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Shopping Online
A reader writes:"I've been buying stuff on the Internet for a while, and wanted to get people's thoughts about the best places to go. I primarily am looking for media or computer parts. Of course, I've used Froogle, PriceWatch or PriceGrabber, but also use places like tigerdirect or NewEgg. Where else do people go, and any recommendations for getting decent deals? " Oh, and of course, shamless plug for ThinkGeek, who is also owned by OSTG.
Fatwallet.com
Belive it or not, I'm finding things cheaper, yet with good quality, on eBay. I'm also looking for hard-to-find parts (like 128Meg EDO SDRAM for a Dell CPi D266XT -- They won't take generic!) and finding them on eBay itself. Alot of vendors have fairly good stock of them.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Check Out the Fatwallet.com, AnAndtech.com Deals forums. Also Check out dealnews.com
http://evertek.com/
they hav esome really awsome deals
http://Lenny.com
This will become a bunch of plugs for all the geeks favorite places to shop, so here's mine:
I like Mwave.com, they have just about all the parts you could ever want at comparable prices to other sites on the net. They also ship UPS ground that comes to Idaho as fast as 2 day UPS for 1/3 the price of 2 day.
My best advice for buying PC stuff online is order from the US, and read the reviews on Pricewatch or epinions.com to make an informed decision.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
Hardcore shoppers will take advantage of the various coupon/deal sites, and forums, such as:
100 Big Coupons
SlickDeals
Headlinedeals
Tech Bargains
Hot Deals
Of Course Fat Wallet Hot-Deals Forum can't be forgotten
Just keep in mind that these sites do have affiliate agreements with companies, and so are making a buck off the purchases you click-through from their sites. Some of their recommendations may be skewed based on their affiliate agreements.
These are the sites where you'll find out about last minute clearances, specials, % off coupons, and pricing errors. Often you're being the 'evil consumer', but you're getting a heck of a deal.
May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
I like to use froogle to find the prices.. BUT:
(and I hope some online vendors take note of this)
If I can't get the shipping price BEFORE I put in my Name and Credit card - I take my business elsewhere. Alot of these places put a low price out to get high on the search engines, and then have like $30 for shipping, which of course you can only see AFTER you put in all your shipping address and credit card, mothers maiden name and favorite pet, at which point I bet they figure either people won't notice, or will feel that they already did all that work they might as well just pay it.
So, bottom line for me : No shipping price ahead of time, No Business from me.
Don't Tread on Me
www.ebuyer.com has always served me well. I believe they have a US operation too.
Wherever you go to find the deal, go to Reseller Ratings to check the rep of the shop offering the deal. They've been around a long time, and for as long as I've been buying/building from parts they've been advising me on whether I'm likely to get what I paid for. (Come to think of it, they have a best-price-finder system now, too.)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Type anything* into google and invariably all the results are price comparison sites anyway.
I often put "-compare" as an additional search term to remove most of these, if I'm looking for just the specifications for something, for instance.
*Computer kit, obviously.
I'm in the UK and I mainly use Ebuyer, Savastore.com and Clickonit. Ebuyer generally has the cheapest prices of the three, but Savastore sometimes beats Ebuyer. Clickonit usually delivers quickest of the three and usually seems to have cheapest delivery charges too, however their hardware is usually (although not always) the most expensive of the three.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
u know buying online SHOULD be nice and convenient but i find buying stuff online WAY to pricey due to the american exchange rate.. for example ThinkGeek.. or as i would like to call it.. "Overpriced American Geek Store" (no offence to the OSTG) but OVER all i would say:
online shopping == Good
Online Shopping From Canada == Rip off
i could be mistaken.. but so far the only site i'v found with decent canadian prices is Amazon.ca
any suggestions eh?
Newegg is all you need. I've quit shopping around, I go straight to Newegg. You know they'll have what you want within a few dollars of the lowest price around. Together with their fast shipping and great customer service, they can't be beat.
Who knows what their deal with ChiefValue is? I hear it's the same warehouses.
I was once looking for a video tape for my friends in Ukraine (different video standard from US). I found it through Yahoo! Shopping Australia...
That said, I also visit CNet and EPinions for product reviews and -- right before buying from a particular vendor -- search Google for
.In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Other World Computing
Small Dog Electronics
Data Memory Systems
While all these places are geared towards Macs, they also carry lots of parts that fit both PC and Mac. Never had any problems with them, after using them for 6-8 years now.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I dunno if you geeks like bicycles as much as me, but I bought mine at Jakz.
I prefer Amazon as it usually has prices comparable to most other sites. But a stronger reason is the reviews. Amazon has a huge custmoer base and there are usuually a lot more reviews for a product than found on other sites.
I use a combo of pricewatch.com and resellerratings.com when sniffing out a new shop. I've tossed these companies a lot of coin with positive results, with the first two being my first stop.
l ue.comr chcomputer.com
. anandtech.com/categories.aspx?catid=40&ente rcat=y (mind the gap)
www.zipzoomfly.com
www.newegg.com
www.chiefva
www.directron.com
www.ewiz.com
www.mona
I watch the following bargain boards...
www.hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=28
forums
www.bensbargains.net
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
CompUSA, CircuitCity, and BestBuy. They always have great prices, along with incredibly knowledgable staff if you decide to visit their physical stores. Oh, and always make sure to get the extended warranty. You're a fool if you don't.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
From the original post: thoughts about the best places to go.
What criteria does the poster consider most important for best?
Okay, my main criterion is unequivocably (sp?) customer service. For me this includes only a few but important criteria:
I have long since abandoned picking the cheapest offering and almost ignore that ranking when looking for a place to buy online. I've almost (saved by an attentive and pro-active Credit Union (Watermark Credit Union -- great service!)) been burned big time and the brush with sleeze was enough to nudge me to find a provider with good service and be loyal. That said, I will plug as an example, amazon.com. They come nowhere near to the leaders in lowest prices but they have been amazing in their response to some difficult transactions -- I consider their approach exemplary as a model to emulate.
Amazon isn't the only great provider out their, but they're a good starting point.
Also, for ebay-type shopping, though I'm loathe to penalize newbies, I shop from only highly rated, large sample-space sellers with extremely high ratings.
I haven't seen mwave.com mentioned yet. Admittedly, I haven't ordered from them in a few years, but the few times I did use them they had a good selection, good prices and pretty fast shipping.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
It's absolutely useless to get a cheap deal if the vendor won't ship the product. And problems with the transaction happen all the time. Read some of the horror stories from the review sections there about the merchants with a low approval rating. Or a bad return policy. When buying over the web, you really want to avoid having to return the product, as you will usually have to pay the shipping costs yourself. And that can blow any savings by web-shopping that you might have once had.
What I do is search for the product on resellerratings.com first, and I won't buy from a vendor with a score below 9.0 unless I'm desparate. It's really just not worth the risk.
Doing otherwise is somewhat similar to buying a laptop for a low price from some guy in Romainia. ;)
I've bought tens-of-thousands of dollars of things over the past 9-10 years over the Internet/Web, and this is really the way to go. I have never been burned by one of the top rated merchants yet.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
First http://ostg.pricegrabber.com/ (ostg sub-domain), then http://www.tigerdirect.com/indexus.asp?SRCCODE=SLA SHX, then a blatant plug for thinkgeek (a major source of revenue for LNUX). Should slashdot not disclose if they are affiliated in any way with all links? What is the purpose of the pricegrabber.com sub-domain, and the SRCCODE in the tigerdirect link?
They are spammy shitstains.
I had to threaten them with legal action to get off their mailing list. Then found myself back on it and had to jump through the same hoops to get removed again. I never even recieved any product from them. Ordered a DVD player from them for a christmas gift (well in advance), it got back ordered twice after being shown in stock for the original order. then the bastards mail bombed me with crap for months and played spammy games to get removed. I fart in TigerDirect's general direction.
Rick B.
First, go here and stock up:
;-)
http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/ctd/default.asp
then here for some accessories:
http://www.russiancombatgear.com/
Only then go to an electronics site and if they give you bad service, then you know what to do...
Oh well, what the hell...
Back in 2000 my credit card number was stolen and at the time I had no idea who gotten it. But 3 years later a person in a gaming guild I play in mentioned that they had a card that was ran up after shopping at tiger direct. About 4 months ago a co-worker said that their card used at tiger direct was also abused.
In each of the cases the punk ordered stuff from various places and sent it to us. But it was still a pain in the arse.
Wouldnt shop there. And the FBI and police said there's not much they can do???
There is some overlap between the two, but AddAll.com comparison-shops a bunch of bookstores and will calculate shipping rates for you (for pretty much any country on the planet) and is primarily useful for looking for new books. It also includes the 3rd party sellers going through Amazon and the like.
If looking for used books, head to used.addall.com, but here you'll have to deal with shipping costs yourself.
For books, http://www.bookfinder.com/ searches all the major listing sites )TomFolio, ABEBooks, Alibris), as well as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Almost any English-language book in existence can be found there, and there are many foreign bookstores there as well.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Dealnews
DealInk
DealCoupon
DealCam
and the stuff is not Mac-centric, tons of periperals that are Windows only or cross-platform useable. Many times, combinations of Rebates and hidden Coupons are pointed out showing that the end result is an item that costs $0.00!
I like microcars
I just bought 2 dvds (different titles) on ebay, from two different sellers and was screwed by one, and disappointed by the other.
This was the first time I bought DVDs on ebay, every other purchase I've ever done went smoothly.
The 1st DVD was a bootleg. When I confronted the seller he just said that it wasn't a bootleg, but an import with a different cover. This was bull for many reasons. The first is that I ordered the DTS version, and the dvd was labeled as that, but the movie itself was Dolb Digital. Next, the dvd was only single layer (it says on the label DVD-9)! I had to return the movie to the seller at my expense, then he gave me negative feedback since I gave him negative feedback.
CAUTION: Be wary of sellers that say their DVDs are imported and may have different covers, this means they are very convincing bootlegs!
With my other purchase, the guy shipped me the DVD that I asked for, but without its' DVD case! He never mentioned this, after I told him about this, he said that throws out the cases that his DVDs come in. What an asshat! Plus, he didn't take paypal, so I had to send a money order (yuck), I should have noticed that before I bid though.
My algorithm is to search on pricegrabber for the product, and then pick the lowest priced vendor that has a 5 star rating. If the price difference is small, I'll prefer a vendor I've dealt with before.
Zipzoomfly has been a good vendor, though I've had about a 50% DOA rate on Hitachi 7K250 drives from them. They've been quite prompt and good about replacing them (if you call --- the web interface for returns is a black hole). Once I get working drives, they seem to stay working though.
This happened to me a little while ago...
I decided to purchase a digi camera and I looked up froogle.com and found this super deal. The camera was supposed to be brand new unopened. So I purchase it and then I get this e-mail telling me to call up and purchase my order. So I call them up and they were like you gotta buy the battery for the camera. I found this a bit strange since the camera is supposed to include a recharger and a battery in the box. So I said no that's ok. He was like how are you going to use the camera without the battery. I said I'll buy it later. Then he says, oh I'll check on the product. Then comes back and says that they don't have the product in stock. I was like ok.
So then I went to a different store and found a camera for a good price. But b4 that I went to read some reviews and this store had bad reviews and seems to do the exact same thing. And apparently there a a bunch of stores that do this.
Post super low prices, then u need to call them up to confirm ur order, and then they try to sell u accessories, and if ur not interested, the tell you that the item is out of stock...
WTH.. can't ppl be straight up and stop wasting my time.. sheesh..
This was where my original purchase was: amphotoworld.com
This was where my next order was gonna be: fotoconnection.com
I am glad that I didn't buy from those scammers...
I ended up buying it from this store Adorama, through Amazon. Now I pretty much buy all my stuff through Amazon. I get free shipping most of the time + they respond to my e-mails very fast + if a package is lost, the re-ship it out in record time.
I have done "internet shopping" for a long time now and would reccommend it to anyone, as long as they are smart about it. I have only once run into an internet merchant that is purposely trying to defraud people, and it isn't even credit card fraud. It's rare and you would have to be damn stupid to try and pull credit card fraud these days. It is so tightly watched and so easy for consumers to fight back against blatent credit card fraud (obtaining a CC number and then charging to it without consent or transfer of goods / services)
The one place that I HAVE run into, and I'm picking on them because they are the ONLY place that has done anything this bad, is http://www.wawadigital.net./ I ordered a Minolta Dimage Z2 from them because they showed the price in their store as and I quote "$188 after $50 mail in rebate". This was a great price because most other stores were doing $219 or $229 after rebate. I decided to give it a shot and ordered the camera. Strangely enough, my final receipt after tax and $15.04 2-day shipping said $203.04. I though hey, maybe they messed up and now after the $50 mail in rebate I'll get a $399 MSRP camera for $153.04. The next day, I was contacted via phone (on a Sunday suprisingly) by a salesman from wawadigital.net to "confirm my order". He double checked my address and order information which I thought was impressive and noble of them to do.
Then he said that the price I paid is after a mail in rebate so he would have to add on the $50.00 to my sale. As soon as I questioned this, charging my credit card a different amount than my receipt, the salesman's demeanor immediatly turned from patient and polite and warm to "I don't have time for this, I'm cancelling your order. " All I had done was question this practice, not say I didn't want the camera. I though about it for a minute and after comparing the price sheet to other retailers, decided that even after adding $50.00 it was still worth it. I called back the number and convinced him that I would go ahead with the order at the higher price if he sent me a proper receipt. He was not patient or nice at this point, cussing at me and giving a very rude version of what I'd call "customer service". After agreeing to not cancel my order he then asked if I wanted to add on any memory cards or - but I cut him off before he could list accessories saying No I don't want anything besides the retail box with the camera and what it comes with from the manufacturer. He had hung up before I could finish that sentance. I figured that my order was still going through.
While waiting for my order to arrive (tuesday or wednesday if he shipped it out on monday) I researched wawadigital.net because that seemed a little fishy. I couldn't find anything about wawadigital.net, they're a yahoo store and there was no feedback about them on yahoo's review system. I looked on their website to see if I could find any better info to cross-reference with. Just an email, mailto:wawadigital@yahoo.com (oops, did I just post that publicly?) and that was it. I checked their domain registration whois information and got a name and address. The name was too generic to bring up anything on google but the address brought up such links as
http://www.complaints.com/directory/2004/november/ 10/24.htm
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff146772.h tm
http://www.shopcartusa.com/wawadigital/Details/Rev iewsOrder_Worst/Page_1/
I read through hundreds of stories explaining situations very similar to mine with all sorts of bait-and-switching going on and started to wonder if they had ever sold a camera in their life. I realized that they had a
There are plenty of good places out there, but I think you do have to strike a balance between price and service.
NoimsThis is not the greatest sig in the world. This is just a tribute.
Ewwww, CNet.
Try PriceRunner, a new price comparison site in the USA but successful since long in Europe.
I worked for ChimpUSA in Washington state while in College. Most of the people they hired knew NOTHING about computers, and they didn't care. Once I had a new hire for the tech department ask me what the difference between a ISA and PCI card was. As one of the two people in the entire store who understood computers, I was handed every sort of question that couldn't be answered by looking at the box, from the trivial ('Does this computer have some RAMs?') to the unanswerable ('Will this copy of Dragon Natural Speaking work with a cheap microphone and a portugese lisp?').
None of the sales force were given any education about product, and the main focus was to sell waranties, which had markup margins of about 3000%. All the sales people told customers that they weren't commissioned, and although they were paid a close to minuimum wage hourly rate, they recieved (small) bonuses when they sold warranties. The warranties where given marketing droid created osfucating names, like 'Technology Assurance Programs'.
Most of the 'sale items' were really regualr price with a rebate thrown in. Quite a bit of the hardware they carried was utter junk, packard bell, compaq, and taiwan made no-brand crap that didn't work right half the time. The classes they offered at inflated rates were worthless to anyone except Information Highway roadkill.
Their POS/inventory system was horrible, and half the time suff listed in the computer could never be found. (If you ever call to see if they have something in stock, don't believe a clerk if they say it is listed in the computer. Make them grab it and put it aside for you.)
Many times, the 'super deals' they list in their flyers wouldn't be backed up with stock on hand. They would have 3 on hand when they opened the doors on Sunday morning, and by 9:15 they would be sold out. Customers who persisted in demanding the item they had drove out to buy were directed to go put the item on back order. These back orders would languish for months, and typically never get filled.
If you want to do businuess with them, it is safe to buy software from them. They really can't fuck that up, other than not having it in stock.
Personally, I wouldn't trust them with a couple of burnt out matches. The greed, stupidity, and ignorance starts with the lowest floor staff and goes as high as I encountered people. The higher ranked the managers got the more ass-kissing became an art. They only cared about their numbers, PERIOD. Customers were considered an annoyance that they placated to get rid of. I can only imagine the mentality at the corporate level. (Oh, yeah, they are based in Texas. You do the math...)
I may sound bitter about the company, but I don't have any personal axe to grind because I got fired or anything. I worked there for a year or so, saw they were fools and moved on. Shop there at your own risk.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Only one place when you are in the need for Hot Stuff.
I avoid Ebay for electronics unless I absolutely cannot get it anywhere else. This is because I get slaughtered on shipping costs. One time I bought a 8gb cf card. The shipper charged $10. The $550.00 card arrived bare, in an envelope with a 37 cent stamp on it. The same thing happened with an LCD inverter card - $10 item charged $15 for shipping and it came in a paper envelope, no ASD bag or anything.
ALL the electronic sellers do this.
Lately some sellers are going for $20 per item fixed shipping costs. For a 1-lb item UPS Ground. For instance look at some USB hard drive enclosures. These would sell for $30 in the store. They are priced at $8.95 or so, but comes to $28.95 with shipping. The sellers use this method to avoid the Final Value Fee ebay charges them on the total sale.
BZBoyz? Are you kidding Me?
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller2048.html
HJ