A typical bargain hunting execution loop:

1. Lock into product.
2. Go to as many price comparison site as possible.
3. Find the vendor offering the cheapest price.
4. Buy from that vendor.

It is done in the way that “price” becomes the only determining factor, whereas the quality of service provided by the supplier/vendor is rarely added into the formulae. However, we usually learnt that although it is the same product, buying it cheaper does not necessarily mean that it is better at the end.

Duncan has a story to tell — his bad experience with Retravision Bunbury, where he bought a Sony LCD High Definition TV from but never got delivered. At the end he has to request a refund, and then bought the same TV somewhere else. He might have to pay a few hundred dollars more, but I bet he is enjoying every minute of it, right now!

The same thing can be said when you look at gadgets and PC parts. People usually head to staticICE first, search for the product they want, and picked the one with the lowest price. Again, getting cheapest price does not mean you will get a satisfying service — it is pointless to save 10 bucks on that latest video card, when it takes over 2 months to delivery.

How then can you know that whether a shop is good or dodgy, because you pull out your credit card and make the purchase? Reviews from existing customers can be very helpful. Whirlpool, one of the top broadband and technology related community, runs Australian PC Shop Guide which includes many computer shops in different states in Australia, and how they were rated by other Whirlpoolians.

I personally buy most my PC parts from EYO Technology (note, OzBargain Blog is not affiliated with EYO in any way). They are cheap, but never the cheapest. However they have been around for ages — yes I have been buying from them since the late ’90s. Moreover I found them providing good services, especially with regarding to returns and warranty claims. Able to have a smooth warranty claim is very important especially when you buy hard drives — half my hard drives died within the warranty period!

Now, talking about dodgy PC shops. I have received emails from a helpful OzBargain member this week reporting one that has been posting deals on OzBargain, and cite a few whinging discussion threads on Whirlpool to backup the claim. Sorry I do not want to name names here. OzBargain is a community where cheap bargains are reported. However, you might still need to do your own research to check the shop’s reputation. And don’t forget to share with other shoppers at OzBargain :)

Two weeks ago I blogged about Myer’s latest shopping offer for Family and Friends. Indeed it looks a good deal — 10% to 20% discount on wide range of goods. Moreover, as the offers are “exclusive” to the family and friends of the Myer employees, flyer needs to be presented, so it must be genuine right? From the circulated PDF file:

… team members, their families and friends will have access to a range of exclusive offers. In addition to these special offers, family and friends of Myer team members will also be eligible to receive Myer team member discount on any purchase, including the special offers, for the offer period.

However, according to this comment on OzBargain, there seems to be nothing special about the Family and Friends offer flyer.

I went to Myer today. Myer actually had the printed copy of the discount flyer on their information counters. Plus if you are a Myer One card holder (free to sign up), you will receive the special offer too.

Hey that sounds a bit dodgy, does it? It is supposed to be exclusive to family and friends, but a few of them managed to leak out the emails. However everyone and their dogs and cats have that flyer in their hands, and it has been freely given out at the Myer store? Where is my exclusiveness?

Then I read this article on Crikey today — Myer goes viral — and customers are happy to catch the disease. From the article:

To paint the picture; Myer seeded an email into the market that, for a very limited time, offered up to 20% discounts to “Family & Friends”. Our spies report busy stores on the weekend. So why did it work?

… The Family & Friends offer appeared to offer something only to those close to the company. It made the recipient feel that they were in on something a bit special. However, while Myer team members needed to produce their staff discount card, all anyone really had to do was to produce a copy of the email. In reality, the discount was available to anyone with a printer. It made the message stickier, and is an example of a simple message that enough people find irresistible.

Busy store indeed, and so is the part about irresistable. We did not go because we have nothing to buy, but a few of our friends insist to visit Myer in Sydney CBD on Sunday afternoon just to “catch the sale”.

However, do you reckon that this type of viral marketing “dodgy”? Telling you that it is an exclusive offer to those who are close to the company, but in fact the deal is available to everyone? Then you look at the discount — they are actually not that great. I believe Myer actually runs that sort of discount regularly without tucking under the “Family & Friends exclusive offer” banner.

I have been fooled. Oops. That was a typo — I have been tooled. So are my friends who went to Myer that day with all the excitement.

I wonder whether viral marketing has any negative effect. Actually there is one — I actually feel more reluctant to shop at Myer and post any Myer deal now because of their marketing tactics. When the next “exclusive offer” email comes in, how can I tell that it is really genuine sale, or just another marketing ploy that plays on people psychologically? I don’t think I can tell. I might as well throw that into bin.

Last time the OfficeWorks clearance sale was a big hit, but unfortunately all the dirt cheap item went out of door too fast. Now, OfficeWorks Clearance Sale is on again — so hurry up for the big savings! Sorry no link provided because of the idiotic online shopping system implemented by OW, so you have to go into the site, click on “Clearance”, and start browsing.

Some fine examples:

• Canon PowerShop A540 $184 (Price comparison)
• Fujifilm FinePix 6500FD $299 (Price comparison)
• Fujifilm FinePix A700 $134 (Price comparison)
• Lacie 320Gb Brick External HDD $175 (Price comparison)

I am sure at this price they won’t last.

Have you ever wondered, why people run websites? Especially the websites that aggregate hot bargains? In an attempt to answer a question on the Whirlpool forums, I posted a list of Australian bargain sites, which got me into thinking this question (my post has been deleted but that’s another story). There have been quite a few new social deal-bookmarking sites lately (which I reviewed two last week), and a new cashback site went live just two weeks ago! I was going to write a review on that new cashback site, but I think I want to clear some things up first — why do people make bargain sites?

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Anyone on the PlayStation 3 craze here? IBM Cell Processor, 256Mb GDDR3 RAM, 60Gb SATA drive, USB, Ethernet, Bluetooth, Wifi, and more hard core hardware specs? Well, I don’t. I don’t really have time to play computer games and buying a PlayStation 3 would be the last thing in my mind. However I am just going to use PS3 as an example on how to save $$ on buying Sony products.

PlayStation 3 60Gb Australian version has an RRP of $999. There are shops that sell them a little bit cheaper, but I am going to show you how to get PS3 for $869.95 delivered.

Step 1 — NRMA Exclusive Members Offer

If you are a NRMA member, you will get some “exclusive” deals through their “Show You Card and Save” promotions. Many of these deals require you to show your card at the retail store during check out. Many have special landing page that require you to put in your NRMA membership detail before they show you the deals. However, there are some that simply have a simple landing page without authentication, so anyone who comes across these pages can see the special discount.

As I have just posted on OzBargain, Sony Style is one such online store. Go to the following page, NRMA Exclusive Member Offers, and you will see the special discounts.

Basically you get 3% off on Viao and PlayStation products, and 10% off for the rest. You also need to remember click on the link “To beging shopping, click here“, as that link contains session ID that enables special discount on products.

Step 2 — Buy That PlayStation 3 & Check Out!

This part is easy. Find PlayStation 3 from the list of products, buy it and head down to checkout! When you get onto that page, you will notice that the price has been adjusted with an Exclusive Online Offer that is exactly $30 cheaper than the RRP, bringing the price down to $969.95.

Click on that shopping cart logo to add your brand new PlayStation 3 onto your shopping cart. Click on check out and have your credit card ready!

Step 3 — Use $100 off Coupon

The last step requires a coupon posted by Jaxx on OzBargain last month, which gives you $100 off when you spend $300 or more at Sony Style. Use this coupon code when you checkout:

SSAUSPS54090

And you shall see the double discount reflected on the check out page:

It shows $869.95 as the final price. When you step through the checkout process, your NRMA membership detail is never required — so this trick can be fully exploited by those who are not even NRMA members!

Of course the 3% and 10% discount not only apply to PlayStation game console, but also other products sold on Sony Style. Like PlayStation Portable for $220.05, or Sony CyberShot DSCW35S for $259.10.

Update: Thanks to Ben, who notified me about the cashback offers for Sony Cybershot cameras — you’ll get between $25 to $50 cashback on selected models. That means even more savings :)

Ever since Digg raised to popularity, community-based voting/bookmarking sites pretty much spawn into every corner of Internet. After all, in the age of Web 2.0 user-generated/user-moderated content rules. There is no exception in the realm of bargain hunting and sharing. What was once dominated by forum communities, many Digg-like sites have also emerged over the last 18 months into the bargain sharing scene. Check ProBargainHunter’s list of social bargain hunting sites in US for more samples.

I must admit that OzBargain, my own site launched last November, is not the most original idea (which I believe everyone would have known that). There are in fact a few pre-build software that can get you bootstrapped with a working Digg-like site very quickly. With OzBargain, I went with Drupal + Vote Up Down module for the built-in flexibility of Drupal. However, for the best “out-of-box experience”, Pligg is probably the best open source software if you want a turn-key Digg-like site.

In fact I have just discovered two more Australian bargain sharing sites over the last couple of weeks. Both are less than 3 months old, and both are powered by Pligg — in fact little has changed from the default Pligg template.

Dealicious.com.au	TopBargains.com.au

Not really sure whether it is a good idea to link them because (1) they might be in “beta” like most other Web 2.0 start ups (2) oh they are actually my competitor. But what the heck.

Dealicious —

Dealicious [Delicious Deal], is a web 2.0 community where members can find, submit, share and vote for the latest hot deals, voucher, bargain, freebies, and all other hot deals which can be used in Australia.

TopBargains —

It’s a social bargain hunting network for Australia where everyone recommends and rates bargains.

Well done guys (if you don’t mind me cross-linking some of your hot deals)! I guess the more bargain sharing sites the better for the bargain hunters in Australia. Now we just need more bargains to populate these bargain sites :)

Oh by the way, OzBargain does run weekly contest of real cash give away to encourage participation, although the contests seem to be won by the same group of guys…

Big thanks to Meg T at dLook.com.au who created a list of top 100 Australian blogs. Ranking is determined with a combination of Technorati + Alexa ranks. Due to the readership of Oz Bargain Blog (bargain hunters and cheap skates :) I did not expect this blog would rank well. I thought only the nerds will install Alexa toolbar and link this site from their own blogs, right?!

It turns out there are indeed some nerds camped around here :) Meg updated her list, and Oz Bargain Blog is currently ranked at number 33 on the list!

Yeah!

As I have previously observed, two of the big Christian bookshops in Australia, Koorong and WORD, always seem to have sales at the same time! I have no idea that who is proactive, and who is reactive in putting up sales, or maybe they both have worked out the schedules together. Either way, we are going to have great deals on those books and CDs.

Koorong 15% Off Everything in Stock

First we have Koorong’s 15% off everything in stock, from Thursday 26 to Monday 30 April.

From the newsletter:

Don’t miss Koorong’s 15% off sale! From Thursday 26th April to Monday 30th April, you will save 15% off everything in stock.

That’s 15% of our entire range of bestselling books, Bibles, CDs, DVDs, gifts and more. Grab a copy of Switchfoot’s new CD, Oh! Gravity, for under $19! Prices will also be slashed on hundreds of other popular titles.

Sweet deals!

WORD 20% Off Web Sale

3 hours after I received Koorong’s newsletter, I then got this in my inbox. WORD.com.au is having a 20% off everything web sale during the same period, Thursday 26th to Monday 30th April.

My wife and I were going to shop for a new kids’ Bible (there’s a lot of crap out there), and I had just moved into a new office building right next to Angel Place, where WORD’s city store is. However from the look of it I might not be able to pick it up from the Sydney city store.

Discounts apply to products in stock in our Nunawading store or Bulk warehouse ordered online from Thursday 26th April to Midnight Monday 30th April 2007.

Free Delivery

Both stores offer free delivery if you spend $100 or more, and save $1.50 otherwise. Looks like it is time to get all the friends at church to pull the shopping list together.

More Dell coupons spotted! I was browsing Dell’s latest catalogue today, and found this:

Warning! Lots of marketing talk on that page! What does it mean “to make your Dell unique to you”? However, none of that matters, as long as juicy Dell coupon codes are also found on the same page!

So what we have got here:

Some terms and conditions:

1. Offer available only on orders placed online until 3^rd May 2007.
2. To redeem this offer insert the coupon code quoted above.
3. Coupon discount can only be redeemed when the order is confirmed at CHECK-OUT in the Dell Australia Small Business ONLINE store.
4. Limit of one Coupon discount per system ordered.
5. Limit of 5 systems per customer.

Vote this deal on OzBargain

We did have some coupon code covered earlier this month. Both of them expire on 3^rd of May, and you might want to try both on your purchases to find out which one gives the best discount.

Repeat after me. Credit card is my tool, not my master. Say it three more times. Now you are ready to read this post!

Credit card has always been a major problem in Australia. It is an easily approved personal loan, which “helped” many Australians into very deep debt. Therefore many have portrayed it as an evil master that you kept in your wallet, and for many people it would be better of without a credit card.

But maybe it is just me, I have absolutely zero problem with credit cards. In most cases I am less an impulsive buyer, which means there is even less a desire to pull out a credit card at inappropriate time. In fact I am often the opposite — thinking way too much whether I really need it, and often only concluded that I wanted to buy after missing out the good deals! In my case, credit card has been my tool to get even more discount when I go shopping. Since I always have a rough idea on how much I have in my bank account, and will never buy more than I can afford even on credit, I can always pay off the balance before any interest is charged.

Anyway, this post is not about how one should use credit card without getting into too much debt, but rather how my existing credit cards have helped me to save.

These are the cards I have.

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Big thanks to yingtzee for posting this great deal at OzBargain. It has been a while since Myer last had Team Members Family and Friends shopping offer. Apparently they are on this weekend again!

All team members, their friends and families are invited to take advantage of the following special offers on presentation of this flyer. In addition, this flyer will entitle friends and family of Myer team members to the team member discount on these offers and anything else in store over the course of the event.

Go to this page at OzBargain, and click on the image to download the flyer in PDF. Bring it to the nearest Myer near you this Saturday or Sunday (21-22 April 2007), present the flyer, and you can get the following savings!

Womenswear

20% off Wish,Cooper St, Leona, De Cjuba, Basque, Urbane, Collection, Stitches, Eve Hunter, Mirrors, Susan Blake, Stella, Jane Lamerton and Regatta women’s
clothing.

15% off International and Australian designer women’s clothing.
Excludes Carla Zampatti, Covers, Charlie Brown, Marc Cain, Gerard Darel, Lucia, Perri Cutten, Anthea Crawford and Feathers

20% off women’s Tokito, Miss Shop, Kenji, Bauhaus, Bardot, Kuku, Prince & Portobello and Popstar clothing in the Miss Shop department.

Footwear

20% off women’s, men’s and kids’ footwear.
Excludes Alan Pinkus, Steve Madden Basement and Country Road

Frangrances

10% off fragrances.

Furniture

Save $10 on every $100 spent on furniture.
In one transaction. Excludes nursery furniture

Menswear

20% off Reserve, Maddox and Blaq men’s clothing.

15% off Brooksfield, Nautica, JAG, Levi’s®, Blazer, Gazman, Yarra Trail, Back Bay, Sportscraft, CEO, Politix, Polo Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Country Road and Marcs men’s clothing.

15% off men’s business shirts, ties, suits, underwear, socks, sleepwear, belts and wallets.
Excludes Lords Formal Hire and Rhodes & Beckett

20% off men’s clothing from Mossimo, Kenji Urban, Bauhaus, Redsand and M-ONE-11.
Excludes men’s sleepwear and underwear

Intimate Apparel

20% off all Berlei, Triumph, Bonds, Bendon, Soho, Miss Shop, Hey Sister, Kookai, Kissed & Mossimo lingerie.

Electrical

Save $10 on every $100 spent on electrical.
In one transaction. Excludes lay-by purchases, Apple iPod, Apple computers, iTunes gift cards and gaming consoles.

Nice! I have actually received the same flyer in email today as well, before I realise that someone has already posted on the OzBargain site. But anyway, nice to be a friend of friend who works in big retailer shops :)

Dealighted is a relatively new deals / bargains website. It describes itself as:

dealighted is a selection of today’s best deals + many deal forums combined into one.

Under its nice and clean user interface, it is actually two different sites. You have a deals aggregator that analyses forum threads in major deal forums, and you also get a price comparison website that is actually powered by ResellerRatings and Shopping.com.

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You know what I am waiting for? Catch of the Day and Daily Deals‘ Catch-A-Thon Number 4! From experience of previous 1 2 and 3, we shall expect to see lots of great bargains for the duration of 24 hours.

Catch A Thon will kick start at 12pm today, but too bad I am having a meeting then. Hopefully there will still be something left after I come back.

Some of my predictions:

• Lots of USB-powered devices, as hinted on CotD site.
• Return of many good deals, at CotD price, i.e. cheap.
• It will run for more than 24 hours due to demand, just like previous Catch-A-Thons.

Hey guys. Just make sure you don’t crash their server at non today.

Here’s another weekly updates on the deals posted on OzBargain. See the picture? Yes, as I have previously stated, you might actually see less and less deals posted here in this blog, as they will all be posted to OzBargain first. I will, however, try to write something else, and might do a weekly review on what has been happening at OzBargain.

So, any good bargain this week?

Freebies!! Thanks to claudine for sharing the Free Comic Book Day at Kinokuniya on 5 May 2007, where everyone will be given a free comic book on the day! What about the Free Huggies Swimmers? Also thanks to mrgq for telling us how good it is to live in NSW, because the government is upgrading your entire house with energy saving globes. Sorry Victorians!

And don’t forget about the free ticket to CeBIT, the biggest ICT exhibition in Australia on 1-3 May 2007 at Sydney Darling Harbour. Thanks to ozpete for sharing his coupon.

I guess the only thing that is better than free is getting paid for trying freebies! Steve from MoneyBackCo showed us how to get $25 moneyback when you sign up Quickflix free trial. There are many other deals at MoneyBackCo, where as a member you can get moneyback from affiliate sale commissions. Do sign up with the link on the right.

Deals Direct also has been having some amazing deals lately. Quality 12 piece stainless steel cookware for under 30 bucks? You bet! Except the price only lasts two days, and now not only the price has gone up to $60, it is also out of stock :( Something else that is almost out of stock is this — Creative Zen Neeon 2 MP3/Video player 2Gb for $100. That is even cheaper than many no branded 2GB MP3 player at Deals Direct? And check how much other people are selling. Very good deal isn’t it?

Also thanks to moo for sharing with us the coupon code to get 40% off at Sassi Jewels. They made great gifts for the missus mum :) Moreover, you can get 15% off moneyback from MoneyBackCo! I asked whether anyone can post the final discount, but since no one has posted anything, I will show how it works here.

Assuming the final price is $100. Put in the 40% off coupon code you get $60. Now MoneyBackCo’s moneyback is 15% of pre-GST transaction amount, so the actual moneyback you get would be $60 / 1.1 * 0.15 = $8.18. So at the end you only pay less than $52 for that $100 item.

That’s it forks! Have a good weekend.

Last month I posted a question on OzBargain forum, asking who do you use for energy? Well, I did not get much response so I ended up doing the research myself. No, actually I did not do anything but my frugal wife did all the research, and we ended up using Integral Energy for electricity.

The story is, our 3 year contract with Energey Australia is about to expire this month, and they sent us renewal notice, asking us to continue with them with a 4% discount.

Not bad! However, we discovered that there are actually many different companies, either private or state-owned, who provide energy to residential properties. We wondered whether anyone else can give us a better offer!

First we tried AGL since it is one of the biggest. It did not take much effort and they are willing to give us 5% off over regular tariff, if we combine electricity and gas under one account! We have also gone to websites of many other providers. However, the biggest issue is — you get only get the standard tariff price off their websites (and everyone is the same), but they do not tell how much discount they will give you if you sign the contract. You ended up needing to ask for a quote, which is not very convenient.

Integral Energy is one such company. We ended up requesting for a quote from their website, but they never replied back!

Then a few days ago at 7:30pm in the evening, someone knocked on our door — and it turned out to be an Integral Energy salesman! He happened to come around trying to sign up customers, and is not correlated to our quote request at all! He then introduced how Integral is run by NSW government and provides the best rate in the industry. Without much negotiation, we signed up on the spot. And the discount we get over the standard tariff?

10%!!

That is quite a bit of saving consider winter is coming and our electricity bill is going to skyrocket due to heating. Moreover, unlike other energy providers Integral can do 100% green energy at no extra cost. Something you greenies should definitely consider :)

The saving does not just stop here though. All members of Integral Energy can participate in their INrewards Program. The website is guarded with membership username and password (which I’ll only receive 25 days after signing up), but I can give a sneak preview of the kind of saving you can get.

The idea is, you buy pre-paid cards from INrewards and use those cards to shop. These cards are cheaper to buy than their face value, thus you are getting some form of discount. And I am not talking about discount from online shops. How about

• 5% off Coles?
• 5% off Big W?

Yes I am talking about prepaid cards for supermarkets and department stores. You can buy those them at discounted price, and save! I will write more about INrewards next time when I get our membership details.

So, electricity solved. Now, where do I find cheap gas?