You won’t catch me wearing this one — LED Belt Buckle from DailyDeals, sister company of Catch of the Day. Basically it is a light flashing plate that you hang around your waistline, and you can customise the lights to display something meaningful.

Here’s the blurb from DailyDeals:

The L.E.D. Belt Buckle is a groovy gadget and fashion accessory all rolled into one. It says “hey, I’m funky” — in fact, it says anything you want it to say! You choose the wording, the display brightness and the scrolling speed — it’s the legit way to get a gal to check out your package in the first five seconds! Plus it stores up to six messages, so you’ll always have the right text to scroll. Forget “read my lips”, make that “read my hips” with the LED Belt Buckle!

Yeah right, as though anyone is going to buy it for that very purpose. However, I could be dead wrong as there might be a real market for message-displaying belt buckles! I think it is more likely for marketing or advertisement agency to buy lots of those, and pay people to wear them and walk around the CBD whole day with ads on it (like those Smart cars you can rent for $5 a day). That will surely bring a buzz to whatever you want to sell.

Anyway. It’s $57.90 delivered. Up to 512 characters (yeah, longer than AdSense) and up to 6 messages. No, I still won’t wear one even if you pay me :)

News flash! Just arrived in the mail! Someone contacted me using our contact form, and this is what he has written:

Dear sir,
I need 40 Pcs of “Dell 6400 inspiron- core 2 duo-120 Gb hard…”. what is your last price fot [sic] this order?
We are laptop trader in IRAN. hope we have a good business.

Regards,
Ali [last name withheld to protect the “innocent”]

Wow! OzBargain Blog has gone international — all the way to the Middle East! He is probably writing in response to this post. Now, my loyal readers (if there is any), what shall I do to help our friend Ali from Iran? What’s the best price we can get him? :)

Weren’t we just rejoying about the Target 10% discount coupon yesterday, young_dazza reported today that Target is having 15% off store-wide sale from Thursday 1^st to Saturday 3^rd of February, i.e. starting today!

Then there are also other percentage-off sales on specific categories of items.

• 40% off kids licensed backpacks and rolling luggage.
• 50% off RRP new books.
• 35% off strollers and prams.
• 25% off vaccum cleaners.
• $17.95 charted CDs.

The store-wide sale excludes gift cards, iPods, computers and game-console — so if you are thinking of getting these (except gift cards again), you might need to wait for next week for the 10% off sale.

Thanks to yingtzee for providing this. It’s the Target Double Team Member Discount, where you get 10% off everything (excluding gift cards), even for already-discounted items!

You need to:

1. Go to this page.
2. Click on the title or the image to download the 390kb PDF file.
3. Print out the coupons, and cut them up.
4. Bring them to Target on Friday 9^th to Sunday 11^th of February to get the 10% off discount.

However I do note that it has a fine line saying “no photocopies will be accepted”, which wasn’t present in their previous team member discount coupons. I am not sure whether printed copies can be used, but might need to use a bit of negotiation power when you present your coupons at the checkout.

Love it when Deals Direct offering those site-wide free delivery via PayPal, because

• Delivery cost has always been a big hurdle for online shops. Goods might be cheap, but in a big country like Australia, the cost of delivery can sometimes be more than the price of the goods.
• I happen to have quite a bit of fund in my PayPal account that I haven’t bothered to cash out (and has been funding the competitions at OzBargain).

I am not sure whether it is a typo, but the promotion actually ends 1^st of Feburary at 11:59am (mid-day). So there are still 26 hours to go to claim your free shipping! If you don’t have a PayPal account — I think you should definitely get one. Because,

• You won’t miss out lots of great deals like this one.
• Many eBayers buy/sell using PayPal. Direct debit is slow, and PayPal gives you instant payment, which means faster shipment.
• You’ll be able to get PayPal cash transfer from me if you happen to win one of our competition!

Well, here is another PayPal-only deal. free $10 voucher from dStore for Valentine’s Day. You get to use this free $10 voucher before 14^th of February when you purchase anything from dStore, provided that you are an existing PayPal user. One voucher per customer.

Both deals are reported on OzBargain, here and here.

The long-waited operating system from our overlords in Redmond has just been released, today! Yes, I am talking about Windows Vista, which should have been released world-wide on the 30^th of January.

Now I am pretty sure everyone wants to have their hands on a copy to experience the “wow” factor. So after upgrading your PC to multi-gigahertz of clock cycles and multi-gigabytes of RAM, the real question is, where do you buy the cheapest Windows Vista?

Understand the pricing structure for different products is already confusing. As far a I can tell, there are Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate which you can buy off the shelf — and I know there are other versions that only come in special licensing agreements. With each product level, you can also get either 32 bit or 64 bit. Then there’s upgrade price, complete OS price and OEM price. And then you have academic prices for teachers and students. Argh!!! It’s complicated. Welcome to the world of software licensing.

So far I have only checked out the price at Big W, OfficeWorks, Dick Smith and Harris Technology. You can already see variation in price, and you can always find the best price with some price comparison sites.

Well, maybe the exercise should be left to the readers as at work we have MSDN subscriptions and I am pretty sure Vista comes with them :) Alright I am lazy. How about you share with us where is the cheapest place to buy Windows Vista.

Yan at ProBargainHunter has some great tips on how to get the lowest price on a new car. He summed up his tips with 3 main points:

• Never trust the dealer. Everyone would agree on this one. I still need to decide which one is worse — insurance salesman or the car dealer? They are capable of using all the ripoff techniques — all at the same time! They should have BUYERS BEWARE tattooed all over their forehead.

• Do your shopping online. For us Aussies we have the Redbook (not to be mistaken with this one) which lists out all cars ever sold in Australia, their features and their price. Then you have car websites, or the “dealers aggregators”. My favourite would be Drive.com.au, simply because my friend Glenn works in there :)

• Use shopping tricks. You needs tricks. Lots of tricks, when you are dealing with car dealers. Yan pointed out a great article here that outlined a few things you can say.

I don’t consider myself “having lots of experience”. It was completely opposite actually. I have only bought a new car once, more than 7 years ago, and made all the mistakes. For example,

• Only shopped at 2 dealers (should have rang up more dealers).
• Thought the first price the dealer gave me was a good deal (bah! Never trust the dealer).
• Did not bargain for more accessories (accessories are common chips people used to haggle when dealers refuse to budge anymore).
• Paid the dealers to do tint and engine mobiliser (should have done it elsewhere).
• And laugh at this — bite the “fabric and under-body protection” offer (best $500 wasted. Period).

Well. Young and naive. Anyway…

The only way to learn is learning from the experienced, which I really do not qualify. However there is an interesting thread on Whirlpool forums at the moment, bargaining for new car (I think you need an account to access this thread). Some of the tips I’ve gathered from the experienced:

• Never go into a car dealer without knowing the maximum you are willing to pay.
• Go an see a car broker before going shopping.
• Phone/email dealers and ask for their best price. No point to talk to all of them face to face.
• You need to be prepared to walk away if the agreement cannot be reached, and go to the other dealers that are not part of the same company.
• Things to ask/haggle with: Accessories. Drive away price. Extended warranty. Fuel vouchers.

However, face to face haggling is not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s definitely not mine, nor am I experienced with haggling the price for a new car. As how this person has put in the discussion thread:

You do it once every few years but the car dealers do it every day… Who’s going to win?

A car broker is recommended if you don’t like that “intimacy” with the car dealers. What car brokers do is haggling on your behalf. You tell them the specific model that you wish to buy, and they will try to get the best price for you by ringing up all the dealers and negotiating with them. To get an idea on how much you can save, just browse around Discount New Cars — these are the prices that they can definitely get for you, even before haggling.

However, a fee-based car broker is usually better, as dealers are more interested when they see you have already committed yourself by showing the money. This forum post compared 4 most popular car brokers:

I contacted the best 4 from what i could see as i had to purchase 6 new novated cars. Interestingly enough, the one that costs the most to use, actually saved me more than the others which are free or charge a minimal amount.

And he showed the result — Better Deal has saved him almost $12,000 from the next best broker on these 6 cars. Take the Nissan X-Trail 2.5 Manual for example, that’s around $6,000 saved from the price stated on DiscountNewCars.com.au (which is already cheaper than RRP).

So how should I conclude? Personally I don’t think I am the type of person who enjoy front-line battle with the car salesman. In this case I’ll take the broker approach — letting someone else doing the hard work for me, and the price you pay for brokerage would be far less than the discount you receive.

On the other hand if you are brave, gifted, and enjoy watching the salesman cried for help — then go for it! Get out there, equipped with all the tips and techniques, and share with us how much you have saved from your new car purchases.

Wow. Lots of contributions last night. Thank you everyone! Let me try to summarise the hot bargains submitted over the last week.

Woolworth Drought Relief has so far received the most vote. On 23^rd January (i.e. TODAY!), Woolworth/Safeway is going to donate their profit of the entire day to the drought relief found to aid rural families and into further research on sustainable farming practises.

For us city dwellers we sort of taking water-coming-off-taps for granted. The annoying bit of drought is no more than the inability to water garden and wash cars. However it is closely related to the livelihood of rural farmers. Shopping in Woolies today might not grab you any “bargain”, but it will definitely contribute to those who are in need.

Next we have OZ Lotteries get 2 free games when you sign up. I will never buy a lottery ticket — it’s not “investment”, it is “gambling”. But I guess having free entry into some competition is a complete different matter :) Haven’t register mine, as my past competition winning history has told me “don’t bother”. Maybe your luck will be different.

We also have Coles and Woolies offering 10c / litre discount on petrol (partnering with Shell and Caltex). You need to spend $80 or more in respective grocery shops to get that discount coupon. Lots of competitions in the grocery market these days, although our family has switched to shop mostly at Aldi. Valid until 28^th Jan.

Also don’t forget about 15% off everything from TWOdollars.com.au when coupon code is applied, valid until 24 Jan 2007 (tomorrow). Lots of bargains in this two dollar shop on the net.

There are plenty more bargains submitted. If you are just checking the home page of OzBargain, you’ll only see the ones that has 2 votes or more. You’ll see many more if you visit the recent bargains section! Btw, if you are submitting deals, don’t forget to vote for the ones that you have submitted so it gets higher chance to bump onto the home page :)

Finally, don’t forget about the competition that ends mid-night tonight! 13 more hours to go for you to submit bargains to enter into draw of $20 and $50 Deals Direct gift vouchers.

Any Arnott’s Tim Tam fan here? I have to confess that I simply could not resist, and throughout the years, the cost of a pack of Tim Tam has always been part of my “unofficial” measurement of inflation (argh! they raised the price of Tim Tam again?!)

So my wife went to Coles to do some grocery shopping today, and came back with two packs of caramel chocolate Tim Tam because they are on special! All flavours of Arnott’s Tim Tam are currently half price in Coles — $1.37 per 200g pack. Having been tracking Tim Tam price for the last 15 years, I have not seen them so cheap. I would have bought more if it was me who went shopping today…

Sorry I could not find the Coles catalogue to back it up, but the price is reflected on Coles Online grocery shop. Sale ends 21^st Jan 2007.

Thanks to mjwills who posted this comment on OzBargain, which leads me to this thread on Whirlpool forum, where a trick is discussed to use Optus Prepaid’s call diversion functionality to make mobile calls to any phone at 10 cents per minute. I am a bit of a late comer on this, as the trick was posted a year and half ago. However it seems to be still working.

If I have read it correctly, the trick basically goes like this:

1. Buy an Optus prepaid mobile SIM pack (available pretty much everywhere). Get the one with maximum free time with other Optus prepaid.
2. Activate the SIM, and get a new number, for example “0411 111111”. You will also get 300 free minutes to other Optus prepaid mobile phones.
3. Now to use your new SIM to call another number, for example “0422 222222”, you need to set up your own phone to automatically divert to that number. Dial **21*0422222222# to set up this diversion.
4. Call yourself! Dial 0411111111 on your phone.
5. Optus will figure out that the number you are calling is actually busy, which then triggers the call diversion to the number you actually intended to call. Since you are calling an Optus prepaid number (i.e. your own number), which is free (but will use up your My Time minutes). However, call diversion is charged at 5 cents / 30 second block, making it effectively the only cost on the call.
6. Remember to UNdivert the phone after you have finished. Dial ##21#.

It is a bit troublesome to set up if you need to do lots of calls, but I think it will bring quite a big saving for those who used to spend a lot on phone calls. The minimum recharge on Optus prepaid mobile is $30 which lasts 60 days. So it might be worthwhile to try out if you spend more than $15 a month on mobile calls.

Another suggestion is to cancel the diversion as soon as the phone is ringing. It will be very confusing if someone else calls you while you are on a call, and he/she gets diverted to the voice mail of the person you are currently calling!

I am more surprised that Optus has not yet cracked down on using this trick to make cheap phone calls. Or maybe I should not have written this post as this diversion trick is now more publicised, calling Optus to respond…

Top Ten Retail Ripoffs Exposed, from TrampolineSales.com. If you have often been to the shopping mall, these techniques shouldn’t be too foreign to you. These are the ones that shoppers should definitely watch out for. However they are not uncommon amongst the online shops either.

1. The “Bait and Switch” Fraud — a lot of online shops actually don’t stock everything they have in their catalogue. It makes perfect sense to them, but some used same trick to get you hooked, and forced you to buy lower quality / higher price products.
2. The “Keep You Waiting /Wear You Down” Ploy — fortunately keeping people waiting doesn’t really work in online shops. Not until you start calling them up to do price match anyway.
3. Extended Warranty Scare Tactics — many people I knew took the bait at least once on this one. Scare tactics works. As consumers we just need to know how to calculate the risk properly.
4. The “I Made a Mistake Adding This Up” Trick — often used when you need to get a quote on something or getting something done. They give you an illusion that you have got a bargain when they “recovered” from their mistakes. Well, that’s just an illusion.
5. The “Get ‘Em Saying Yes” Routine — lots of those sites on the net, asking you obvious questions to lead you into an impulsive buy.
6. The “This is the Last One” Ruse — ain’t they common on the net? Limited stock! Don’t miss out! However they are usually more effective in retail shops where you can visually see people competing for the “limited” stock items.
7. The “Low-Ball” Lie — similar to (1), where customers are attracted by low-price but non-existing stocks, and are tricked to buy the item next step up. I used to have lots of those from buying computer components online. “Oops. The 128Mb version are all gone, but you can get the 256Mb version for $50 more. Let’s just make it $25 more — want one?” Err.
8. The “Today Only” Tactic — they are EVERYWHERE. Similar to (6), which plays psychologically on consumers’ mind. Zazz and CoTD — “they won’t be here tomorrow!” (although they are indeed usually cheap)? For some products (especially technology related), the price is only going to get cheaper, so do your research first!
9. The “Paperwork” Euphemism — it is amazing that how many people actually don’t read the things they are signing (or the form when they clicked on “I agree”). Don’t sign anything unless you are absolutely sure this is what you want to buy, and do read the contract, or whatever the salesman decided to call it.
10. The “Turn Over” Maneuver — load of crap when the sales say they are going to “check with the manager”. Just stick to how much you are willing to pay.

Anything else? Online shops are easier because you can eliminate a lot of interaction with the dodgy salespeople. However many techniques are still used to make you do an impulsive buy. Now you know their tricks — don’t bite them when you see one.

Via ProBargainHunter.

Kmart‘s latest catalogue is out!

While I posted on OzBargain about their 15% off computers and notebooks sale (it’s on page 9), but who buys computers from Kmart anyway? Meanwhile I also see that they have great deals on strollers and baby seats, as well as infant clothing. Great to prepare the 2nd one of ours coming :)

• 25% off strollers
• 25% off car seats and booster seats
• 20% off bed rails, door barriers and baby monitors
• 20% off new born and infants clothing

Sale starts on Thursday 18 Jan 2007 until 24 Jan.

Ozpete reminded me that “not all bargains are on the Internet”. Indeed. I am not a shopping mall kind of person, but everytime I visit one I know where the bargains are — where crowds of bargain hunters digging into shelves of marked down items. Oops. That scene does not have an URL attached to it so I can’t share on OzBargain…

But now you can!!!

Oh well, provided that you also happen to bring along a camera (or your camera phone). I have written in details how to do it in the forums, but basically:

1. Snap a shot of crowded shopping centre and 50% off sign of your favrourite shop.
2. Upload it to OzBargain.
3. Write a sentence or two about it, and post!

It also applies to those coupons PDF you receive from emails. Now you can upload them yourselves without sending them to me. Time to hunt some bargains at the local mall now, don’t you think?

By the way, there is only 9 more days to go to submit deals to participate in the current OzBargain competition, where you can win $50 and $20 Deals Direct shopping vouchers. Keep your entries coming!

We all love great bargains — getting something and paying less than everyone else in the neighbourhood. But for some of us, we love freebies even more!! I have been subscribing to The Freebie Blog for the last two months, and I was amazed that how many freebies are there on the Internet!

The latest freebies, free stuff, free samples, coupon codes and great deals the internet has to offer. Featuring Australian and Worldwide freebies.

There are usually quite a few posts a day, but for us Aussies there’s an Australian Freebies category (and the corresponding RSS feed). You can also subscribe to their newsletter if RSS is not your thing. Very worthwhile to check it out.

Last week an old friend messaged me over IM asking about my opinion on plasma TVs. I told him that I preferred LCD because of the higher resolution. I told him that the sweet spot is around 26-32 inch, which you can probably find a good no-brand one for under AUD$1,000. “But 26 inch is too small!”, he said. He wanted something big. “So I guess plasma is a better bet…” If you want something big and cheap, and can tolerate 852×480 DVD-like resolution, then I guess a 42 inch plasma for around $1,500 can be a good buy… (Note: here’s a useful document on LCD vs plasma TV from the Good Guys)

Until I saw this Highlander LCD TV from Deals Direct (which I initially posted on OzBargain).

• 102 cm / 40 inch LCD TV
• HD 720p resolution — 1366×768
• Brightness: 500 cd/m2
• Contrast: 1000:1
• Viewing angle: 178 degree
• Sound output: 10w x 2
• HDMI/D-Sub/RCA/SCART input
• $1,799! (+ $66 delivery)

Yup. A 40 inch LCD high definition TV under $2,000. Moreover, it comes with a DVD record with 80Gb hard drive, for FREE! (Well, we all know it is part of the price but…) A complete living room package where you can watch digital broadcast TV and record them. The only thing missing is a high definition set top box (something like this, also from Deals Direct). I wonder why they can’t be bundled.

Just in time for the Australian Open :)