Tuesday, August 31, 2010

One Deal At a Time.....354 days to go

This week I am highlighting all of my personal bargain shopping tips! If I can't do it, someone else might as well do it. I am gonna do this by deal category. The first category is: One Deal At a Time Deals

What is One Deal At A Time (or ODAT as it is known in bargain shopping circles)?  These are websites where the retailer will literally sell one item at a time until...

a) a timer runs out or
b) it items sells out.

My favorites include: www.steepandcheap.com, www.whiskeymilitia.com, and all of their sister sites (listed fully at http://www.sacalerts.com/steepandcheap_tracker.php).

Not only are the regular deals on these sites great, and usually the best price on any item that you can find, but there are often "Dollar Deals." Dollar deals are things that are sold for $1. There are also other super cheap items that sell for a more odd number, like $1.39, or something like that. These deals are HARD to get. But I am gonna tell you how to do it (you lucky ducks!!). To start, the only 2 websites that consistently have the dollar deals are www.steepandcheap.com and www.whiskeymilitia.com . The others have great deals, but rarely  have dollar deals.

1) It really helps if you have a desk job and are at your computer a lot!  You really have to watch the internet all the time.

2) You need to make an account on the website you want to purchase off of, including pre-loading your credit card and shipping info in (you'll see why later), and STAY logged in!

3) Watch the deals as much as possible. Some days there are 3-4 or more $1 deals, some days there are none. You can see the latest trends at the website I referenced above: http://www.sacalerts.com/steepandcheap_tracker.php.

4) So, while you are watching the deals all day, STAYING LOGGED IN to your account. Whenever the timer for the current deal gets down to a few seconds, start refreshing the page using Ctrl+R while keeping your cursor hovering over the drop down menus where you select items. This is how you catch a dollar deal in its first seconds, which is the only way to get them.

5) Don't think about sizes or colors, just go as fast as you can. If you get something that doesn't fit you great you have a nice gift for a friend out of it. Select the item size and color and select ADD TO CART as fast as you can.

6) The next page will be shipping, just let it select it for you. It'll be the slightly more expensive option, but if you select it you might lose the deal, and it's only $1 difference usually

7) It'll advance you to the credit card info page, this is why you want your info pre-loaded. It'll have all of it filled in. You just have to fill in your password and press submit. If you've saved your password into your computer properly, it will already be filled in.

8) Congrats, you bought yourself a dollar deal! Now, it will give you an option to hold your order and keep adding to it. Every subsequent purchase will only be $0.99 shipping. So, that's a great deal. It'll hold it for up to 8 days and you can add to it for tremendous shipping savings. A few items aren't holdable, but, most of those don't end up as dollar deals anyway.

Any questions, let me know! Has any one on here gotten a dollar deal before? I'd love to hear about if you have, or if you do! Happy Shopping, if you dare (it's pretty addictive).

(All that bargain sharing made me tired...allow my dachshund, Roxie, to illustrate this for me :))

5 comments:

  1. Sounds hectic, but rewarding! Thanks for sharing all these great tips!

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  2. Have you won any dollar deals? What have you won?

    Also, you know how you can hold your order.. can you hold off on getting your dollar deal shipped until a few days later, so you can hopefully/maybe pick up another dollar deal or so.. and get shipping for that for only 99cents as opposed to whatever it normally is (that slightly expensive amount that you mentioned before..)?

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  3. I've won dozens and dozens of dollar deals...my best ones were some Marmot winter jackets, a $400 waterproof ski jacket, and Patagonia stuff. I totally do the combined shipping thing, I should have mentioned it up above! Thank you for bringing it up. Have you gotten some dollar deals too? What did you pick up? Do you stalk SAC all day, or just occasionally?

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  4. Nooo I've never won (or attempted actually), but since I'm also at a computer all day at work, I'm definitely going to be trying it now! I'll let you know if I get anything good.

    The stuff that you have won.. if you really have no use for it, have you tried selling any of it on ebay?

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  5. Well, you're not suppose to re-sell on eBay...but...I've heard that re-selling their stuff works out really well...*wink, wink* :)

    Yeah, let me know if you get anything! They've been having 1-2 DD's a day on SAC, and they've still been having a couple on WhiskeyMilitia too!

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