Alissa at Free Sample Direct is running a competition — Free Idole 2008, where you can write a poem or produce a video about freebies. Yes I know it’s a bit similar to our own birthday competition this year, but on a different theme (freebies rather than bargains). The deadline is by the end of this month (31 December), and you’ll win a mystery prize. Here’s your change again to score another prize, for you creative ones out there…

As of the winners of our birthday comp, I can confirm that both XyleneFree and Shirr0 have received their Nintendo Wii — yes I gave out two of them!!! Now both are suffering from domestic conflicts from family members fighting over the Wii remote. I shall post their excellent video later.

I have just discovered (actually, via this comment on OzBargain, thanks to kevst) this Australian book price search engine — Booko.com.au. This site was built with Ruby on Rails by Dan Milne in Melbourne to “scratch his itches”, according to the about page:

This site was built to scratch an itch of mine. Where to find the cheapest place to buy a book in Australia? Sure, it’s normally Amazon except when it’s not. And what if I want to buy 3 or 4 or 5 books? Which shops have the best shipping options? Or maybe I’d just like to pop into some bricks and mortar and pick one up the old fashioned way?

While it’s “user interface” is not flashy like many of today’s “web 2.0” applications, I have to say that it’s probably one of the most useful thing I found online this month! It has a no-frills entry page with descriptions on what this site is about, and a search box to let you search by book title or ISBN. Search result returns you a list of books that match your criteria, and then you can click into the book for price comparison.

In my case I am looking for the cheapest place with Real World Haskell. And this is the result I get:

It lists out the common attributes — book title, author, ISBN, book format, etc. Then it searches through all its providers in parallel for the best price. It not only includes delivery cost (very important for online shopping), it also calculates the exchange rate for overseas merchants so everything is presented in AUD. In my case, Fishpond wins the price comp by a big margin. In fact I am about to buy this book…

Update: It ended up that Fishpond’s pricing was wrong so I bought the book from TheBookDepository.co.uk. Thanks Booko!

While OzBargain grows, our members often picked up errors made on merchants’ website which usually translate to great bargains. OfficeWorks has a reputation of honouring their errors on their website. Not with Dell. And this week’s “oopsie” shop is — Wishlist.com.au.

Wishlist.com.au has been established for almost 10 years, although I could not remember when was the last time I bought from them, because of their high price (which is probably why they are called “Wish” list). The story started 2 months ago in September when fashionvista78 posted the coupon code to get free $10 Wishlist.com.au voucher. It’s a generic coupon code for their new weekly email subscribers, and the first comment by pauly is — excellent for buying Hoyts tickets!

Then Wishlist.com.au ran 2 days of free delivery promotion — result? Someone found that you can get a Hoyts movie ticket delivered for free! Thanks dansor (who won last week’s bargain hunting competition). Wishlist did not find out until the morning afterwards, and I wonder how many orders of “free movie tickets” have gone through. They immediately removed the product, killed the coupon code, rejected OzBargain as an affiliate and then mass-emailed all those who ordered that the coupon has been cancelled as it does not meet their terms and conditions…

I thought the Dell fiasco two weeks ago was enough. Now this?

And just like the Dell event, bad mistakes don’t come alone. Wishlist.com.au ran a free delivery day again yesterday, and someone discovered another free $10 voucher (thanks to qwerty and Rev Milk). Result? Free Hoyts tickets again!!! It was posted at 9:16am in the morning, the deal got killed 3 hours later, and the cancellation emails sent later in the afternoon, stating coupon code wasn’t valid and could not be used together with free shipping offers.

Yet their checkout system had no problem taking the code and charging customers’ credit card?

FAIL! Please fix your cart + coupon software.

Both CotD and Dell’s reputations have been damaged so much due to those recent events. Now I can’t see myself ever going to shop at Wishlist.com.au…

Record traffic for OzBargain over the last few days. It all started when dansor posted the mistake by Dell on their Vostro 220ST desktop system. A lot of people clicked through and “purchased” the desktop before the deal was taken down (although according to Dell, they have never received payment). Well. The pricing was a mistake — and they were not going to sell those systems at that price. For the next few days they then called around and tried to refund the payments.

I would be fine if that’s all that was. Everyone makes mistakes, and I am glad that most people I’ve dealt with were very forgiving. However, before asking whether the order should be cancelled, Dell tried to sell the same system at $799 (+%5-%10 discount) — a clear bait and switch tactic. They should have apologised and then cancel the order, and at least for me I’ll be fine with their honest mistake. But don’t try to take the opportunity to sell me the same box at a much higher price.

Well. I am lazy. Meh. Most time I can’t be bothered. But from the discussion comments, people won’t let Dell get away easily. Worse, not that they had made a pricing mistake once, they did it again 4 days later, selling the same system at an even lower price. Same things happened — offer pulled and phone calls started. That’s one sure way to get all the OzBargainer fired up!

It’s also actively discussed on other forums. Then it got submitted to Slashdot on Monday, featured in Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday, and other online media.

It will be interesting to see how everything developed. You can get more info on this fiasco on the OzBargain Wiki.

OzBargain was launched back in November 2006, which means we are almost 2 years old! For the last 2 years, our community members have posted:

• 6,200+ deals
• 600+ forum discussion threads
• 26,000+ comments

Thank you all who have participated! Last week I have also posted in the OzBargain forums — OzBargain Birthday Competition, where I am giving away a Nintendo Wii and 10x $25 Deals Direct Gift Vouchers!

To win, you need to:

1. Prepare a happy birthday message for OzBargain
2. Publish your message on our Facebook Page, on your blogs or on any social media websites

Please check the forum post for more details on the rules, and the deadline for submission is 28^thth of November 2008 — so don’t miss out! It has only been live for a few days and we have already received quite a few messages on our Facebook wall (and some rude ones too! but I am not going to delete them, just yet). Thanks to Sonja who submitted an OzBargain game!

Have fun!

On the latest Australian Startup Index for November 2008, I saw:

Wow! Although it dropped one place from last month’s ranking, but every exposure counts. From the main Aussie Startup Index page:

The Aussie Startup Index is a traffic ranking of Australian startups.

It will typically be posted around the 10th of every month.

At the moment, sites are ranked based on an average of Alexa and Compete traffic data. Only sites that are ranked by both Alexa & Compete and that have an average ranking of < 1 million will be listed.

So it’s basically a ranking based on Alexa and Compete — two failed indication on the traffic level of a website. Alexa is just not accurate because of its dependencies on the Alexa toolbar (which I’ll suggest you to install so you can help to boost OzBargain’s ranking when you visit our site :) Compete on the other hand is perceivably more accurate, but it tracks US traffic only! Not useful when 95% of OzBargain users are from — guess where — the land Down Under!

There are other shopping-related sites that are also on the startup list.

• Get Price (11)
• BuckScoop (35)

… and heaps of other useful online apps built in Australia. Go check them out.

Kmart has been running some online specials recently, where you get good discount coupons but online available online to their email subscribers. The top deal today — thanks to cacbm who submitted it — is for this weekend. You need to print out the PDF file, and bring it to your local Kmart for further discount on already discounted items.

For this week, you get

• Triax men’s 21 speed ‘Crimson’ road bike for $99 (store price $149.95), or
• Schwinn women’s 26″ ‘Ranger’ mountain bike for $99 (store price $186.95), or

Well. Summer is coming soon so I guess it’s about time to get out and ride a bike. I was hoping to be able to ride to work, so I can do some exercise while save on bus tickets every week. Actually I have been saying that for years but have never realised that hope… I’ll see how it goes this year.

Special Catch of the Day birthday bash promotion — full day of celebration, one special deal per hour. With deals like:

• Nintendo Wii for $199.
• Sony Playstation 2 for $99
• Micro RC Helicopter for $5
• Samsung 8MP Camera for $49
• Tom Tom GPS for $99
• Samsung DVD Player for $29
• Kenwood Steam Mop for $29
• iPod Nano 4GB for $99
• … and much more

Check out their blog for details. With sweet deals like these, no wonder their dedicated server cannot cope with the surge of traffic.

Not that they have overloaded their warehouse with goodies. They have also overloaded their servers! Well, I am not going to talk about handling scalability problem over here but maybe both CotD and JetStar need to sign up classes on the new cloud computing.

Guys at Hightek Hosting have gone seriously insane.

For this long weekend ONLY, all new signups who purchase any shared or reseller hosting plan (including Plesk plans) can take advantage of the most insane offer ever… 90% OFF FOR LIFE!

Believe me. This is insane promotion for Australian-based web hosting. The discount applies to both Australia and US-based shared hosting and reseller hosting. This means you can get their US-based Start Plan (CPanel, 1GB space, 5GB data/month, 5 add-on domain) for merely AUD$5.50/year, or 46 cents per month.

Use coupon code insane when you order, and the offer expires on Monday (6 Oct). Although I already have way more hosting account than I need, I am seriously tempted (although I have no idea what shall I host next). The reseller plans can get you started reselling hosting space from $2.50/month after the 90% discount, like splitting it up and sell them to your friends for $5/month :)

Thanks Dale for the offering!

Thanks to Noslee for posting this deal on OzBargain — JB Hi-Fi is currently having a 10% off all computers, LCD and plasma TVs until Monday, 6^th of October.

It’s a great offer because you would be able to grab computers from vendors that don’t usually give massive discounts (read: Apple).

Sorry I have been slacking posting on this blog again due to being very hectic at work and at home. OzBargain is going great, thanks to the wonderful community there sharing all kinds of bargains. More about it later…

I posted this new competition at OzBargain yesterday. Basically this is what happened.

Monday evening I received an email from Chang at Yogee, a Sydney based online toys & games store and a regular at OzBargain. OzBargain has been bringing many new business to him so he wants to thank OzBargain by offering additional prizes to our regular weekly competitions!

And here’s the prize:

2 Channel Remote Control Palm Size Helicopter

The competition will run for the next 4 weeks — one winner from each week. And the rule? Best commenter in the Toy & Games category. Read more about this comp at OzBargain forums.

Thanks Yogee!! For other stores — feel free to contact me if you like to sponsor some of our weekly prizes :)

LCD monitors — they just get bigger and cheaper all the time. A while ago Chimei’s 22 inch LCD led the revolution that made 22″ the “best bang for the buck”, and now you can buy those for as little as $250 a pop. One problem for 22″ though is its resolution. At 1680×1050 it is just not good enough for true high definition content at 1080p. You need the next step up, the 24 inches at 1920×1200, to fully present the HD in its true glory. And now days it’s amazingly affordable.

The Dell 24″ Entry E248WFP was priced at $499 earlier this year, and thanks to neosin who posted this deal on OzBargain, you can now get one for as low as $304 delivered. Although there are a few steps involved, including using a motor club (NRMA, RACQ, etc) discount (10% off) + 3% moneyback via MoneyBackCo. It’s not an UltraSharp, but it’s still a great display if all you want is screen real estate.

On another note, Ozstock is selling a ViewSonic VX2835WM monitor for $448 + shipping today (posted on OzBargain by SimBer). It’s a refurb unit with maximum 3 dead pixels. However it’s probably cheaper than many 26″ LCD TVs on the market doing much lower resolution. Only less than 3 hours to go — so head down there if you are looking for something that’s big and cheap.

Last week was cheap USB drives, and this week OzBargain has been flooded with cheap 2.5″ portable hard disks.

• Seagate Qnap 250GB for $94.95 from MWave.com.au
• Western Digital Passport 250GB for $93 from MLN.com.au
• Western Digital Elements 160GB for $69 from MLN.com.au
• Verbatim 120GB for $59 from OfficeWorks

These portable drives are great for transporting large files (huge bandwidth between your and your friend’s computers, when you think about it). Great for backing up your Linux ISO as well :)

I can’t remember when did I first came across Tjoos.com, but I vaguely remembered them as a price comparison engine for contact lenses. But that was all very last year. I revisited Tjoos.com again after it has recently been featured on TechNation.com.au, a TechCrunch-like site focusing on web startups in Australia. Then I realised that the founders, Kim Chen and Bart Jellema, are in fact based in Sydney Australia. Moreover, Tjoos.com has gone through a dramatic change.

So what does the Tjoos.com have?

• A collection of stores.
• For each store, a collection of coupon codes.
• For each coupon code, there are some descriptions, an expiry date, and ability to let users to vote whether it is working or not.
• Invalid/expired coupons get pushed to the bottom of page.
• Anyone can add coupon codes against stores.
• Store/site owners can add themselves to Tjoos, i.e. the merchant portal feature.

Continue reading »

It’s back! If you missed out the last time, now you can get $20 free coupon from BigGift.com.au! Just use the coupon code “BIRTHDAY1” when you checkout. That means you can pretty much get anything under $10 for free. Definitely going to be best bargain for this week. Thanks to pete123 for posting this.

Here is a quick link to everything under 10 bucks at BigGift.com.au.

For me, I “bought” a Junior Bath Sponge Set for my daughters for a grand total of $0. Looks like it is going to be an expensive promotion for BigGift — hopefully they will honour all the sales.