Understanding Shopping Boards
Shopping boards are one of the most established ways to find deals online. They are very easy to find just go to Blingo (we don’t use Google on this website find out why here) and type in shopping boards. A bunch of different forums will pop up. My favorite is Mycoupons.com. This is one of the most active shopping boards around. It was my first foray into using the internet to get better deals on items that I wanted to purchase.
You will find that most of the people who post to these boards are women and that they are VERY thrifty. In fact many times when they are posting if the deal is less than 50% off the post sounds more like an apology than information. I myself will post from time to time when I find a great deal. A few example of items that I have gotten at amazing prices due to these boards are:
Eddie Bauer Mountain Bike — reg price $200 - purchase price $50
Extra LCD screen for DVD player — reg price $100 - purchase price $25
32 piece dish set — reg price 52.00 — purchase price $13.00
These are just a few of the deals that can be found on the shopping boards. The disadvantage to this method of online shopping is that it is very time consuming and highly unpredictable. For most people it only makes sense if you are looking for general deals or are expecting clearance items to start coming through for specific stores. A great example right now is that many Target locations have marked their summer lines down 50% off. In a couple of weeks these prices should drop to 75% off (This happens at Target so check my post on Target clearance). The best way to know when this happens is to watch the LWIF B&M boards and hope no one else beats you to the deals.
June 18th, 2008 at 2:18 am
Boards like this are definitely a great resource. You do have to be careful, though, because some of the larger ones can lead to deal abuse. fatwallet, which can be a great resource, is also one of the biggest culprits here - some deals are intended only for certain customers, while others are intended for a limited audience until they are exposed to much larger one. Great deals can disappear quickly this way, and are often taken away from the people they were originally intended for.
For instance, a couple of Victoria’s Secret coupon codes were leaked a while ago, intended only for holders of their credit card, but a lot of people were able to use it and it caused all sorts of chaos. As a cardholder, I finally did get my order, but there was a while when it seemed like all the orders would get canceled.