most saving by buying (1) large bulky items (2) small inexpensive items where delivery charge would be relatively high comparing with the unit price. Got a bar freezer last time OO.com.au ran the free delivery promotion. Let me see what I can get this time.

It has been an awesome week. We have just got back from our holidays and it was nice to take a break from work and enjoy the good weather in Queensland. There has also been a great week here at OzBargain — 5,000+ visitors on Wednesday when the 5 cent Jetstar ticket sale killed their webserver (and almost crippled my little VPS too). Yes it was an awesome deal only if their IT infrastructure (or lack of) can keep up with it! Their website basically went into zombie mode (dead but not yet) 30 minutes prior to the sale, and although some have managed to purchase their 5 cent tickets, the majority ended up starring at the “Sorry our website is experiencing very high levels of demand right now” for a few hours — myself included!!

Alright. It appears not everyone can be the winner in the sport of bargain hunting, but let us check out some of great deals posted this week.

FootLocker Family & Friends 30% Off

Thanks to dailek for posting this special deal — FootLocker 30% Off for Family and Friends! Between 22 and 25 November, just print out the voucher and head down to FootLocker, and you’ll get 30% off everything including the on-sale items!

As Christmas draws near, we’ll hopefully see more of these special offers for staff’s family and friends (at least from past experience). It is a great opportunity to get further discount on all the discounted items.

Radox Products 100% Cashback

Thanks to zack2008 for posting this great cashback offer, where Radox is giving 100% cashback for their products. All you need to do is fill in a claim form and mail in, and they will send you a cheque of 100% the cost of that product + 50 cents for postage.

It is a great way to check out their products however it is limited to 1 per household. You should be able to find them in all major supermarkets. Offer expires 13 Jan 2008.

$20 Voucher from dStore

dStore is giving out more free vouchers! When you spend $30 or more before the end of November, and paid using PayPal, you will receive $20 free voucher from dStore to be used during December! Thanks to dansor for posting this deal.

There is also a free delivery promotion when spend $50 or more, but has now expired. If you are looking for dStore deals, you can check them out here and there is an RSS feed at the bottom of the page for you to subscribe.

Sorry it will just be a quick update this week. I am currently in my week long holidays on the Gold Coast accessing the Internet via slowband of 256kbps ADSL, but I will be back next week taking care of OzBargain again.

• Hopefully none of you have missed out Kmart’s 1 day monster sale today. Lots of goodies at great price.
• Download your Free CA Internet Security software thanks to Commonwealth Bank. Sorry no comment on how good they are.
• You can get free $20 iTunes voucher if you buy an iPod nano from Australia Post. They sell it at RRP, i.e. starting at $199 for 4GB, so you need to work out whether to buy from cheaper retailers, or go for the free iTunes voucher.
• Free $10 voucher from dStore. They might not be the cheapest online store in town but you ought to be able to find some cheap deals with $10 off.

Kthxbye!

It has been a week since the Reserve Bank of Australia raised the cash rate to 6.75% on November 7. You’ll expect the response to be polarised. If you are in debts with mortgage or credit card loans, then expect a letter from the banks demanding more money each week. However if you have cash investment in saving accounts, then your bank will hopefully pass on the higher interest rate to the investors.

Usually the mortgage lenders will pass on the increases in no time, whereas saving banks will only react after a week or two. However from what I have observed one week after the rate raise, the competition in the online saving market has actually driven the banks to raise rate before many lenders.

Right after the announcement of much-expected rate raise on 7^th of November, many online saving banks also sent out their follow up press release of their own rate raises and how generous they are passing all the benefits to their customers.

From ING DIRECT‘s November media release (PDF file, 63kb):

ING DIRECT is raising the interest rates on its savings products, including its flagship Savings Maximiser, Term Deposits and Business Optimiser.

The rate on its high-interest, no-fees Savings Maximiser will increase by 0.25%, from 6.15% p.a. variable to 6.40% p.a. variable, effective from Friday 9 November.

Then we have BankWest’s TeleSaver‘s Media release on the same day, as reported on OzBargain:

Customer champion BankWest has today announced that it will once again pass on the cash rate rise to deposit customers.

For retail customers this means the BankWest TeleNet Saver 12 month variable introductory interest rate will increase 20 basis points from 7.00 per cent p.a. to 7.20 per cent p.a, with the standard interest rate to increase 25 basis points from 6.50 per cent p.a. to 6.75 per cent p.a.

RaboPlus was a little bit slow, who has finally made a press release via PRWeb 5 days after the event on 12 November, and increased their standard rate to 6.90%:

RaboPlus – the online banking division of AAA rated Rabobank -lifted its on-call variable interest rate from 6.70 per cent to 6.90 per cent per annum on its online savings deposits, effective from midday today, November 12, 2007.

Are you affected by the interest rate raise? In a good way or in a bad way?

Update 10 August 2008: It appears that TechaDay is no more! From what I have heard that they have done a runner on some buyers. For more information please join the discussion in OzBargain forums.

Recently I have been notified yet another one deal a day site, but focusing on electronic gadgets — TechaDay.com.ay. From its FAQ page:

What is TechaDay?

Techaday is a internet-based store that only sells one electronic item a day, at a large quantity. Techaday will continue to sell that item until either it sells out, or the 24 hours ends. Buy any amazing product for an incredibly marked down price and get the latest technology everyday.

Melbourne-based Techaday is similar to sites like Woot, Zazz, CatchOfTheDay, etc, but no perfumes, no wine, no chocolate fountain — just electronic gadgets!

New item is sold for 24 hours, starting at 11am. So now through out the day, we have Zazz at 12am, 1-Day at 10am, Techaday at 11am and finally CatchOfTheDay at 12pm.

The site itself is pretty new, and they only accept PayPal payment at the moment, however there has been a few interesting products being offered. Hopefully they will continue to offer great one day items to keep us busy throughout the day (checking all different deal sites)./p>

Here are some of the best deals submitted this week. Sorry about last week’s post, where Bob complained that almost all the deals have expired. One thing I forgot to mention (it was on my mind but I forgot to put it down!) was that I meant to tell everyone to Subscribe to OzBargain to get the up-to-date bargains! Well, I’ll try to share the deals that are still available today.

Free SMS

tassie Pete submitted this great web web2msg.com that gives you free SMS everyday. On the site it says “Send free SMS to anyone you like, quickly, simply. No signup required.” The only thing you need to put in is your friends’ number + your message, and that’s it (oh wait, after passing the CAPTCHA and agree with usage policy). You can send up to 5 SMS per day.

It is not perfect though. It only works half the time for me, and sometimes some network works and some network doesn’t. It is not something that you should 100% rely on because later on you might ask your friend “hey what do you think about the idea I sent to you via SMS the other day?” “what SMS?”

JayJay04 also submitted a similar deal today, 5 free SMS per day from FreeSMSMate.com.au. Time to go and spam message my friends!

Tiger Airways 50% Off

Tiger Airways seems to be on the bargain channel everyweek these days. I know this is a deal that is about to expire (today is the last day), so if you only see it today, for the next two hours you can get 50% off Tiger Airways ticket sale for flights between December 2007 and January 2008. Hurry up!

I have just heard this week that you can’t even bring your own food onto Tiger Airways’ plane — if you are hungry and you want to eat, you must buy the inflight food! Can anyone verify that? So be prepared when you buy those Tiger Airways tickets. You could be on a plane with whole flight of the cheap starving passengers!

Kingston 2GB USB Key Buy 2 Get 1 Free

ShoppingSquare is now selling Kingston 2GB USB Key, Buy 2 Get 1 Free so you can get 6GB of USB storage for $51.90 + delivery.

Great deal for a well-known brand USB storage. Who wouldn’t have one in his pocket?

Guitar Hero 3 Bundle $98 from Big W

Any Guitar Hero fan here? There must be lots, looking at how many votes this deal has got. For one day only, you can buy the recently released Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock from Big W for $98 and that’s including the game + the wireless controller, available on PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii. Thanks to Eggy for posting this deal.

I have to confess that I have never owned a game console except for the Atari my parents bought when I was young, and have never played guitar hero so I have no idea about why people are so obsessed to it. Maybe I should go down to the local Big W to have a look. Now here comes the OzBargain question of the week —

Who is your favourite guitarist?

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, food is at the very bottom, and mankind has fought hard over the centuries trying to satisfy this very basic need. As someone who is the breadwinner of the household, I am very happy to see that there are food related deals that actually give you free food!

Free Slurpee from 7-Eleven on November 7

Thanks to JeffreyM for posting this freebie. On 7/11, the 7-Eleven Day, you can get a Free Small Slurpee by walking into a 7-Eleven and congratulating the guy behind the counter, “Happy 7-Eleven Day!”

Here is link to store locator so you can spot the closest 7-Eleven next Wednesday. It’s limited to one Slurpee per store per customer, but doesn’t say how many stores you can visit — so do note down all the 7-Eleven stores near you!

Free Donuts from Krispy Kreme on November 25

Thanks to bluestone-123 for posting this deal. If you vote for free Krispy Kreme for Australia, you’ll receive an email coupon to redeem up to 6 free Krispy Kreme donuts! Now, there are four parties you can vote — the Original John, Sprinkles Kev07, The Greenies and Lemoncrats. Sprinkles Kev07 seems to have an upper hand at the moment, but just like all elections, you never know until the end :)

Krispy Kreme has also released a satirical video on YouTube. As the commenter has said, “If only the real campaigns were this entertaining…”

It is that time of the week again! There has been a few milestones this week at OzBargain this week — 500 RSS subscribers and 4,000+ visits yesterday! We also have great deals posted this week.

Tiger Airways $9.95 One Day Deal

This is the competition winner this week. Tiger Airways has a one day air ticket sale — from $9.95 from Melbourne to various destinations, including Canberra, Gold Coast, Hobart, Launceston, Mackay, Newcastle, Rockhampton and Sunshine Coast. Unfortunately it is only available on Oct 29, so if you only found out when you are reading this… Then you are too late.

Funny that Jetstar was also trying to the same by offering $9.95 tickets as well, but was taken down pretty soon afterwards. No wonder — these prices are just way too cheap. They are cheaper than my weekly TravelTen, thanks to fierce competition in this space. Thanks to yousuf for posting this deal.

Dell 24″ 2407WFP for $599

Again, if you only found out when you are reading this, you are too late! thechung posted this incredible deal, where you can get Dell’s 2407WFP 24″ LCD monitor for $599, far cheaper than recommended retail price of $999+. You need to make a phone order and quite Q142407WHC for this offer.

With other 24″ LCD monitors costing below $600, you sort of expect the price to drop for Dell to stay competitive. Hopefully we’ll see Dell’s 2407WFP to become even cheaper in the future.

Save $20 at Myer’s Private Sale

Here is another expired deal — Myer One Private Sale: Save $20 for every $100 you spent. I guess the best way to lure your customers back to shop for more is — offering them “private discount”!

For every $100 spent, you’ll get $20 off, if all is one transaction! Too bad that this deal too has expired. Thanks to JeffreyM for posting this deal.

$100 Cashback on Sony Handycam

Okay. Here is one that is still available. Sony is currently a promotion on handycam and digital still cameras.

For selected models (please check the deal page for more details), you can get $100 cashback on handycams, and $50 cashback on cameras. Alternatively you can also claim accessories, which might cost more than the cashback. You can also combine with previous Sony coupons coded. Definitely the cheapest way to get a Sony.

In the beginning there was ING Direct, offering high interest rate online saving account that beats even term deposit rates from major banks. Then came along Bank West, with its A Bette Deal promotion and 1 year honeymoon interest rate, they took the crown of online saving account in Australia.

We all know competition ultimately benefits the consumers, don’t we? Recently RaboBank entered into retail market with its RaboPlus branded online saving, term deposit and managed fund platform account, offering the best interest rate. It quickly sent the competitors into panic mode. BankWest came up with Regular Saver account with 8% interest rate plus a long rope attached to it. ING Direct on the other hand pumped the promotional rate to 7% until the end of year. Unfortunately for existing customers, it wasn’t the entire amount of saving, but just extra amount on top of existing balance. That suck big time. I’ve been an ING Direct customers for years, and guess where I moved my money to?

Then this morning I received another deal sweetener.

Thanks to somecheat for posting this promotion on OzBargain, RaboPlus is now offering 7.1% interest rate on not just the new users, but also existing users — for the entire account balance!

Special promotional rate of 7.10%

• High interest promotional rate until 2 Jan 2008
• Includes amounts up to $1 million
• No fees or penalties, no minimum balance
• Digipass online security with 24/7 access

Oh yes. Competition is good.

On a side note, Tiger Airway offered $10 air ticket departing from Melbourne, but the sale only went for one day. Did I say competition is good?

I guess I have to blog this one as soon as I found the deal is working. You can get 20% OFF DELL INSPIRON SYSTEM using these coupon code mad__llama has posted. I have just test it out with an entry level Inspiron notebook computer, and…

IT WORKS!!!

20% off is a huge discount from Dell, and at only 20 customers I am sure it won’t last long — hopefully there is still some left after I typed up this blog entry. Too bad I have already had too many Dells at home…

Many great deals have been posted at OzBargain this week, and sorry about this belated weekly update.

DSE Standard Definition Set Top Box $29

With analogue TV cut off day draws closer and closer, what is the cheapest way to keep your old CRT TV or old plasma TV alive? Buy a cheap digital set top box — how about this $29 Standard Definition one from Dick Smith Electronics? It is fully compatible with DVB-T, and plug straight into your old analogue TV. Thanks to tassie Pete for emailing me this deal.

However for the recent models of plasma TV or LCD TVs, it might be a good idea to buy a high definition set top box instead. Another great SD Set Top Box posted by ozpete a few months ago was this $69 unit with hard disk option — you basically BYO hard disk, and turn this Strathfield SD set top box into a PVR! Now I just wish I have time to watch TVs…

Dell Vostro 1000 $743 Delivered

How much would such Dell notebook cost? Vostro 1000 15.4″ WXGA LCD, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 80GB Hard Disk, DVD Burner, AMD Athlon64 X2? How about $743 after downgrading to Windows Vista Home Basic and use MoneyBackCo? That is very cheap for a dual-core notebook with 2GB memory, which is just enough for your Vista Home Basic, but will be plenty for XP Home, which is also an option. Thanks to acersaurus for sharing this deal.

Now with the right coupon code, you’ll get a further 5% off.

Subway Fresh Fit Bike Promotion

Subway is certainly trying to break the image of greasy fastfood by giving its FreshFit range an health image. Two months ago they had this promotion that gives you free MP3 arm band, and now you can get a Repco bike for $50 + $10 P&H after you eat 4 meals of Subway FreshFit.

Yes. Time to go out and ride on the bicycle rather than sitting in front of computers all the time…

Thanks to insideinfo for posting this deal.