Online Shopping blog

2005-01-07T14:11:00.000-08:00

Free Blackberry 6710 with purchase at Orbitz. This is a pretty good deal, but it does have some caviates. First you buy travel from Orbitz to be eligable. That's pretty clear. But Blackberry's require wireless services and here's where they get you. Your free blackberry also requires a one-year service plan (that's $29.99 a month), $35 activation fee and $9.99 shipping and handling. However, there is an $85 mail-in rebate to help offset costs.

Frankly I like Orbitz the best of all the travel services, so I use them anyway. If you want a blackberry this may be a good way to get it.

Here's the link if you want your
free blackberry

2005-01-01T22:01:00.000-08:00

DealCloset just expanded coupons some more. Now they are broken down by store too, like this dell coupon page. I counted about 47 individual rss feeds there.

That means that if you know you're going to buy from Overstock, and you want an overstock.com coupon, just hit that site and see what's available.

Dealcloset seems to be getting larger so they're getting several exclusive coupons and specials now from the stores. I've definately seen them for Dell, Overstock, and Smartbargins.

2004-12-08T10:51:00.000-08:00

I'm looking at ebay for more and more stuff. Can't believe the inventory these days. Rumor has it that there's over 25 Million listings. I found a site that includes some closing prices and descriptions with the ebay listings they put up. It needs better navigation, but for now it's the only place to get this info (other than a convoluted method in eBay.)

Check out dealdawg. Cool new idea.

2004-11-24T16:58:00.000-08:00

It's coming up to black Friday and I just had to post. This is the time to get with the rss coupon feed program. I'm using DealCloset's coupons. They are available both in html and rss forms.

Here's the html:

Hot Coupons
apparel-coupons
extreme-coupons
gifts-coupons
home-coupons
travel-coupons
dell-coupons
computer-coupons
all-coupons
baby-children-coupons

The RSS Coupons:

Apparel RSS Coupons
Hot RSS Coupons
Extreme RSS Coupons
Gift RSS Coupons
Home and Bedding RSS Coupons
Travel RSS Coupons
Dell RSS Coupons
Computer and Electronics RSS Coupons
All Coupons RSS Feed

2004-08-05T21:29:00.000-07:00

It's back to school season and folks just don't realise how easy it is to get college books online. In fact, you can save a fortune if you buy used college books.

Try it, you'll like it:)

Amazon has a great deal where people can sell their old books and then turn around and buy new ones. I've got to believe this is killing the publishing business. These books were probably a huge money maker in the past, now with recycling it's got to have dropped revenues by a factor of 3 maybe. The joys of improved productivity and market efficencies.

2004-07-31T21:03:00.000-07:00

So I've been using eBay (doesn't everyone?) to find hard to get stuff. For example I wanted a particular cordless phone that was disconnected. Where to look? You got it, eBay auctions.

I've been using a new site called auction-dog for online auctions. The site is improving each time I visit it so I have high hopes. In the mean time, they give a bit to charity, so what the heck?

You might try it out...

2004-07-11T13:58:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some shopping for unusual items lately. There's some good router bits here. Nice summary of various router related auctions.

Also there's a good place for better sales meetings. The books help people conduct more effective sales meetings.

I'll be searching around the online auctions site to bring you more information later.

2004-05-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

I've been booking a bunch of tickets. I've been looking for
cheap air fare. I tried places like the airline websites, but for iteraries that require multiple hops, expidia, travelosity, and orbitz are better. I often save significant money on those sites.

Those sites don't do as well for hotel reservations. They have them, but the restrictions are onerous.

2004-03-29T20:49:00.000-08:00

OK, it's been a while, but I've been shopping, just not reporting:(. Today I'll talk about cruises and travel. Here's the deal...the big companies like travelosity or expidia buy their packages from a consolidator. Seems the consolidator figured out they could sell this stuff themselves with a web site and some advertising. Hmmm...get a bigger cut of the deal in a super competitive market...sounds like a good idea!

So that's what's happening. The company is vacation outlet. You can check out some of their deals at cheap cruises.

Why cheap cruises? Well, it seems that some time ago everyone decided they needed to have another cruise ship or maybe 5. That created way too much capacity. It's now left to people like vacation outlet to unload all these cheap cruises.

Sure they have other cheap vacation packages, but this is where the real deals are. These boats just can't fill themselves up. Furthermore, people are a little worried about being at sea with all the crazy people out there. That means driving vacations to places like the Grand Canyon are more popular now. That leaves even fewer people to fill those boats.

So check it out, you could get a really good deal. FYI, to figure out which cheap cruise is right for you, that same page has a pointer to cruise reviews and a cruise wizard at Expidia.com.

As my Grandmother used to say, "happy sailing"!

2004-03-18T19:08:00.000-08:00

I was shopping for discount bedding at Overstock.com and decided to try to find a leather rolling bag for my computer. I took a leap and found one that was an overnight bag and a computer holder. It's great! It's a bit heavy, but heck it has wheels.

If there are any left, I recommend buying one. It is very nice, well made, and makes it easy to throw everything you could want into it.

I'm not sure if it'll fit 3 days of stuff, but it definately handles one day's stuff fine. More than fine.

2004-03-16T23:33:00.000-08:00

OK, this one is expensive, but the more you buy the more you save:). I found a huge deal on Franck Mueller luxury watches. These are super expensive luxury swiss watches.

Somehow someone bought them at a great discount where you can get $1,000's of dollars off. They're still expensive though! Even with all the coupons you'll qualify for it's gonna be pricey. Still it's a fraction of the price you'd normally pay for these watches even used.

The ultimate supplier is Overstock.com and they're a reliable company. Great return policies and super great service, so that part will work out. We wonder how many people will be buying.

2004-03-08T08:50:00.000-08:00

We're trying the 800 count sheets to see how those are working out. (This is where we found the 800 count sheets.)

Out of the box they were super nice and soft. But clearly some of that was the finishing the manufacturers put on sheets. So first thing, I put them in the wash. They seem heavier than my 300 count sheets, but not as soft once washed. I think that after about 10 washings they will be very soft, but I'll have to report back on that. I can say that the 300 count sheets were a bit stiff till they got a lot of washings, so that's consistant.

I can say this is still a pretty good purchase, but you don't really get the instant satisfaction as I did with the comforter. The comforter continues to poof up and improve. Definately a good purchase.

2004-03-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

It's time to talk about a tire purchase I made a couple of weeks ago. I discovered I could buy cheap tires online. I have a car with oddly sized tires (I'm told), and the manual says I should not substitute a different size. The result is higher prices for tires. After a routine maintance check, my mechanic said I needed new tires:(.

So I decided to try the place that advertised the cheap tires. A friend said I could do it, but I wasn't convinced. It looked pretty scary to me, heck how could I be sure I bought the right tires? Who would install and balance them? The whole thing looked pretty hard to get right.

TireRack actually does make it easy. You just need the make, model, and year your car was made. That information is available on a sticker on the driver's side door if all else fails you.

Then there are a selection of tires that show up to select with reviews. So I read the reviews and learned that Continental tires were the best choice. I cross checked this with some friends I have who race. They said these were really good tires.

Great, so I ordered the 4 tires at about $75 per tire. This is definately a good price. But how to get them installed? Well, next they ask for your zip code and direct you to many installers with reviews in your neighborhood. I found several that would be just fine. Cost to install each tire was about $20. Still pretty easy...

Now how to get the tires to the installer? Turns out that Tire Rack ships the tires to the installer you specify. They call you when the tires come in. Then you bring the car in and they install it.

For my car it took about 45 minutes.

Overall this was a really easy thing to do. Save money and try it for your next set of tires.

2004-02-27T15:13:00.001-08:00

Here's the luxury linens update....

Recall a few days ago I ordered two sets of sheets, one 350 count (for guests:)) and one 800 count. I also ordered a new down comforter with a 400 thread count shell.

When comparing the 800 thread count to the 350 there was *definately* a difference. Much softer and finer fabric. More like silk than cotton (not that'd you'd be confused, but you get the idea.)

The comforter is also *very* nice. It just arrived today though and I haven't been able to test it yet. Probably worth the money for the extra thread count.

I'll give you a testing update after we wash and change the bedding. The perliminary results are quite good.

If you're interested in buying some of this stuff see this discount bedding page at dealcloset.com. I bought everything from Overstock.com

2004-02-27T15:13:00.000-08:00

Here's the luxury linens update....

Recall a few days ago I ordered two sets of sheets, one 350 count (for guests:)) and one 800 count. I also ordered a new down comforter with a 400 thread count shell.

When comparing the 800 thread count to the 350 there was *definately* a difference. Much softer and finer fabric. More like silk than cotton (not that'd you'd be confused, but you get the idea.)

The comforter is also *very* nice. It just arrived today though and I haven't been able to test it yet. Probably worth the money for the extra thread count.

I'll give you a testing update after we wash and change the bedding. The perliminary results are quite good.

If you're interested in buying some of this stuff see www.dealcloset.com/discount-luxury-bedding.html. I bought everything from Overstock.com

2004-02-25T06:59:00.000-08:00

It seems to me, that over the next couple of years many people will want to upgrade from VCR tape to DVD. We did, but due to some pecularities in our TV viewing.

The story is that we record our TV shows on a TiVo. I frankly don't watch much TV, but I do like Yoga. Turns out I like the Wai Lana Yoga series. The trouble is that with Yoga tape is a pretty inconvienent media, DVD is much better. Furthermore, there are a lot of Wai Lana Yoga shows. Even with our hacked TiVo (story best left for another time) I was filling the hard drive with Yoga.

This is where the DVD recorder comes in. If I could move the shows from the TiVo to DVD that would be much better. I looked at moving it to a PC and then to DVD, but that seemed like a huge amount of work. The consumer-grade dvd recorder seemed like the way to go.

So I looked at a lot of dvd recorder reviews and settled on the Sony. It's been an ok purchase. My husband's review is that it's still kind of complicated. I think it works ok for what I need it to do. The most frustrating thing is that the disks have a high failure rate. I haven't had a recorded one fail to play yet, but sometimes it stops recording after only one or two Wai Lana Yoga episodes.

I saw on a data sheet somewhere that this DVD recorder would play DVD-audio, but it doesn't:(. Also it records stereo TV signals as Pro-logic. Generally this isn't the end of the world, but I like to record concerts from time to time, and it's not the way I'd prefer to listen to them. (Yes I tried everything, called tech support, used the digital out to by pass the D/A converter, but the outgoing signal still went through Pro-logic circuitry.)

So overall I like the machine especially if you have a pressing need as we did. If you can wait a couple of years I'm sure they will be better still.

2004-02-24T17:58:00.000-08:00

I thought it best to mention today a purchase made over the weekend. Our down comforter is getting a bit long in the tooth, so I went to buy a new one from Overstock. Once again this was a consult my mother type purchase.

She advised against comforters with feathers rather than down. Total bummer since the white feather and down
one was only $37 at Overstock.com. Her complaint was the feathers are a lot heavier than down and it will be uncomfortable to sleep under.

She went on and on about the european down comforters. So I found a 230 thread count down comforter
for about $60 at Overstock. More than the cheap one, but still not bad. Mom said that would be ok, but I really needed a higher thread count to hold in the feathers. Otherwise it wouldn't last as long. I'm not sure I need it, but Mom's often right in these matters. Argh!!!

So that brought me to the 400 thread count hungarian goose down comforter
It was $130, not as super cheap as the others, but passed the all important tests that Mom put before it. I bought a new set of 800 count sheets from overstock which brought the overall cost just over $200 and that gave me a $10 discount. Added some sheets for the spare bed, and I was up to the $20 discount.

I guess the key was my husband is looking forward to the new and improved comforter, and he's curious about the 800 count sheets, so it's probably worth it. I think he's tired of me smothering him looking for warmth under our very old down comforter. He is even be cold under it. That's truly a bad sign, since he's rarely cold.

I'll give an update after the new bedding arrives.

2004-02-24T17:49:00.000-08:00

So it's been a few days since my last post, but I've been shopping. Today I found 2 ply cashmere turtleneck sweaters for about $40 at SmartBargains. I bought all three colors, black, charcoal, and heather. Bascially all shades of gray.

See Cashmere Top

Go quickly since they may run out of stock. SmartBargains sometimes is short on stock.

I'll fill you in on how the sweaters are after they arrive.

2004-02-06T10:40:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my blog. It's my first attempt using this new media. I decided my blog should be about what I do most online: shop. I started on the internet back when it was called DARPANET, it soon changed to ARPANET. In fact, I remember when it was uncool to have commercial content, and I wished people wouldn't complain about it.

So I was happy when ARPANET became the internet and commerical content was, however reluctantly, allowed. I've been shopping online pretty much ever since. In the early days, I used it as a better catalog and called in my orders. I didn't trust that the companies could secure sensitive information.

Overtime, the security issues resolved themselves, and now I order confidently. I do always check out new places before I order, just like I would with any mail order outfit.

I hope people like the stuff I find, and point me to other good things.