Here are some of the best deals this week.

Big W’s entertainment sale is on this week! Most noticeable deal has to be that 80cm/32in Acer LCD TV for $698. Yes, a branded 32in LCD TV that are cheaper than many 26 inch ones. The panel itself is pretty standard — 1336×768 resolution, 800:1 contrast ratio, 12ms response time, but it has no HDMI/HDCP support. No one would complain at this price anyway. Thanks to moo for spotting this deal.

I know I have been watching quite a bit of DVDs at home, but I also know that it is never going to be a substitute of real cinema experience. Thanks to vincent for posting this, you can now get Hoytes super saver tickets for $80 for 10 tickets, plus $8.95 delivery cost. Much cheaper than buying the ticket on the spot.

Where do you keep your spare cash? In bull market many would just go directly to stock market or managed funds, but there are those of us who prefer something that is safe and stable — saving bank accounts. RaboBank is currently having a 6.60% high interest rate account gives you more interest than anyone else (except BankWest’s 1st year honey moon rate). I have been using INGDirect and BankWest for a while, but was too lazy to change. Maybe I shall get my act together after July. Thanks bdl!

While I was talking about IGA’s fuel deal yesterday, Woolies strike back with 20cent/litre discount when you spend $60 ore more! So far the best fuel deal, but only until 17 June.

That’s it for this week.

I have just watched George Clooney’s Syriana tonight. Sorry my blogging has been slow this week — blame the Bigpond Movies free trial! I am going to watch X-men 3 tomorrow night, so finger crossed having time to summarise this week’s bargains.

Syriana took an interesting multi-storyline approach and the message is actually quite political around the oil industry. Oh wait, I don’t write movie review here. However what Syriana reminded me is, that I need to blog about IGA’s fuel deal! From this page at IGA’s website,

Australia’s Best Fuel Deal

The Fuel offer through IGA is now available to IGA customers EVERY DAY! (Includes NSW, Qld, and Selected stores in South Australia and Victoria)

There has been a lot of publicity lately about fuel discounts. There is no doubt that every Australian family is interested in saving money. At IGA, we thought we would make it easier for you. Our invitation is simple:

1. Go fill up your family car at any service station
2. Come and shop with us at a participating IGA store any day and spend $30.00
3. Bring in your fuel receipt
4. We will reimburse you 4c a litre on your petrol receipt.

What is unique about IGA’s fuel deal is — it claims to be Australia’s BEST Fuel Deal! However, you only get discount cashback when you reimburse it at IGA after you have paid for the petrol. You are allowed to pump on any petrol station though.

That means, you can potentially pump at either Shell or Caltex, getting maximum 8 cents per litre discount from Coles or Woolworth, and you can get further 4 cents per litre discount from IGA if you spend $30 or more there — making a total 12 cents / litre saving. There is no such restriction in their terms and services.

Or even better, get 10% off petrol at BP using BP-Citibank Mastercard, and then get another 4 cents per litre from IGA! Judging from $1.40+ petrol price currently, you can get maximum 18 cents / litre off with the above combination! Yes, you still need to pay $1.20 which sucks compare to 3 years ago. But it is quite a bit of saving.

However, it is actually expensive to shop at IGA. Coles, Woolworth, Franklins or Aldi are much cheaper. You might get at most $2.40 (80 litres) reimbursed back when you spend $30 on grocery, but they probably would cost only $25 in other shops. There is one IGA close to us in Kingsford, Sydney, and only poor university students shop there because they don’t have cars. Then if you don’t have cars, fuel discount deals are pretty useless, aren’t they?

Best fuel deal? Maybe not.

If you are thinking of getting a vacuum cleaner, let me give you the verdict first. JetForce Deluxe Bagless Vacuum Cleaner from Daily Deals is a fine piece of machineary that is good value for money, and its powerful suction power and included turbo head should have no problem keeping your house clean. However, personally I find the made quality similar to other sub-$200 or even sub-$100 vacuum cleaners — cheap. Maybe it is a bad analogy, but I think the JetForce is like a dressed up Hyundai that looks so much better on paper than a barebone Merc at similar price. But hey, it is still a Hyundai.

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It is finally here! We have not had one for a while — the last one was almost 4 months ago. However, from 31^st May til 1^st June, Target is having its 15% off store wide sale!

Excludes gift cards, iTunes, pre-paid mobile recharge cards, game consoles, iPods and computers.

Big thanks to John for posting this deal on OzBargain.

Another busy week at OzBargain! We had a lot of submission this week, although I probably won’t call some of them as bargains. After all it is what voting is for — better deals get promoted to the front page to get more exposure. So if you have an OzBargain account (it is free to signup), please vote to promote better deals.

Last Monday we have this free shipping coupon code for SnapFish. SnapFish is a photo printing service which HP acquired back in January 2005. It has pretty good photo printing quality I must say, and with 20 free prints when you sign up, it is an even better deal. That’s right — 20 free prints + free delivery to your door.

Also a big thanks to moo for posting Sunglass Hut’s $75 off voucher, when you spend $200 or more. Looks like quite a few people went and grabbed a pair of sunnies. Too bad that the deal is expiring today.

There has also been quite a few interesting deals with Kmart’s latest mega entertainment sale. Thanks to holdenmg for posting their deal on this Seagate 160GB external hard drive for $99. It is definitely not the best looking external drive around, but I think it does not matter that much as long as the price is right.

I have just watched the second movie as part of 2 month free Bigpond Movie trial. However, if you (and all your neighbours) have already tried Bigpond movie before, then this 1 month free Quickflix trial might be your next best option. You get to watch unlimited DVD (unlike Bigpond which is only 10 DVDs a month), but only for 1 month. Thanks to JeffreyM for posting this special deal.

What is better than cheap big LCD screen? A cheap big LCD screen with bonus gadgets! Thanks to moo (again) for posting Dell’s latest deal on their famous 2407WFP UltraSharp LCD monitor, where it is now only $999 with bonus entertainment pack, that is a gaming mouse + professional headset. Very very nice…

Now onto the toys — 15% off coupon code for ToysOnline.com.au. Moreover, MoneyBackCo is giving you 9% back on ex-GST amount. So at the end you can get almost 22% off (sorry the math is a bit complicated)! The coupon however is only valid until Monday 28th of May — so hurry if you are looking at buying toys from there.

I have not seen any counter offer on this one yet from Koorong, but WORD.com.au is having a 20% off sale again! Except it is in-store only this time, with a twist. You’ll get a free environmental shopping bag, and for whatever you can fit into the bag, you can get 20% off. Thanks to mrgq for posting this! Offer ends this coming Thursday 31 May.

Any photographer here? I will definitely not raise up my hand because my photographic skill simply sucks. While this deal will be a bit useless to me, but Canon cashback on DSLR EOS 30D and 400D will certainly make some people happy. You get either $100 or $200 cashback when you send back the form. Thanks to donut for posting this deal.

Thanks again everyone for sharing! I cannot find all the great Aussie deals by myself, and thanks for the help. However, there has been a few dups lately, i.e. people submitting deals that have already been submitted. One thing for sure — you will definitely not get good votes for submitting old deals. A good idea would be doing a search before posting.

It is back!!!!! Deals Direct is offering store wide delivery this weekend (26-27 May 2007), if you pay via PayPal.

And from the website:

This fantastic promotion will save you from paying any shipping fees for anything purchased via PayPal on the DealsDirect.com.au website! If you’re looking to save a little more on your product items, then now is the time to do it!

This offer is for a very limited time only, so if you want to save a bit more, then pay via PayPal. All you have to do is choose PayPal as your payment method! It’s as simple as that!

Thanks to mrgq for posting it on OzBargain.

Two days I ago posted this Deals Direct notebook bargain — MSI 17″ Core Duo 1.87Ghz Notebook for $1,299. The spec looks a bit dated — but it is a 17″ lappy! It also has the full 103 keys keyboard with the numeric keypad, making it a great desktop replacement. Too bad it weights 3.6kg so you don’t need to go to gym if you carry it to work and back everyday.

Delivery cost is $20 — free if you pay via PayPal this weekend.

BIGshop.com.au, “Australian’s virtual shopping mall”, is an interesting concept. It aims to be the middle-man bringing shoppers and merchants together — to provide straight-through shopping experience for the shoppers, and to provide well designed online shop front for the merchants. Taken from their About Us page:

One Shopping Cart, One Account, Many Merchants, Thousands of Products… BIGshop.com.au is Australia’s One Stop Shop, a place where merchants and consumers meet and transact. On BIGshop.com.au you can shop from many merchants for thousands of products with one shopping cart and in one simple transaction. It is the quick and convenient way to shop. Furthermore, all our merchants are reputable Australian businesses who have passed our strict screening process, ensuring a safe shopping environment for all our BIGshop shoppers.

Having a shopping mall to host all the affiliated merchants is not a unique idea (think eBay and Amazon). BIGshop.com.au seems to be a late starter in this arena, although it is still not hugely populated in Australia. Are they as good as they claimed to be?

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When I arrived home from work last night, I saw this sitting on the table.

I am by no mean a movie person. Last time I was in the cinema was 2 years ago, and I think last time I rented a DVD was over 4-5 months ago! After all watching a DVD is quite a time consuming exercise. It might be good if you get lots of time to kill in the evenings, but probably not the best use of time for someone who has got two young kids, works in a demanding IT job, and has quite a few websites to maintain during spare time.

There is, however, only one condition that will make me signing up to these DVD rental deals — if it is a freebie!!

That’s right. With this Bigpond Movie deal posted on OzBargain, you get not just one month free trial, but two months absolutely free! That is up to 20 DVDs delivered to your door, and the only effort you need to make is to get up from the bed, walk to your letter box, and bring the DVD back!

Note that you do need to provide your credit card details to sign up to their “free” trial.

Now, if you do not see me blogging here, you know what is going on :)

Thanks to ozpete, there has been quite a lot of discussion on credit cards today on OzBargain. Last month I wrote about my credit card lineup, on how I use a combination of cards to get the most rewards. BP-Citibank MasterCard is still my preferred reward card, however Wizard Clear Advantage MasterCard is about to become my favourite no-annual fee card because of it has no fee on overseas transactions as well.

10% Off Fuel Discount from BP-Citibank

First of all, BP-Citibank is offering both new and existing card holders this great deal — 10% off fuel from BP when purchasing with our beloved reward credit card.

For limited time only:

The card that drives your savings further

• 10% off petrol at BP for up to 3 months
• 10% off everything in-store at BP for up to 3 months
• 5% off everything at BP, ongoing after 3 months
• 1% cash back on everything else you buy anywhere ongoing
• Enjoy 6.9% p.a. for 6 months on balances transferred from non-Citibank Cards

10% off petrol is going to be very useful when the etrol price is about to hit $1.50/litre. Even currently at $1.30/litre at the pump, 10% discount would be 13 cents off per litre — much better than the 8 cents offered by Coles/Shell or Woolies/Caltex. Nor are you obligated to do any shopping and remember to bring the dockets.

Wizard Clear Advantage MasterCard

The Wizard Clear Advantage MasterCard shared also by ozpete looks like just another no-annual fee card with no rewards, when I looked at it briefly last time (and never bothered to reply). However, ozpete’s post has been enlightening on what this card can do:

• No annual fee.
• No fees for cash advances.
• No fees for overseas purchases.
• A low 13.15% rate on purchases AND cash (unlike some other low rate credit cards).
• 4.99% p.a. interest for six months from account opening on balances transferred.
• Up to 55 days interest free.

First of all, it has no fee on overseas purchases! Check this CHOICE magazine article on the foreign exchange charges on overseas purchases. Most cards don’t spell out how much fees you pay on your overseas purchases (BP-Citibank doesn’t, my ANZ card doesn’t, but my NAB Visa Mini does), however they usually range from bad to worse.

And that was exactly the reason why I wanted a PayPal debit card! Although AUD has been very strong, buying from overseas can still be cheaper if the middle man doesn’t take a small portion for every cent I spend.

Wizard’s MasterCard seems to solve this issue — no fee for overseas purchases.Secondly it has no fees for cash advances. But why do I want cash advances? Cash advances will charge interests from the date of withdrawal, which pretty much eliminates the interest free period.

However, combining with no overseas purchase fees, it becomes quite a handy tool to get cash off overseas ATMs.

You can usually get cash from an overseas ATM using with PLUS or Maestro, two inter-bank networks that you usually find on your Visa or MasterCard. They are linked to your everyday transaction account so you can withdrawal cash overseas, but they are not cheap. I used them pretty often when I go overseas, and they are around AUD$5 per transaction.

Now if you do cash advance with Wizard Clear Advantage MasterCard, you can get cash overseas without penalised by this $5 transaction fee. As the interest is at 13.15% P.A. or 1.1% per month, you can borrow up to $454 and not pay back for up to a month, and the interest is still cheaper than the $5 PLUS/Maestro transaction fee.

Or you can just go with what ozpete has suggested — topping up your credit card before going overseas, so it will always have positive balance even if you do a cash advance.

Looking forward getting this card now.

Well. It is that time of the week where I try to summarise all the juicy deals at OzBargain. Personally I found the biggest issue with writing these posts are — they can be at most 1 week late to that mega sale! Therefore do subscribe to OzBargain RSS feeds or daily emails if you like to up-to-date deals.

This week starts with a big sale, Catchethon #5 at DailyDeals.com.au, thanks to sh3n posting it on OzBargain. There has been some very cheap items on sale there, although I didn’t buy anything. It is also the first Catchethon which I did not cover here, because … Well I was flat out this week (which you can tell from the number of posts I made). My schedule is still going to be busy next week as well as our deadline is already overdue. Well, that’s what you get when you work in IT.

Then thanks to filtercore who showed us how to get Bejeweled Deluxe game for free. Yes, free game! Too bad that it is already expired. Too bad that I did not manage to download it at the end as I still could not get the coupon code to work (although it has been reported to work in the comments). Well, the good thing is I did not waste time playing it while I should have been doing work last week.

Did you miss the 20% off storewide at General Pants, which ends today? Big thanks to bdl for posting this family and friends deal.

This week we also had our usual duel between two biggest Christian bookshops — both Koorong and WORD put out 20% off site wide this week, and the WORD deal is still running til mid-night today! We just went and spent around $120 on books, including a few kids Bible to give out to new parents at church. Which WORD is nice and close to my work place (they are at Angel Place in Sydney CBD), I still think Koorong is in general cheaper, especially if you visit the store and you might pick up a bargain sometimes.

Another thing we bought this week is a small upright freezer from OO.com.au, for $169.95. Standard delivery is $26.75 to Sydney because it weights 31kg. However because of the free delivery promotion with PayPal, I am paying exactly nil to have that heavy freezer delivered to our door! The promotion was initially expiring on Saturday, but OO.com.au has just extended to Monday — so more time for shopping!

Wanna a best way to advertise your web site, web service, or simply a product you wish to sell online? Look no further than Google Adwords, and you simply can’t go wrong with this $146,000,000,000 company! Actually, there are many ways that Adwords can go wrong but it is going off-topic. But it won’t hurt when the big G is giving you $50 credit just to try it out, and depending on what you are trying to sell, $50 can go a long way. Kudos to JeffreyM for posting this.

Alright. There are more bargains to cover but I seriously need to go to sleep now, because

1. Tomorrow is Monday (D’oh!)
2. My two month old daughter is highly likely to wake me up a few times tonight
3. There are still a few OzBargain enhancement that I am working on

I have managed to add a few new features last week, and more is to come this week so stay tuned!

Cia!

Meg from dLook posted a list of Top 100 Australian Websites based on the Alexa traffic rank. While Alexa traffic rank is no where near an accurate measurement of real traffic, it is still a good indication of how popular a site is. The top 100 contains all kinds of web sites, but I will just extract a few that is related to bargains and shopping. It is actually interesting to see where do the Aussies go shopping online.

Auction Sites

It seems that the top shopping sites are actually auction sites. We have:

Classified Sites

We also have a few classified sites taking the top 100 spots.

Affiliates / Rewards / Price Comparisons

There are also sites that are big affiliates with many merchants. They are the middle man taking the commissions, but also provide other services like cashback rewards, price comparison engines, community, etc.

Retail Shops

Finally, there are some retailers/online stores that are actually selling something.

These sites are Australian sites only. However Aussies do regularly shop outside Australia. Amazon.com — 27 on Alexa’s top 100 sites visited by Australians.

OO.com.au is running a promotion with PayPal again, having site-wide free delivery if you pay using PayPal. It could be a lot of saving dependings on what you are buying. Offer ends this Saturday 19 May 2007..

Thanks to XoiThit posting it on OzBargain. We were just looking some deep freezers last night because with two kids and more than busy life style, we constantly run out of space in our freezers. It could be a big $25+ saving on bulky items when delivery fee is waived.

Just need to figure out where to put it (dog house? garage?)

I should have write these summary posts here more often as most bargain postings have been moved to OzBargain. Anyhow — I will try to make it weekly summarising good deals posted over there + a few small announcements.

Borders seem to have regular promotions, and Jeffrey seems to have got them all! Thanks for posting all these coupons — and one has just been voted the deal of the week with 25% off full-price books at Borders (although it has expired now). That pretty much concludes — don’t buy anything from Borders, unless you got this week’s coupon!

I have not been a fan of online DVD rental due to my less than optimal Quickflix experience. However, the best thing about these online DVD rental is — free trials! Sooty posted a special coupon code that can get you 6 weeks free DVD rental from Bigpond Movies — 15 movies a month and 4 DVD at a time. I might consider it if I can get a month off work and not thinking about blogging and updating my websites…

If you are still buying off brick and mortar shops, and you love good sports gear, then this 30% NIKE Family & Friends Discount might appeal to you — simply print the voucher out and bring it to the shop on 18 to 20 May 2007. However, you also need to live in the right state going to the right shop. Only on Smith Street, Collingwood in the Garden State. Big thanks to Shan, who also posted about Puma factory outlet 25% off all women’s apparel. Again, Victorians only.

Finally, thanks to vincent for posting this Myer 20% to 50% off mid season sale. Lots of items on-sale, and it is available to everyone — no “family and friends” flyer needed!

It has been almost 6 months since OzBargain first launched, and lots of great deals have been posted. If you wish to subscribe to all deals posted there, there are currently two ways:

1. Use an RSS reader, and subscribe this feed. You will get the latest deals in your feed reader within 1-2 hours.

2. Subscribe to daily email update. Put in your email address there, and FeedBurner will send you an email at most once a day to inform you about all the latest deals posted at OzBargain.

   Enter your email address:

Cheers!

Cashloop‘s motto, “it pays to shop online”, pretty much reflects its business model — it is (yet another) cashback/moneyback/reward website that gives back a part of its affiliate commission to its members. When you enter into online retailer’s websites via these guys, an affiliation cookie will be installed on your web browser, so that any purchase will be tracked, transactions recorded, and you can get a percentage of the transaction amount as cashback.

We have actually looked at quite a few reward websites before — OzRewardS, BuckScoop and MoneyBackCo, although I have yet to write a review on the biggest one site in the country, EmailCash. Except for EmailCash with its ever-so-confusing currency system, they all pretty much work the same. Is Cashloop any different?

Well, let me look at the things I like and don’t like about this new reward service.

Good

• Definitely one of the better looking one of the bunch. Clean design. Very readable text. Easy to use navigation. It certainly makes finding the shop you are after easier. Nice.
• Before end of July, you can get 50% extra cashback! That means, if a shop usually offers 5% cashback, you can get 7.5% before 31^st of July!
• It is coded in Java. Yes I know it is no longer an “in” language unlike 10 years ago, but it still feels heaps better than other “scripting languages” like PHP (BuckScoop, OzRewardS, MoneyBackCo) and ASP/VB (EmailCash).

Bad

• Even with 50% bonus cashback, its cashback rate is still no match of MoneyBackCo’s. Just compare it with the rate offered by MBC, I think it is giving out around 75% the commission back at the moment, and 50% after July.
• They are very new — only started in April 2007.
• Does not offer any merchants from DGM-AU — only clixGalore and CommissionMonster are offered.

Ugly

• What is all this “100 points = 1 Australian Dollar” crap? Just show me the dollar sign and nothing else! (One thing that I really dislike about EmailCash)
• I cannot get the email/account verification to work! After I paste in the URL to verify my account, the site would say “whoops! An internal error occurred. Administrators have been notified by email. Apologies for any inconvinience. (sic)” — until I clear out all the session cookies. Maybe it should not have been coded in Java in the first place. Due to the outage, I am unable to test any functionality. Maybe next time.

Well, I guess Cashloop is not that much different from all its peers I guess. This cashback/reward space is certainly getting a bit packed. Competition should encourage innovation I hope, and it is the keen shoppers that benefit at the end.

As a consumer, it is also a good idea to stick with one reward program because you usually need to accumulate a fixed amount of credit before you can cash out. You don’t want to try them all and have cash credits and points scattered everywhere, but the amount is never large enough to change to real $$ in your bank account.

Update: Thanks to Luke from Cashloop for fixing up my account.

For the past few weeks I have been posting some real Dell deals at OzBargain, including coupons that give you $150 off business/professional systems and 3% to 10% off regular price (btw, both of them have expired yesterday). So I said to myself, “hey, maybe it would be good if more people can know about these deals”!

Being a good and moral person (yes, trust me, it is true!) plus lack of knowledge in any dodgy black hat way of getting cheap traffic (okay, that is the main reason), I decided to go with what has been recommended by the big G — buying Google AdWords advertisements! So I went there, created a small text ads saying “Save on Dell Products”, added a list of keywords that I wish my ads would appear on, crossed my fingers and waited. And waited… A few days later — still no impression nor clicks.

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