• mlg@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    I remember the good ol days when black friday was actually a single day event, and cyber monday actually had real deals and not faked 30% off 60% markup.

    I have to remind myself to buy things I need before November because then they bump the prices and they don’t go back down until February.

    1 TB 970 Evo SSD selling for $140+ on major retailers right now, even though I bought one a while back for $40 (and even that was lucky because they inflated to $80 anyway).

    Also rip Newegg

    • dreugeworst@lemmy.ml
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      3 hours ago

      I’ll be damned, a PC part that’s cheaper in Europe than the us? first for everything I suppose. it’s 95 euro here, including VAT

  • DreamButt@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The constant battle to remind my partner that savings are only savings if you would buy the item regardless

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      “I bought all this shit. Look how much I saved!”

      Is a joke my partner and I share anytime we make purchases that are more want than necessity. Keeps us grounded. We know we would have been fine without the thing most likely and buying it had a real price other than just the $ amount.

  • helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    If you shop blackfriday for Xmas and such;

    Check out the extension camelcamelcamel https://camelcamelcamel.com/

    It tracks prices on Amazon (or if you don’t want extension, you can paste the link on their site). The extensions makes easy to check as your shopping.

    This let’s you check if 50% off is really a sale or “we tripled the price last month and are fucking you over”

    You can also setup price watches, and get email when something’s price drops below whatever you set.

    (Someone else mentioned Keepa that does the same thing, I’ve never heard of it, but a quick look shows it has a subscription for some stuff, no thanks)

    • wander1236@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      Keepa’s price tracker is free and actually shows a lot of useful info embedded into Amazon product pages, like the price history for used, warehouse deals, lightning deals, refurbished, etc.

  • edric@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    Remember, if you got an item for $70 instead of the $100 regular price, you didn’t save $30, you spent $70. That’s what I tell myself when I see discounts on stuff that aren’t immediate needs.

    • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      I take your point, and you’re absolutely correct in that if you’d have never spent that $100 on whatever whizzy gadget you’re looking at then you didn’t save a penny no matter how good the sale is.

      However, life is more than mere survival. If I were to buy something that I was going to get anyway then that’s money saved even if it’s not an immediate need. The caveat being that I hate “lightning deals” and other short time sales (damn you Musician’s Friend and your Stupid Deal of the Day) because in the past I spent a lot of money that I didn’t have trying to get a deal on something that I didn’t take the time to properly research and wouldn’t ever use.

      • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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        20 hours ago

        Furthering the idea that ‘life is more than mere survival’, I want to add that choosing to buy or not buy an item affects more than just you.

        When you buy a $70 item from Amazon on sale, yes, you’ve spent $70 and not ‘saved’ anything at all. But even if it was a good price, you should consider the added cost is that you gave your $70 to the evil empire. Amazon got your money, and you got your trinket. Surely it would be better if you spent the $70 somewhere else. Give it to someone that you like more than Jeff Bezos. I’m sure you can think of someone like that. You probably won’t be able to buy that exact same trinket for $70, but surely you’ll get something else you want - and you can actually help someone else at the same time rather than entrenching the power of exploitation.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          And sometimes you can choose not to buy something that really will improve your life until you see it on sale. Maybe you don’t need it, but it’s more affordable now, so you go ahead and buy it and it makes your life better.

  • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    also, fuck amazon, go to thrift stores (but not this time of year, they’ll be picked clean)-- i got a brand new toaster oven/air fryer and a mini fridge for $25 each

    you just have to keep checking back

    also, if you’re in a college town, check their bulletin boards towards the end of the semester–college kids move out of their dorms and give away all kinds of shit

    • Baguette@lemm.ee
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      20 hours ago

      Thrift stores are kinda fake now. Especially goodwill. Not much in terms of deals nowadays, everything is just barely under retail. It’s worse now that people are going around buying and reselling products. Hard to find stuff when you’re competing with people who do it as a business.

      Craigslist is pretty dog now too. Last thing I got from Craigslist was around 2018, there’s never really anything actually worthwhile now. Don’t really know what’s up with that, but unfortunate I guess.

      As much as I despise facebook, facebook marketplace is still the best for secondhand, along with college buy or sell groups. It comes with its own issues (esp if you are selling) but you actually get secondhand prices for most of everything.

    • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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      1 day ago

      I was one of those college kids. Only so much fit in the trailer! I hoped some people were getting a good deal on it.

  • ReiRose@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I love to put all the things I want in my cart and leave them there. Then remove them.

  • pipes@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Use keepa.com and learn how they take us for absolute fools. Their new trick to circumvent the recent law in Europe that forces them to show the average price from the previous 30days, is to have a “tickbox coupon” on many items (only visible from the item page) that takes out a discount, and obviously is not counted in the average “list” price. Magically all those tickbox discounts disappear on black friday.

  • Sestren@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    I prefer to buy it, use it for a few days, and then return it as defective. Not my problem that they accept any and all returns for completely bs reasons. Who needs “sales” if you’re just getting your money back anyway.

    And yes I know that this fucks over the seller more than Amazon itself, but ultimately there’s fuck all that I can do to hurt Amazon. I might as well get something out of it if they’re going to own the world.