Deals Direct has its special free shipping for all items site-wide — today only (that’s 15 November 2006 by the way), and only if you purchase with PayPal.

I don’t recall any site-wide free shopping from Deals Direct since Socceroos got into World Cup almost 5 months ago, and don’t miss out the opportunity. If you don’t already own a PayPal account, signing up is easy, and you can let PayPal take funds from either your Australian bank account or credit card.

Update: Looks like it has just been extended until 6pm today (16 November 2006) because overwhelming response overloaded Deals Direct’s webserver. So you still have chance if you missed out! Now, if we can extend sales by DoS a shop’s webserver… <evil grin>

Just got an email from Kmart about their Monster Thursday one day sale.

Some ridiculous saving here:

• Audiosonic 2.1 channel DVD player for $29.99
• Superia 26″ men or women’s 10-speed mountain bike for $59
• Sanli lawn beetle 4-stroke lawn mower for $124
• Men’s Hard Yakka leather side gusset workboot for $39.99
• Duo laundry powder 1.5kg for $2.79 (note to myself: need to get this one)

The lawn mower is a bit insane, and it comes with 2 year warranty. It is on this Thursday 16 November 2006, and there will be more savings in store.

OO.com.au is having a 3 day LCD TV clearance, from 14 to 16 November.

Highlight would be the Sansui 80cm LCD TV for $999.95. Sansui shouldn’t be foreign for those who have been through the 70’s and 80’s — but although this LCD TV bears the same logo I am not really sure whether it is really made by that popular Japanese brand.

Btw, OO.com.au has launched their new website last week. Not much difference visually in my opinion, but the access speed is significantly faster. Yeah, their old Miva Merchant site is no speed demon, and their current pure ColdFusion site is much faster and cleaner.

Also noticed their low price policy — find a better listed price online or in print, and OO.com.au will beat it by 10%.

Yet Another?

When the idea was first implemented, it was such a novel idea. When a similar site was built here, it surely can claim “Australia-first”. That does not take long for the first copycat to appear onto the scene. However, do we really need a 3^rd one day deal site?

Maybe the market ain’t as saturated as I thought. Even for a small market here in Australia.

Snap It Up

Snap It Up is yet another Melbourne-based one-deal-one-day website that is also focusing on gadgets and electronics, i.e. the things I’m more interested in :) Their Joomla powered website is a bit flaky at the moment — stock template with mismatching image background colours, empty content, etc. It was launched just a few days ago, but they should have certainly fixed those issues before launching the site. Moreover, the write-ups and blogs aren’t even funny, unlike Zazz and Catch Of The Day who have adopted Woot’s model.

Nevertheless, the products are there, everyday changing at 12:00pm. There were some good deals there (like 22″ Chi-Mei LCD with DVI for less than $500), but looking at their current issues in the forum, I’ll wait for at least a month or two for them to get their site stabilised.

One-Day But Not Always Good Deal

Just a side note with these one-day-deal sites — they don’t always have the best price. However because of their marketing nature (“buy now otherwise you’ll miss out in 24 hours”), customers might feel compelled to buy psychologically. Personally I found some deals aren’t even cheap at Zazz, and it is worthwhile to do some research before hitting that “Give Me” button.

Yan at ProBargainHunter blog has also compiled a list of One Deal a Day Web Sites, which is useful to check out. As US market is much more competitive, there are heaps of website that offers great bargains and deals to customers, which us Aussies won’t have the privilege to experience. Not saying that I’m moving to US though, Australia is much better :) We’ll eventually see those ideas adopted by Australian retailers and marketers, and we will see the lag (between US and Oz) shortened as on-line market globalised.

Digital photo printing an pharmacy? Huh?! But who cares if they are cheap.

Chemist Warehouse, which has its online presence as ePharmacy (one of the shop I featured on my pharmacy online comparison site), has digital photo printing at 13 cents per print! It does have some restrictions.

• 10x15cm prints from CD, memory cards & USB keys
• Auto printing only — every imafge on media source will be printed
• Minimum order 100 prints
• Offer expires 30/11/2006

So it’s $13 get you 100 prints of 10x15cm photos. Good deal if you have lots to print — and don’t forget getting your photos organised on the media before bringing it to the shop, as it automatically prints everything.

Closest shops for me (Sydney Eastern Suburbs) are Maroubra and Bondi Junction. Check store locations for more details.

It always says it’s the biggest, but I am assure you that it is definitely a sale. Allans Music is having its Biggest Ever Sale this weekend (yes, like right now!)

From previous experience, you’ll really be able to find bargains of good brand musical instruments there. They said:

It’s on again and it keeps getting bigger!

Weve never had so much stock, and theres more on the way. So this weekend we are having our Biggest Ever Sale!

Guitars, amps, pianos, keyboards, recording equipment, computer music and hitech, brass, drums & percussion woodwind and orchestral instruments, DJ and PA – every single musical instrument and all print music will be on sale!

That’s today & tomorrow only.

Everyone is undercutting price these days as Christmas approaches. The low-res LCD TV is also dropping price like crazy. Just a while ago $900 gets you a 26″ / 66cm, but now you can get a Tevion 81cm LCD TV from Aldi for the same price! Thanks to Dan and Ian for posting this deal on the forum.

These are the specs:

• 16:9 WXGA display
• HDTV ready at 1080i/720p
• Resolution 1366 x 768
• Contrast ratio 1000:1
• Brightness 550cd/m2
• 8ms response time
• Twin TV tuner
• HDMI input
• Picture in picture
• 176 viewing angle
• Teletext function
• Child lock and sleep timer
• 2 x 10W output speakers
• Connections: HDMI input, PC input, Component in, 2 x Scart, Coaxial antenna input, PC audio in, 1 x AV in (side), 1 x S-Video in (side) and headphone socket (side)
• Includes Scart/AV adapter, remote control and 2 x AA batteries

Tevion seems to be Aldi specific brand that I can’t find any other references on the web. However I guess those low-res 1366×768 panels are generic enough and they should be very similar to other budget 81cm LCD TVs out there. Sale starts next Thursday 16 November 2006

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RetraVision of Kingsford always seem to have “renovation sale”, although I walked by their shop at least twice a day, and have never seen any visible changes. Anyway. I just saw their advertisement on Southern Courier this week (local news paper for the Sydney Eastern suburbs), and they claimed that their floorstocks are reduced to cost & below cost. Indeed there are some interesting bargains around.

For example, a 81cm LCD TV, branded Hisense (a Chinese brand with website here) is selling for $990, reduced from $1,800. No spec is given on the catelogue, nor can I find the corresponding product on Hisense’s website as there’s no model number to match. The image on the catelogue looks like this one (model TLM3233). Let me try to decipher the Chinese for you.

• Resolution: 1366×768
• Brightness: 500cd/m²
• Contrast: 1000:1
• Input: D-Sub, HDMI, (and something else that I am not sure how to translate :)

Well. There you go. A 81cm LCD TV, whatever brand it is, is still cheap at that price.

There’s also Conia 106cm plasma TV for $1,399. Just did a search and I haven’t found anything cheaper than that (yet). Sunbeam Espresso Machine (which I can no longer find on their list of current products) for $150 because water-damaged packaging.

Sounds like great savings — only if you live around Eastern suburbs.

People make purchases because of recommendations. How likely are you going to buy something because some dodgy website (like this one) recommends it? Hmm. Maybe. How likely are you going to buy something because your neighbours, your friends or your family members recommend it, all at the same time? Very likely!! And I can see OO.com.au is making its way to market itself this way.

What’s Affiliation Sales?

First of all, BIG DISCLAIMER — there exists such a thing called “affiliation sales”, where retails pay a small percentage of the sale made by your friend, the “customer”, to you, the “affiliate” or the “referrer”. And Bargain Blog is actually utilising this evil scheme to make money!! If someone clicked on any of the OO.com.au link on this website, and then subsequently made some purchases there… OO.com.au actually gives me some of your money! How bad is that?! Bwawahahah!! I am going to be filthy rich with your money! Not.

The thing is, who is going to base his/her purchase decision on what I said, on a nobody’s website? OO.com.au has realised this, and is now offering affiliation/referral program to the general public! You too can make money off your friends!

Refer Your Friends to OO.com.au!

First, go to OO.com.au: Tell A Friend, put in your personal details, and *very importantly* the email addresses of all your friends? An email will be sent to your friends to lure them into shopping at OO.com.au. And for every $100 they spent there, you’ll get a whooping $4 referral fee!

Just in case your consciousness makes you feel bad about it, OO.com.au won’t disclose all these affiliating activities to your friends. Moreover, OO.com.au will further donate 1% to Mission Australias Christmas Appeal, who provides for thousands homeless families in Australia to have a great Christmas this year. Wonderful isn’t it? No bad feeling any more? Sign it up here.

The next step of getting rich: Go out and find some friends. Now that’s beyond the scope of this blog…

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Who doesn’t love large LCD monitors? Who doesn’t love large LCD monitors that has sharp image and fast response time? Who doesn’t love large quality LCD monitors that are actually a real bargain?

Tully wrote in the forum telling us about the latest deal at Nintek:

Our deal for 22″ Asus LCD monitor at $569 has just gone live!

This would make an ideal Xmas gift for your partner or kids – delivery is expected to be 7-28 days from deal closing. At $569 this thing is a steal, we’re also offering FREE INSURED NATIONWIDE shipping at this price!!!

We’re limited to 200 units so you need to get in quickly — they’ll all be gone by the end of the week!!!!

Basically Nintek is organising a bulk buy, $569 for Asus MW221U 22″ 16:10 Widescreen LCD, if they can get 200 orders. And that price already includes delivery to anywhere in Australia! It is is much cheaper than everyone else is selling. A pretty nice panel as well:

• Resolution: WSXGA+ 1680×1050
• Dot pitch: 0.282mm
• Brightness: 300cd/m²
• Contrast Ratio: 700:1
• Response Time: 2ms gray to gray
• Built-in stereo speaker
• Video input: D-Sub & DVI
• Audio input/output: 3.5mm mini-jack

You’ll have to submit your interest of purchase before 15 November (Wednesday next week). However I suspect they’ll run out before that at this price. Maybe not as cheap as a Chi-Mei, but as far as I can see they are two different classes of monitors.

I would like to have one replacing the 19″ Dell UltraSharp that I am using at work, but not sure whether work will pay for it. Tempting tempting tempting.

Latest Toys “R” Us email newsletter contains a few nice coupons with great discount. Most interesting one has to be this:

With coupon code on this PDF file (which you need to download, print and bring to Toys R Us), you can get 20% off items from “R” Zone. That includes:

• Video games
• Computer games
• DVD and VHS movies
• Plug n play TV games
• Televisions
• DVD & video players
• MP3 players and accessories
• And lots more!

Yup. The 20% off coupon covers lots of desirable gadgets, and depending on the marked price there can be some really great bargain for some items. There are however some exclusion — it does not include game consoles, gaming package deals, music cards, batteries, iPods and memory sticks.

Valid until Wednesy 8 November 2006.

And there’s another coupon that gives you a free 66cm Christmas Poinsettia Flower with every purchase, valued at $1.98. Don’t forget to grab that one as well when you go there to grab your 20% off gadgets!

Here’s something we have been waiting for.

20% Off Everything at Koorong

Yes. From Wednesday 1^st of November to Saturday 4^th November, there is going to be a big 4 day sale at Koorong! That’s 20% off all books, Bibles, CDs, DVDs. Perfect time to stock things up for Christmas (although I am pretty sure there’s going to be another sale before/after Christmas).

This applies to Web Orders as well (see the conditions here). Moreover, orders more than $99 will get free delivery.

Currently we are definitely getting Colin Buchanan’s King Of Christmas DVD. We already bought the CDs last year, but we’re getting the DVDs anyway as Anna is a big Colin fan. We still haven’t got the Bible atlas that we said we are getting, so it is also on the shopping list.

Now we just need to organise the group buy with friends at church to get above $99…

It appears that Zazz is not alone. Catch Of The Day is the new kids on the block of 24-hour-cheap-deal websites. Launched last Wednesday, it looks disgustingly similar to Zazz! — from its home page, 3 product images with Javascript roll-over on the front page, product discussion forum, dry humour on the product description, etc. Almost a clone, I’ll say. The website is also a bit buggy at the moment (like giving out tomorrow’s deal?) But who cares as long as it gives me cheap gadgets! :)

Catch Of The Day is also based in Melbourne (I guess that’s where all the good shoppings are), and is part of Daily Deals. So far for the last couple of days it has brought out quite a few great deals, so I decided to add them onto the sidebar, alternate with Zazz on the front page of this blog.

Thanks to young_dazza who notified me on the forum.

Dell Inspiron 6400uMA — Intel Core 2 Duo notebooks for less than $1,100! Maybe not as desirable as Apple’s new MacBook Pro which was also released with Core 2 Duo this week, but it is surely a lot cheaper.

For $1,099 you get:

• Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 1.66Ghz
• 512Mb RAM
• 60Gb Hard drive
• 15.4″ wide screen LCD
• DVD/CD-RW combo drive
• Intel Media Accelerator 950 integrated graphics

Hmm. About the same as the Latitude D600 that I am typing this blog on (except it has only a single core 1.7Ghz Pentium M). But it was supposed to be the state of art 2 years ago, and costed me (actually my company) heaps more than $1,100.

Those new Inspirons are so cheap that I have just bought one for my brother!! He is coming back from overseas and going down to Melbourne to work. Actually he is paying for half of it. Here comes the configuration — Core 2 Duo T5600 1.86Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 120Gb HDD, DVD Writer, 256Mb ATI X1400 graphics, 2 year warranty. It all comes down to $1,910. Dell will post it to Queensland where my parents are, but no ETA yet.

Now my wife also wants a computer upgrade :(

Sale ends in 2 days.

Kmart Mega Entertainment Sale! That should please all the fans that thrill on big savings on gadgets.

For mega deals on a massive range of TVs, LCDs, digital cameras, mobile phones, iPods and more, don’t miss the Mega Entertainment Sale!

For example, last month I blogged about Kmart’s Markdown Madness, and thought the TV and Canon PowerShot A430 was cheap. Sorry if you have bought these items last month, because the very same 66cm Magnavox LCD TV has been marked down to $799 — whole 100 bucks cheaper! Yup. The same 26″ LCD panel, 1366768 wide screen, 600:1 contrast and 500cd/m2 brightness, etc. 81cm/30″ TV also $100 off to $1,199.

Canon A430 is also getting $14 cheaper at $165. Same camera bag bonus.

Sales starts tomorrow Thursday 26 Oct 2006 to next Wednesday 1 November 2006.

Update: Just realised one weird thing. How come I kept on talking about nice big flat panel TVs when I spend like 10 minutes a week watching TV (actually I don’t really have a “real” TV at home). Weird.