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.

Comments

Great Deals?

[jdc180]

Fatwallet.com

Re:Great Deals?

[NiceGeek]

Ok, I'm still trying to figure out why you didn't get modded (-1 Troll)

1. Name a single 24/7 B&M computer store. Also it isn't the fault of the on-line stores that delevery is mon-fri during daytime hours...take that up with FedEx and UPS.

2. Is it the store's fault that you are incapable of
googling the item you are thinking about purchasing before you buy it?

3. If that DVD burner actually wrote at 0.4x then it is defective and you should have returned it to
the store and gotten a refund. More likely you are either just trolling or you are a complete incompentent.

eBay

[strredwolf]

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.

Fatwallet and AnAndtech Forums

[Anonymous Coward]

Check Out the Fatwallet.com, AnAndtech.com Deals forums. Also Check out dealnews.com

If you have a Biz License goto

[LennyDotCom]

http://evertek.com/

they hav esome really awsome deals

Re:If you have a Biz License goto

[Monkelectric]

*NEVER* and I mean never shop at geeks.com/compgeeks.com/evertek.com... A few years ago they were a truely awesome place. But their customer service has gone to SHIT, and so has their products.

I dont have time to type out all my horror stories, but here's a few:

Bought a wireless card and antentta from them. Paid a fortune for the wireless card trying to get a "good" brand so I wouldn't have trobule. As it turns out the card was defective (It woudln't work in about 50% of computers). Compgeeks refused to take a return or even talk to me on the phone. I won thuogh, I got my CC Company to reverse the charges.

Before that I bought a laptop, and went there to pick it up. I got down the street with it, and thought, id better look to see what this is... I openend it, it was *nothing* like the laptop I ordered, half the ram, no dvd burner, etc etc. SO I went back, got them to exchange it (had to wait like 45 minutes)... all turned out well, except the laptop broke just out of warranty anyways. Expensive repair :)

And my all time favorite story -- a friend of mine bought a laptop from them. They ship him laptop #1 with no power brick. So he spens forever on the phone with them, and gets them to send the brick. They send it to the wrong address, so he calls and they ship him a brick a second time. He finally gets it (weeks have elapsed since his laptop got here). The laptop is DOA. He calls back, they give him endless shit about how could the laptop be DOA when he's had it for two weeks ... finally he gets another laptop, it works but ONLY IF YOU REMOVE THE WIRELESS CARD. All of this took about 3 weeks, and at least 10 hours talking to reps.

My point about compgeeks is -- they sell shit and their customer service is shit. I am working on a sucks site for them if anyone would like to contribute stories.

Deal / Coupon Sites

[LogicX]

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.

Well..

[Heem]

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.

Re:Well..

[abirdman]

Excellent. I do the same. I get that sinking, "I'm being hoodwinked" feeling when I get to the page where I'm supposed to type in my CC number, and I still don't have the final price. Sheesh!

I also will not buy from a vendor who shows only "after rebate" prices. I used to use Tiger Direct for computer parts, because even if I could beat the price elsewhere, they are great at shipping complete orders quickly, have a good selection, website that's reliable, etc., etc. Sometime along about 2 1/2 years ago, they got totally hooked on this "after rebate" pricing, which made it impossible to figure out what the heck the final price would be. It was easier to find out the shipping price than the retail price. Add to that the "last minute" nature of some of the rebates (sometimes less than a week from the time of placing the order), and it was obvious they were using them strictly to lie about the prices of their products. I fought it for awhile, and finally just switched to NewEgg. They have rebates, too, but they show the actual price when you're shopping (and also have a great selection, good website, fast shipping, competitive pricing).

I buy well over a thousand bucks a year in computer parts and components on the WWW, and I'll never shop at TigerDirect again. They've already shown their level of business ethics.

One other comment-- it's almost always possible to beat a price I get on the internet, but the risk of hassling with returning a product that's wrong, took weeks to ship, or is just plain faulty or broken, makes the slightly higher price from a legit and reliable vendor more than worth the extra cost. Saving $5.00 on a new processor will never pay for even one return-- in hassle, shipping costs, lost time. Most vendors get your money as soon as they ship, and it can take a lot of time to get it back.

Re:Well..

[Heem]

Heh, that after rebate crap is actually illegal in my state, and we found a website that was based out of this state offering up computers for "free" after rebate. of course you had to buy so many other things to get the rebate - but a quick letter from the attorney general had free computers delivered to the doors of 15 of my friends.. haha.

In the UK

[jgritz]

www.ebuyer.com has always served me well. I believe they have a US operation too.

Reseller Ratings

[Robotech_Master]

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.)

Google makes this question redudant, surely?

[hedgehog2097]

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.

In the UK

[NetNifty]

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.

Newegg

[Chalex]

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.

My picks...

[mi]

A Yahoo! Shopping is usually my first destination. They are like virtual shopping mall, where merchants register their stores and list their inventories in some unified format for "across the site" searching. One merchant once mentioned on the phone, that he found Yahoo's terms to be the most reasonable around.

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

vendor sucks

.

the obvious

[justforaday]

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.

Re:the obvious

[arbitraryaardvark]

If you absolutely must deal with circuit city, pay cash. I made the mistake of getting their "free" credit card when I bought a computer there. They screwed up my account, and then spent a year harrassing me by phone about it. My go.to/circuitcitysux page is no longer on line, but I one point I had this all fully documented.
I did end up learning a lot about my rights as a consumer.
---
As to buying online, consider this option: don't.
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
I've bought a couple books from amazon, to encourage the authors, and i still get christmas cards from a politician who i gave a dollar to,
but I've transitioned to a post-scarcity economy.
I have enough stuff. There is cornocopia of free stuff online. If it isn't free online, I can probably do without it. You can augment that with a library card, and by participating in a tool cooperative. Tool coops aren't always called that; yours might call itself a church or a neighborhod association or uncle fred.
If I felt a need for more random stuff, dumpster diving is more fun than golf. Here's a free copy of cory doctorow's latest book about dumpster diving: http://www.craphound.com/someone.
The american assumption that we need more stuff to keep up with the joneses is one reason asia is kicking our asses. Lower overhead.
By not buying online, you can resist impulse buys. I got this computer for $100 + tax from a local computer recycling nonprofit, virtualscavengers. Occasionally I'll get a good cup of coffee downtown, or have a drink at a local club, but that's more about renting space. I'm mostly out of the money economy, because i don't need more stuff, so i don't need a traditional job, which frees up a big block of time to waste on slashdot and suchlike.
My approach is only one strategy, and has some disadvantages too, but you can incorporate it incrementally into your lifestyle. We are moving to a post-scarcity economy, like it or not. Stuff matters, but not like it used to.

what criteria?

[yagu]

From the original post: thoughts about the best places to go.

What criteria does the poster consider most important for best?

• price?
• speed?
• reputation?
• brand?
• policy?

Okay, my main criterion is unequivocably (sp?) customer service. For me this includes only a few but important criteria:

• friendliness
• promptness
• follow through
• and, only a little... price

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.

Re:SCAMS every where

[Pulzar]

Check out redflagdeals.com regularly for Canadian online (and offline) specials.

This is not a story

[new-black-hand]

Is it just me, or does this 'story' from 'a reader' reak of being an advertisement? Note that half of the links have referrer information in them, obviously to rake up some $ for OSTG:

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?

Re:This is not a story

[DrEldarion]

What probably happened is that a user submitted a question and then when the editors went to post it, they stuck in the OSTG codes.

Anyway, as long as you get the exact same information, why does it matter if the codes are in there?

Do not use TigerDirect

[Grand Facade]

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.