Finding legit deals online

February 14, 2006 11:59 AM

How to know when you've found a deal online and when it's too good to be true?

Part 1: how to know what a good price is for something (pricewatch.com? i dont know...)

Part 2: I see Ipods for ridiculously cheap on Ebay, is this too good to be true? And I see deals on digg.com/deals and im wondering what the catch is... after rebates, no warranty...

I know there are genuinely killer deals to be had out there, but is it ever worth it after all of the work?

posted by baking soda to Shopping (10 answers total)

Assuming you're familiar with the proverb ("If something looks too good to be true, it probably is"), which you seem to be, I don't understand your question.

Or were you just looking for reaffirmation? In that case, "yes," the proverb has endured a couple centuries because it holds up pretty well. Ditto the rest of 'em.
posted by cribcage at 12:13 PM on February 14, 2006

Keep up with Ben's Bargains, maybe Woot! for the occasional daily deal, and maybe Cheap Stingy Freebies keeping a look out for deals in general.

If you have something specific in mind, yes, then pricewatch.com or maybe mysimon.com to compare prices across a lot of different sites.

As for Ebay items, do an Advanced Search for the specific item with "Completed Listings Only" to get a sense for what that item has been selling for in the past few weeks. As far as Ebay goes, I only trust people with very good ratings -- no newbie/just changed identity sellers. Use common sense.

I browse Ben's Bargains daily just to see what's going on and get a sense for what a good price point is.

Is it worth all the work? Depends on if you enjoy doing this or not. I do. I saved $30 on a backpack I was going to buy anyway, got a free iPod cover (although it did take six weeks to arrive), and paid $10 including shipping for a new Wireless G/B router after rebate.

(Yes, getting the rebate did require my filling out a form and mailing it in. Were those two minutes worth $45 of my time? For me, the answer is yes.)
posted by jerryg99 at 12:18 PM on February 14, 2006

Ebay is awash in identical "super bargain" 60/40GB ipods for sale. Sellers are always from China, offering buy it now and no credit cards accepted. They generally have 10-20 positive feedbacks, from other accounts also created within the last few weeks. They "sell" for a week or two and then disappear, then run their script and create a new identity. See the $150 items on this page. Dead giveaway is that the price is italicised.
posted by meehawl at 12:23 PM on February 14, 2006

Response by poster: See potential catches could be: this used piece of electronics is going to konk out in a few months, or... There may be 100s of people selling their old ipods for $40 because the battery is dead on them and would cost $100 to replace...
And i dont trust rebates. It seems like the whole purpose of them is to hope that the customer forgets to submit it or that the customer gives up after all of the red tape involved in getting the rebate. I got the ol' red tape treatment on my latest rebate attempt...
posted by baking soda at 12:25 PM on February 14, 2006

pricewatch is generally very good about only allowing reputable vendors into their database. Not just anyone gets listed, there is a quite extensive vetting process, or at least there was. I've bought cheap hardware I found there several times without any trouble.

Be aware that very often online vendors will augment their prices with shipping and handling charges - $20+ on a single memory DIMM, for instance - in order to get their margins up while still being able to advertise a low price.
posted by ChasFile at 12:40 PM on February 14, 2006

I'm in Canada and I go to forums on redflagdeals.com. Those guys know what a deal is for sure.
posted by KathyK at 12:55 PM on February 14, 2006

I bought a scanner on ebay that was way too good to be true (under $20 I think), showed up with broken glass, contacted them and they refunded the purchase and I kept the scanner. I was pretty sure its a scam- deliver broken goods and hope they don't compain kind of thing, however I ended up with a free scanner (albiet sans glass) to mess around with. On ebay if it's too good to be true it is. I alway avoid the retailers with subpar ratings on pricewatch. usually I just end up at newegg anyway, I'd pay $5 extra for excellent service. I've gotten burned from geeks.com a couple times, the only thing about these great deals is if its broken or shoddy you have to pay for shipping back to them, which is the price to pay for playing the game. Ebay is rife with scams, you have to really get a good feeling about the seller and make sure everything is implicitly stated. That said once you know what to look out for it's not too hard. It might seem like you're not getting the best deal, but its usually not too much more money for a little security.

I've accually gone through with one of those "sign up for aol 20 times and get a free laptop" type scams, which is what I'm writing from. Ended up getting a $700 laptop for about $250, and I got to keep all the fake viagra! There's usually three groups of signups you have to go through. You always want to make sure that you can complete all of them, usually the last group is where the expensive stuff is. Sometimes these scams cost a lot to get the "free" thing and it's on the last page of things you have to sign up for so make sure that you can complete it before starting any of the things and start from the last page as well.
posted by psychobum at 12:59 PM on February 14, 2006

A lot of the eBay kids I've noticed are doing incredibly low auction prices with notices not to bid on the auctions, but instead to contact them directly.

Then, they'll ask you to wire them money via Western Union to them in Romania. No, really, they'll send you your monitor—look, they already have a UPS tracking number sent to you.

If it smells bad...
posted by disillusioned at 1:41 PM on February 14, 2006

The iPod deals may also be the bait for you to enter a matrix/mlm/pyramid scheme at some low amount of money.

Don't, I repeat, don't do this. It's bad bad juju.
posted by thanotopsis at 1:57 PM on February 14, 2006

For smaller online stores, you can check Reseller Ratings to see how they've performed in the past.
posted by hootch at 2:40 PM on February 14, 2006