Internet Specials!

I don't normally post about internet savings. In fact, I never post about them. But yesterday I purchased a 42 inch HDTV (in 1080p) for a total of $870, and I am feeling pretty good about it. So I wanted to share the deal with the world.

First off, if you don't use the internet to search out deals on expensive items, you are missing out. The military invented the internet for three reasons: to improve communications, to save money on consumer items, and to find pornography. If you are only doing one of these things, you are not using the internet properly.

The internet hosts a range of "hot deal" websites. My favorites are slickdeals.net and fatwallet.com. (A friend of mine really likes woot.com because it is funny and has excellent value, but woot only sells one item a day, so it is kind of a crap shoot.) NOTE: the websites I have listed don't actually sell you things, they just show you coupons, and direct you to official deals online or at brick and mortar stores. They aren't a sketchy underground operation... well woot.com is, actually.

Anyway, if you are looking for an electronic gizmo, rather than going to your generic "best buy" or "circuit city" website, you should be going to one of these websites and searching the forums, because there are a fanatic group of nerds who are extremely thrifty, who spend hours combing the world for outstanding value. Then they post this stuff so everyone can benefit. Sometimes stores mistakenly post the wrong price for items on the internet, and this is when they get worked into a feeding frenzy and you will literally see thousands of posts on a given thread. Like, once I saw a really nice Sony HDTV that was listed for about a third of the retail price-- and nerds were literally screaming in all capitals in their posts. Yes-- I said ALL CAPITAL LETTERS! The nerve! (Stores don't always honor these postings, mind you.)

You will notice that the thrifty people have their own little language. They say things like "YMMV," meaning "your mileage may vary," and "B&M" meaning "Brick and Mortar," etc.

If something says "YMMV" it generally means that you probably have to try to use a coupon that technically is not supposed to be used on the particular item you want. For instance, I bought an HDTV and used a 12% off coupon that said "cannot be used for items on sale." The price of the TV I bought had just been lowered that day to $990 and had a tag on it that said "On Sale"... BUT was it really ON sale? Would the salesperson reject my coupon? Would the computer reject it?

This is the essence of YMMV. And in my case, I told the guy at Best Buy, "I have a coupon," he scanned it, and everything went fine. So if you want to try to get the TV i just got... here is the link (lucky for me, VA takes some weekends of from sales tax, and it happened to coincide with my purchase--take that other states!):
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=624397&highlight=1080p+hdtv


I will leave you with a few parting tips:
1) Good deal websites allow users to "rate" the deal. This is key. Look for deals that have good ratings.
2) Search the forums! Using the keyword search. For instance "HDTV" if you are looking for that.. should turn up dozens of great deals going on right now.
3) Sometimes these deal websites will link to suspicious looking websites (this is rare). Don't buy from them, and don't send naked pics to them-- no matter how persistent they are.