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The Almighty Buck The Internet

Shopping Online 388

Posted by Hemos from the what-to-do dept.
A reader writes:"I've been buying stuff on the Internet for a while, and wanted to get people's thoughts about the best places to go. I primarily am looking for media or computer parts. Of course, I've used Froogle, PriceWatch or PriceGrabber, but also use places like tigerdirect or NewEgg. Where else do people go, and any recommendations for getting decent deals? " Oh, and of course, shamless plug for ThinkGeek, who is also owned by OSTG.
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Shopping Online More

Shopping Online

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  • Great Deals? (Score:5, Informative)

    by jdc180 ( 125863 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:17AM (#12979280)
    Fatwallet.com
    • hot-deals.org
      Kinda like Fat Wallet without the frills. Just a text based site with anywhere from 1 or 2 to a dozen deals a day. Most are very good.
  • I always kind of liked ableshopper [ableshopper.com]

    dealtime.com and shopper.cnet.com aren't bad either.

  • eBay (Score:5, Interesting)

    by strredwolf ( 532 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:18AM (#12979285) Homepage Journal
    Belive it or not, I'm finding things cheaper, yet with good quality, on eBay. I'm also looking for hard-to-find parts (like 128Meg EDO SDRAM for a Dell CPi D266XT -- They won't take generic!) and finding them on eBay itself. Alot of vendors have fairly good stock of them.

    • Be wary of ebay DVDs (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jonny_eh ( 765306 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @01:15PM (#12980333)
      I just bought 2 dvds (different titles) on ebay, from two different sellers and was screwed by one, and disappointed by the other.

      This was the first time I bought DVDs on ebay, every other purchase I've ever done went smoothly.

      The 1st DVD was a bootleg. When I confronted the seller he just said that it wasn't a bootleg, but an import with a different cover. This was bull for many reasons. The first is that I ordered the DTS version, and the dvd was labeled as that, but the movie itself was Dolb Digital. Next, the dvd was only single layer (it says on the label DVD-9)! I had to return the movie to the seller at my expense, then he gave me negative feedback since I gave him negative feedback.

      CAUTION: Be wary of sellers that say their DVDs are imported and may have different covers, this means they are very convincing bootlegs!

      With my other purchase, the guy shipped me the DVD that I asked for, but without its' DVD case! He never mentioned this, after I told him about this, he said that throws out the cases that his DVDs come in. What an asshat! Plus, he didn't take paypal, so I had to send a money order (yuck), I should have noticed that before I bid though.

    • Shipping costs (Score:3, Informative)

      by robogun ( 466062 )
      I avoid Ebay for electronics unless I absolutely cannot get it anywhere else. This is because I get slaughtered on shipping costs. One time I bought a 8gb cf card. The shipper charged $10. The $550.00 card arrived bare, in an envelope with a 37 cent stamp on it. The same thing happened with an LCD inverter card - $10 item charged $15 for shipping and it came in a paper envelope, no ASD bag or anything.

      ALL the electronic sellers do this.

      Lately some sellers are going for $20 per item fixed shipping costs. F

  • Fatwallet and AnAndtech Forums (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:18AM (#12979286)
    Check Out the Fatwallet.com, AnAndtech.com Deals forums. Also Check out dealnews.com
    • Just so you know, the name of the second site listed in the subject here is the name of the guy that runs the site, Anand Lal Shimpi. Hope this helps clear up any confusion.

      Side note: Anandtech is easily my favorite site for PC hardware reviews and tech previews. Very professional writers, good background on the benchmarks, and no blatant fanboyism keeps me coming back, and the opposite has had Tom's Hardware redirected to 127.0.0.1 for years now in my hosts file.

      That said, I wish that AT's writers woul

  • If you have a Biz License goto (Score:5, Informative)

    by LennyDotCom ( 26658 ) <Lenny@lenny.com> on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:18AM (#12979290) Homepage Journal
    http://evertek.com/ [evertek.com]

    they hav esome really awsome deals
    • http://www.geeks.com/ [geeks.com]

      This is the same company but for consumers instead of Business's

    • Re:If you have a Biz License goto (Score:5, Informative)

      by Monkelectric ( 546685 ) <{slashdot} {at} {monkelectric.com}> on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:20AM (#12979690)
      *NEVER* and I mean never shop at geeks.com/compgeeks.com/evertek.com... A few years ago they were a truely awesome place. But their customer service has gone to SHIT, and so has their products.

      I dont have time to type out all my horror stories, but here's a few:

      Bought a wireless card and antentta from them. Paid a fortune for the wireless card trying to get a "good" brand so I wouldn't have trobule. As it turns out the card was defective (It woudln't work in about 50% of computers). Compgeeks refused to take a return or even talk to me on the phone. I won thuogh, I got my CC Company to reverse the charges.

      Before that I bought a laptop, and went there to pick it up. I got down the street with it, and thought, id better look to see what this is... I openend it, it was *nothing* like the laptop I ordered, half the ram, no dvd burner, etc etc. SO I went back, got them to exchange it (had to wait like 45 minutes)... all turned out well, except the laptop broke just out of warranty anyways. Expensive repair :)

      And my all time favorite story -- a friend of mine bought a laptop from them. They ship him laptop #1 with no power brick. So he spens forever on the phone with them, and gets them to send the brick. They send it to the wrong address, so he calls and they ship him a brick a second time. He finally gets it (weeks have elapsed since his laptop got here). The laptop is DOA. He calls back, they give him endless shit about how could the laptop be DOA when he's had it for two weeks ... finally he gets another laptop, it works but ONLY IF YOU REMOVE THE WIRELESS CARD. All of this took about 3 weeks, and at least 10 hours talking to reps.

      My point about compgeeks is -- they sell shit and their customer service is shit. I am working on a sucks site for them if anyone would like to contribute stories.

  • This will become a bunch of plugs for all the geeks favorite places to shop, so here's mine:

    I like Mwave.com, they have just about all the parts you could ever want at comparable prices to other sites on the net. They also ship UPS ground that comes to Idaho as fast as 2 day UPS for 1/3 the price of 2 day.

    My best advice for buying PC stuff online is order from the US, and read the reviews on Pricewatch or epinions.com to make an informed decision.

  • Deal / Coupon Sites (Score:5, Informative)

    by LogicX ( 8327 ) * <slashdot AT logicx DOT us> on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:19AM (#12979293) Homepage Journal
    Hardcore shoppers will take advantage of the various coupon/deal sites, and forums, such as:
    100 Big Coupons [www.100bigcoupons]
    SlickDeals [slickdeals.net]
    Headlinedeals [headlinedeals.com]
    Tech Bargains [techbargains.com]
    Hot Deals [hot-deals.org]
    Of Course Fat Wallet Hot-Deals Forum [fatwallet.com] can't be forgotten

    Just keep in mind that these sites do have affiliate agreements with companies, and so are making a buck off the purchases you click-through from their sites. Some of their recommendations may be skewed based on their affiliate agreements.

    These are the sites where you'll find out about last minute clearances, specials, % off coupons, and pricing errors. Often you're being the 'evil consumer', but you're getting a heck of a deal.

  • Well.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Heem ( 448667 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:19AM (#12979294) Homepage Journal
    I like to use froogle to find the prices.. BUT:

    (and I hope some online vendors take note of this)

    If I can't get the shipping price BEFORE I put in my Name and Credit card - I take my business elsewhere. Alot of these places put a low price out to get high on the search engines, and then have like $30 for shipping, which of course you can only see AFTER you put in all your shipping address and credit card, mothers maiden name and favorite pet, at which point I bet they figure either people won't notice, or will feel that they already did all that work they might as well just pay it.

    So, bottom line for me : No shipping price ahead of time, No Business from me.

    • Re:Well.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by abirdman ( 557790 ) <abirdman@mai[ ]rr.com ['ne.' in gap]> on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:55AM (#12979526) Homepage Journal

      Excellent. I do the same. I get that sinking, "I'm being hoodwinked" feeling when I get to the page where I'm supposed to type in my CC number, and I still don't have the final price. Sheesh!

      I also will not buy from a vendor who shows only "after rebate" prices. I used to use Tiger Direct for computer parts, because even if I could beat the price elsewhere, they are great at shipping complete orders quickly, have a good selection, website that's reliable, etc., etc. Sometime along about 2 1/2 years ago, they got totally hooked on this "after rebate" pricing, which made it impossible to figure out what the heck the final price would be. It was easier to find out the shipping price than the retail price. Add to that the "last minute" nature of some of the rebates (sometimes less than a week from the time of placing the order), and it was obvious they were using them strictly to lie about the prices of their products. I fought it for awhile, and finally just switched to NewEgg. They have rebates, too, but they show the actual price when you're shopping (and also have a great selection, good website, fast shipping, competitive pricing).

      I buy well over a thousand bucks a year in computer parts and components on the WWW, and I'll never shop at TigerDirect again. They've already shown their level of business ethics.

      One other comment-- it's almost always possible to beat a price I get on the internet, but the risk of hassling with returning a product that's wrong, took weeks to ship, or is just plain faulty or broken, makes the slightly higher price from a legit and reliable vendor more than worth the extra cost. Saving $5.00 on a new processor will never pay for even one return-- in hassle, shipping costs, lost time. Most vendors get your money as soon as they ship, and it can take a lot of time to get it back.

      • Re:Well.. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Heem ( 448667 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:59AM (#12979550) Homepage Journal
        Heh, that after rebate crap is actually illegal in my state, and we found a website that was based out of this state offering up computers for "free" after rebate. of course you had to buy so many other things to get the rebate - but a quick letter from the attorney general had free computers delivered to the doors of 15 of my friends.. haha.
    • So you want to type in your zip code first, find out the shipping price, and THEN type in the rest of your address information?

      Sometimes it depends on where you are, and where the merchant is.
    • I completely agree about vendors that "make up the difference" on ludicrous shipping and handling... but your method for weeding them out doesn't make sense to me.

      I mean, at some point during the shopping ordering process you need to tell the shopping cart where you live in order to calculate *actual* shipping costs... Granted some vendors have better shop-flows and integrated tools to display/estimate that during the shopping experience, but I can think of a few excellent niche vendors that have you pro

  • In the UK (Score:5, Informative)

    by jgritz ( 858142 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:19AM (#12979299) Homepage
    www.ebuyer.com [ebuyer.com] has always served me well. I believe they have a US operation too.

    • Re:In the UK (Score:2, Interesting)

      by EvilMonkeySlayer ( 826044 )
      While ebuyer offer good prices, (I use them for personal and business purchases) their customer services are an absolute joke.

      It is extremely difficult to find their phone number without first using a search engine like google.

      Example. [google.co.uk]

  • Reseller Ratings (Score:5, Informative)

    by Robotech_Master ( 14247 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:22AM (#12979315) Homepage Journal
    Wherever you go to find the deal, go to Reseller Ratings [resellerratings.com] to check the rep of the shop offering the deal. They've been around a long time, and for as long as I've been buying/building from parts they've been advising me on whether I'm likely to get what I paid for. (Come to think of it, they have a best-price-finder system now, too.)

  • Google makes this question redudant, surely? (Score:5, Informative)

    by hedgehog2097 ( 688249 ) * on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:24AM (#12979327)
    Type anything* into google and invariably all the results are price comparison sites anyway.

    I often put "-compare" as an additional search term to remove most of these, if I'm looking for just the specifications for something, for instance.

    *Computer kit, obviously.

  • In the UK (Score:5, Informative)

    by NetNifty ( 796376 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:24AM (#12979328) Homepage
    I'm in the UK and I mainly use Ebuyer [ebuyer.com], Savastore.com [savastore.com] and Clickonit [clickonit.com]. Ebuyer generally has the cheapest prices of the three, but Savastore sometimes beats Ebuyer. Clickonit usually delivers quickest of the three and usually seems to have cheapest delivery charges too, however their hardware is usually (although not always) the most expensive of the three.

  • SCAMS every where (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RancidLM ( 723035 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:26AM (#12979339)
    u know buying online SHOULD be nice and convenient but i find buying stuff online WAY to pricey due to the american exchange rate.. for example ThinkGeek.. or as i would like to call it.. "Overpriced American Geek Store" (no offence to the OSTG) but OVER all i would say:

    online shopping == Good
    Online Shopping From Canada == Rip off

    i could be mistaken.. but so far the only site i'v found with decent canadian prices is Amazon.ca

    any suggestions eh?

    • Re:SCAMS every where (Score:5, Informative)

      by Pulzar ( 81031 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:47AM (#12979475)
      Check out redflagdeals.com [redflagdeals.com] regularly for Canadian online (and offline) specials.
    • NCIX.com is usually pretty decent (and Canadian). You've just got to look for the right stores.
      • NCIX [ncix.com] has a nice site, lots of inventory but their prices are not that great. Given the choice I would much rather order from one of these guys...

        Don't forget Tiger direct [tigerdirect.ca] has a canadian site and you won't get dinged for duty/border fees if you order from there.

        One of my favs has always been PC Canada [pccanada.com]. They are almost always cheaper than NCIX and they have always been fast with my orders. I had to return some RAM once upon a time and had no hassles at all. The only real strike against them is they do
    • I can't shop at ThinkGeek either mostly due to the shipping costs... and with the american exchange rate and the fact that I might have to pay duty on whatever crosses the border it just makes it not worth it for me.

      Usually customs doesn't screw me, but I bought a used guitar pedal from an online friend once for $140 USD and they charged me $50 CAD duty!

      After that I really can't afford to buy from the US unless the prices are right... and that includes shipping of course.

      Which is a shame, because ThinkGe
    • Say what you will about Think Geek, but there's alot of stuff on there I can't get anywhere. I DON'T shop there for computer parts....there are better places for that stuff. Think Geek has many unique items you can't get anywhere else:

      Penguin Mints - I have had DIFFICULTY finding these....if Think Geek does not have them, I can go direct. My local Meijer USED to carry these...no more.

      Caffinated Anything - Needed for long nights

      T-Shirts - where else can you get a T-Shirt that says Dammit Jim I am a Sys

  • Newegg (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Chalex ( 71702 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:28AM (#12979345) Homepage
    Newegg is all you need. I've quit shopping around, I go straight to Newegg. You know they'll have what you want within a few dollars of the lowest price around. Together with their fast shipping and great customer service, they can't be beat.

    Who knows what their deal with ChiefValue is? I hear it's the same warehouses.
    • My current computer's case came from them. Although it looks nice and arrived quickly, some of the bits and pieces for internal disk mounting were missing.

      Two e-mails to NewEgg (one of them through their web-site) remain unanswered three months later...

      • Try contacting Adam at adamrodriguez@newegg.com.

        He helped me out when my Archos PVR showed up with a dead hard drive. He was very responsive and comped my return shipping as well as next day air for a replacement.

        -R
        • That's the problem -- I'm sure if simply requested to return/exchange the item, their semi-automated process would've handled it brilliantly.

          But I don't want to dismember my main computer and send the case back. And I only discovered the problem, when I put most of the machine together back in April...

          The ability to handle unusual problems is the measure of quality... And NewEgg did not cut it.

  • My picks... (Score:5, Informative)

    by mi ( 197448 ) <slashdot-2017q4@virtual-estates.net> on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:28AM (#12979347) Homepage Journal
    A Yahoo! Shopping is usually my first destination. They are like virtual shopping mall, where merchants register their stores and list their inventories in some unified format for "across the site" searching. One merchant once mentioned on the phone, that he found Yahoo's terms to be the most reasonable around.

    I was once looking for a video tape for my friends in Ukraine (different video standard from US). I found it through Yahoo! Shopping Australia [yahoo.com]...

    That said, I also visit CNet [cnet.com] and EPinions [epinions.com] for product reviews and -- right before buying from a particular vendor -- search Google for

    vendor sucks
    .

    • Correction (Re:My picks...) (Score:3, Informative)

      by mi ( 197448 )
      I found it through Yahoo! Shopping Australia...
      Oops, this is the right URL: http://shopping.yahoo.com.au/ [yahoo.com.au]

    • Yahoo! Shopping is usually my first destination. They are like virtual shopping mall, where merchants register their stores and list their inventories in some unified format for "across the site" searching. One merchant once mentioned on the phone, that he found Yahoo's terms to be the most reasonable around.

      Unfortunately Yahoo! is extremely tolerant of spammers. One of their merchants has been spamming me for years and proudly had Yahoo! merchant logos all over their site. Repeated requests to both t


    • Yahoo! Shopping is usually my first destination.

      I used to be a big Pricewatch [pricewatch.com] fan, but lately I'm getting my best prices from Yahoo Shopping [yahoo.com]. Not to sound politically incorrect, but Yahoo seems to have the best of the little Mom-n-Pop Chinese & Korean shops, in places like City of Industry, who work like crazy to get you the best prices.

      Plus I get the best hits on a wide variety of junque at Yahoo - I got hits on an obscure video card with LabVIEW drivers, and a huge old ALR 6x6 server at a govern

  • Some Mac places (Score:4, Informative)

    by Gilmoure ( 18428 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:31AM (#12979359) Journal
    Other World Computing [macsales.com]
    Small Dog Electronics [smalldog.com]
    Data Memory Systems

    While all these places are geared towards Macs, they also carry lots of parts that fit both PC and Mac. Never had any problems with them, after using them for 6-8 years now.

  • bicycles (Score:3, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend ( 674934 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:34AM (#12979378)
    I dunno if you geeks like bicycles as much as me, but I bought mine at Jakz [jakz.com].

  • Amazon (Score:2, Insightful)

    by star_aas ( 828539 )
    I prefer Amazon as it usually has prices comparable to most other sites. But a stronger reason is the reviews. Amazon has a huge custmoer base and there are usuually a lot more reviews for a product than found on other sites.

    • Re:Amazon (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Wildkat ( 774137 )
      Ill second the review comment about Amazon. I rarely buy anything without checking for an Amazon review. Reviews from real live owners of the product are very valuable and have kept me from buying a printer that was noisy, Flash memory that was slow and a camera that was blurry. There are plenty of bogus and whinny reviews out there and I never base my decision entirely on the reviews but often use them to dig deeper if I have doubts. I have also gotten some great recommendations for alternate products f

  • My picks (Score:4, Informative)

    by (H)elix1 ( 231155 ) <slashdot.helix@nOSPaM.gmail.com> on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:36AM (#12979394) Homepage Journal
    I use a combo of pricewatch.com and resellerratings.com when sniffing out a new shop. I've tossed these companies a lot of coin with positive results, with the first two being my first stop.

    www.zipzoomfly.com
    www.newegg.com
    www.chiefval ue.com
    www.directron.com
    www.ewiz.com
    www.monar chcomputer.com

    I watch the following bargain boards...

    www.hardforum.com/forumdisplay.php?f=28
    forums. anandtech.com/categories.aspx?catid=40&ente rcat=y (mind the gap)
    www.bensbargains.net
  • dealsonic [dealsonic.com] successfully a few times.
  • www.ewiz.com

    about 10% cheaper than new egg and they accept returns on motherboards (unlike NewEgg). I WAS a big newegg fan until I found this site.

  • the obvious (Score:5, Funny)

    by justforaday ( 560408 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:38AM (#12979407)
    CompUSA, CircuitCity, and BestBuy. They always have great prices, along with incredibly knowledgable staff if you decide to visit their physical stores. Oh, and always make sure to get the extended warranty. You're a fool if you don't.

    • Re:the obvious (Score:3, Informative)

      by Dave21212 ( 256924 )

      +5 Snarky !

      The two dollar bill incident [baltimoresun.com] occured at my local BestBuy, which is right across the street from my bank... I was soooooo tempted (then I remembered about the PATRIOT ACT and decided against it:)

    • Re:the obvious (Score:5, Interesting)

      by arbitraryaardvark ( 845916 ) <gtbear @ g m a il.com> on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:32AM (#12979764) Homepage Journal
      If you absolutely must deal with circuit city, pay cash. I made the mistake of getting their "free" credit card when I bought a computer there. They screwed up my account, and then spent a year harrassing me by phone about it. My go.to/circuitcitysux page is no longer on line, but I one point I had this all fully documented.
      I did end up learning a lot about my rights as a consumer.
      ---
      As to buying online, consider this option: don't.
      Reduce, reuse, recycle.
      I've bought a couple books from amazon, to encourage the authors, and i still get christmas cards from a politician who i gave a dollar to,
      but I've transitioned to a post-scarcity economy.
      I have enough stuff. There is cornocopia of free stuff online. If it isn't free online, I can probably do without it. You can augment that with a library card, and by participating in a tool cooperative. Tool coops aren't always called that; yours might call itself a church or a neighborhod association or uncle fred.
      If I felt a need for more random stuff, dumpster diving is more fun than golf. Here's a free copy of cory doctorow's latest book about dumpster diving: http://www.craphound.com/someone [craphound.com].
      The american assumption that we need more stuff to keep up with the joneses is one reason asia is kicking our asses. Lower overhead.
      By not buying online, you can resist impulse buys. I got this computer for $100 + tax from a local computer recycling nonprofit, virtualscavengers. Occasionally I'll get a good cup of coffee downtown, or have a drink at a local club, but that's more about renting space. I'm mostly out of the money economy, because i don't need more stuff, so i don't need a traditional job, which frees up a big block of time to waste on slashdot and suchlike.
      My approach is only one strategy, and has some disadvantages too, but you can incorporate it incrementally into your lifestyle. We are moving to a post-scarcity economy, like it or not. Stuff matters, but not like it used to.

    • CompUSA Sucks (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TiggertheMad ( 556308 )
      I worked for ChimpUSA in Washington state while in College. Most of the people they hired knew NOTHING about computers, and they didn't care. Once I had a new hire for the tech department ask me what the difference between a ISA and PCI card was. As one of the two people in the entire store who understood computers, I was handed every sort of question that couldn't be answered by looking at the box, from the trivial ('Does this computer have some RAMs?') to the unanswerable ('Will this copy of Dragon Natur

  • what criteria? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by yagu ( 721525 ) <yayagu@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:40AM (#12979422) Journal

    From the original post: thoughts about the best places to go.

    What criteria does the poster consider most important for best?

    • price?
    • speed?
    • reputation?
    • brand?
    • policy?

    Okay, my main criterion is unequivocably (sp?) customer service. For me this includes only a few but important criteria:

    • friendliness
    • promptness
    • follow through
    • and, only a little... price

    I have long since abandoned picking the cheapest offering and almost ignore that ranking when looking for a place to buy online. I've almost (saved by an attentive and pro-active Credit Union (Watermark Credit Union -- great service!)) been burned big time and the brush with sleeze was enough to nudge me to find a provider with good service and be loyal. That said, I will plug as an example, amazon.com. They come nowhere near to the leaders in lowest prices but they have been amazing in their response to some difficult transactions -- I consider their approach exemplary as a model to emulate.

    Amazon isn't the only great provider out their, but they're a good starting point.

    Also, for ebay-type shopping, though I'm loathe to penalize newbies, I shop from only highly rated, large sample-space sellers with extremely high ratings.

  • mwave? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by justforaday ( 560408 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:41AM (#12979424)
    I haven't seen mwave.com mentioned yet. Admittedly, I haven't ordered from them in a few years, but the few times I did use them they had a good selection, good prices and pretty fast shipping.

  • If you haven't already, you must experience the W00t! [woot.com] Basically it's one deal a day, good until sold out. I bought my robomower [friendlyrobotics.com] there, and almost bought a 3ghz HP PC (yuk! HP) this past weekend. Keep any eye on the product photos, they often inject some humorous twist...

    From the site: [woot.com]
    What is woot and who's behind it?
    woot.com is an online store and community run by the employees of a 10 year old consumer electronics distributor that focuses on close-outs and generally buying stuff cheap. Since the
  • I once bought flat-profile speakers from them. They were horrid, and they refused to take back them back without a large restocking fee. They didn't care that they were selling crap, and I was a good customer... until then. Caveat emptor.
  • that nobody has mentioned Fry's electronics. You might have to stop by their retail locations for most of the good deals, but they still have some great prices on most everything and you can check various forums for sales flyer scans. You can check out their online store here [outpost.com].

    Shoplocal [shoplocal.com] is another decent site for various electronic goods, you can check sales via zip code search, very handy site indeed.

    Of course, I think every geek knows the standard site for street prices has to be the good ol' price [pricewatch.com]
  • It was nice to find a rare DVD for $9.99, and have it show up for only $9.99+tax

    Which is why I liked shopping at bestbuy.ca, None of those horrible clerks and FREE SHIPPING!

    Otherwise I just go to a local shop.

  • resellerratings.com - ALWAYS research the merchant (Score:3, Informative)

    by btarval ( 874919 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @10:58AM (#12979547)
    I never, ever buy on-line from any site without going here first. The single best place to go first is resellerratings.com. This way you can not only see what the prices are, but (MORE IMPORTANTLY) you can see how reliable that vendor is.

    It's absolutely useless to get a cheap deal if the vendor won't ship the product. And problems with the transaction happen all the time. Read some of the horror stories from the review sections there about the merchants with a low approval rating. Or a bad return policy. When buying over the web, you really want to avoid having to return the product, as you will usually have to pay the shipping costs yourself. And that can blow any savings by web-shopping that you might have once had.

    What I do is search for the product on resellerratings.com first, and I won't buy from a vendor with a score below 9.0 unless I'm desparate. It's really just not worth the risk.

    Doing otherwise is somewhat similar to buying a laptop for a low price from some guy in Romainia. ;)

    I've bought tens-of-thousands of dollars of things over the past 9-10 years over the Internet/Web, and this is really the way to go. I have never been burned by one of the top rated merchants yet.

  • Every once in a while, someone asks this question...

    I'm a big fan of mwave.com. You can almost always find good deals on something at least similar to the model you want, it's easy to build a complete system because they a) market their own cheap (yet reliable) brand of cases and b) will stick the CPU and RAM on the board you buy and test the whole thing before shipping it out.

    And even if you don't do that, and you get a defective motherboard (like I did), they'll replace it very, very quickly, no questio
  • http://www.fatwallet.com/ [fatwallet.com]
    Every once and a while I find some really good deals through in the Hot Deals forum [fatwallet.com]. Although you need to look out for the occasional outlandish price matching scheme to get the deal.
  • I use Expansys [expansys.com] (US site [expansys.com])- while their prices aren't quite as keen as ebuyer [ebuyer.com] (UK only I think) they have a great range, an easy-to-navigate site, loads of product compatability information, and a discussion forum for every product. I've been buying from them since they opened under the name of 21Store in 1997.
  • Techbargains.com [techbargains.com] has their finger on the pulse of tech deals everywhere, including your local B&M compu-store.
  • Is that where one gets the latest copy of Apple's OSX operating system, ersion 10.4, named Tiger?
  • If you're not trying to find something fast, eBay is a great place to get almost anything at a good price. I create "favorites" and ask to be emailed notifications of new additions. I got some Pomona test leads at a great price by waiting. Took a couple of months for the right ones to come along and for me to not get outbid by somebody who wanted them more than I did, but I eventually got them at my price.
  • Is it just me, or does this 'story' from 'a reader' reak of being an advertisement? Note that half of the links have referrer information in them, obviously to rake up some $ for OSTG:

    First http://ostg.pricegrabber.com/ [pricegrabber.com] (ostg sub-domain), then http://www.tigerdirect.com/indexus.asp?SRCCODE=SLA SHX [tigerdirect.com], then a blatant plug for thinkgeek (a major source of revenue for LNUX). Should slashdot not disclose if they are affiliated in any way with all links? What is the purpose of the pricegrabber.com sub-domain, and the SRCCODE in the tigerdirect link?

  • Do not use TigerDirect (Score:4, Informative)

    by Grand Facade ( 35180 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:23AM (#12979705)
    They are spammy shitstains.
    I had to threaten them with legal action to get off their mailing list. Then found myself back on it and had to jump through the same hoops to get removed again. I never even recieved any product from them. Ordered a DVD player from them for a christmas gift (well in advance), it got back ordered twice after being shown in stock for the original order. then the bastards mail bombed me with crap for months and played spammy games to get removed. I fart in TigerDirect's general direction.
  • I like buy.com because they have almost everything and at pretty good prices. However, whenever I need something in a hurry and pay extra they always screw something up and it gets delayed, when I go with the free option I usually have it within 2 days.

  • Always be prepared... (Score:3, Funny)

    by HermanAB ( 661181 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:31AM (#12979758)
    First, go here and stock up:
    http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/ctd/default.asp [cheaperthandirt.com]

    then here for some accessories:
    http://www.russiancombatgear.com/ [russiancombatgear.com]

    Only then go to an electronics site and if they give you bad service, then you know what to do... ;-)
  • Komplett are European and have great customer service. I'm in the UK, so I use http://www.komplett.co.uk/ [komplett.co.uk]

    They also have komplett.no, .so, .ie and .nl

    I also use Ebuyer, who've been mentioned before.

    Rik

  • mwave.com is a good store. i've been there for pickup too - they have a small 50'x50' will call room, very well kept and clean with terminals for buying at the store, and then about 9 billion square feet of warehouse. prices are quite good, decent selection.

  • TigerDirect = Identity Theft (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bruha ( 412869 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:53AM (#12979881) Homepage Journal
    Back in 2000 my credit card number was stolen and at the time I had no idea who gotten it. But 3 years later a person in a gaming guild I play in mentioned that they had a card that was ran up after shopping at tiger direct. About 4 months ago a co-worker said that their card used at tiger direct was also abused.

    In each of the cases the punk ordered stuff from various places and sent it to us. But it was still a pain in the arse.

    Wouldnt shop there. And the FBI and police said there's not much they can do???
  • HardDrive.com [harddrive.com] Nice interface. I love the price/GB list.

  • For books... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Dave114 ( 168228 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @11:58AM (#12979915)
    If looking for books (new & used), try AddAll.com [addall.com], and Used.AddAll.com [addall.com].

    There is some overlap between the two, but AddAll.com comparison-shops a bunch of bookstores and will calculate shipping rates for you (for pretty much any country on the planet) and is primarily useful for looking for new books. It also includes the 3rd party sellers going through Amazon and the like.

    If looking for used books, head to used.addall.com, but here you'll have to deal with shipping costs yourself.

  • I use digi4all.com -

    Great prices and good customer service. They even have super cheap generic RAM (if you're into that short of thing)

  • For Books, Bookfinder.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by Nova Express ( 100383 ) <lawrenceperson.gmail@com> on Monday July 04, 2005 @12:02PM (#12979937) Homepage Journal
    For books, http://www.bookfinder.com/ [bookfinder.com] searches all the major listing sites )TomFolio, ABEBooks, Alibris), as well as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Almost any English-language book in existence can be found there, and there are many foreign bookstores there as well.

  • Dealmac, DealRam, Dealcoupon, etc etc (Score:3, Informative)

    by microcars ( 708223 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @12:08PM (#12979969) Homepage
    off the Main DEALMAC [dealmac.com] page, there are several other sites all devoted to DEALS:

    Dealnews
    DealInk
    DealCoupon
    DealCam

    and the stuff is not Mac-centric, tons of periperals that are Windows only or cross-platform useable. Many times, combinations of Rebates and hidden Coupons are pointed out showing that the end result is an item that costs $0.00!

  • I've had good experiences with Morgan Computers [morgancomputers.co.uk] who have a good range of refurbished and new stuff, and with Dabs [dabs.com].
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I became hooked on on-line shopping while living in the rural US. Since returning to Canada I have almost stopped with the exception of Amazon.ca [amazon.ca]. Canadian retailers just don't get this whole Internet thing, and the dearth of on-line retailers is sad.

    I would happily shop from U.S. retailers, but continue to be amazed by the number of U.S. companies that cannot understand the value in selling to the 30+ million people north of the border.

    If a U.S. retailer wants my business they will:
    • state clearly that
  • PCI Micro [pcimicro.com] has served me well when it comes to smaller computer stuff, like cables, fans, thermal grease, and cheap, durable mice and keyboards. You can usually find a free shipping code floating around if you dig for it.
    Newegg [newegg.com] is still my favorite for bigger parts, like motherboards, memory, and DVD burners.
    Amazon [amazon.com] is usually pretty good about having cheap, quality storage media, like blank DVDs or SD cards.
    Pricewatch [pricewatch.com] can find good deals, but only if you're willing to dig through lots of shady stores p
  • I'm surprised noone has mentioned Yahoo's product search [yahoo.com].

  • Best price/best rating (Score:3, Informative)

    by vanyel ( 28049 ) * on Monday July 04, 2005 @01:16PM (#12980339) Journal
    My algorithm is to search on pricegrabber for the product, and then pick the lowest priced vendor that has a 5 star rating. If the price difference is small, I'll prefer a vendor I've dealt with before.

    Zipzoomfly has been a good vendor, though I've had about a 50% DOA rate on Hitachi 7K250 drives from them. They've been quite prompt and good about replacing them (if you call --- the web interface for returns is a black hole). Once I get working drives, they seem to stay working though.

  • For the europeans (Score:3, Funny)

    by noims ( 23711 ) on Monday July 04, 2005 @02:35PM (#12980708) Homepage
    I put together a new machine about 6 months back and looked around a fair bit. I'm based in Ireland, but this probably covers most of Europe...

    • http://www.komplett.ie/ [komplett.ie] consistently has great prices and good stuff. There are a few Komplett sites for Europe.
    • scan.co.uk often have great prices, but I got seriously burnt by their incredibly bad customer service a few years back (dodgy graphics card), and will never shoip there again.

    There are plenty of good places out there, but I think you do have to strike a balance between price and service.

    Noims

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