Posted February 28th, 2012 by Mark
Logitech.com was running a special on a “dented box” version of the mk550 Wireless Wave Combo a few days ago. At $39.99 shipped, it seemed like a pretty good deal. The next best price was around $55, including shipping. I was skeptical of the dented box part, but the description of the product condition convinced me to make the purchase:
Dented Box items from Logitech are products whose outer box has been torn, scratched, dented, or has other markings on it. The product itself is guaranteed to be in brand new condition and fully warranted. Sales are limited to quantities on hand. Limit 1 per customer.
I couldn’t figure out any reason to care about the condition of the box. I was likely going to throw it out anyway, so I decided go ahead and order.
The package arrived a couple days later (earlier than estimated). I fully expected to open the box and be horrified with the condition. I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the box, as it looked totally new. Certainly, the condition was as good as any box I’ve gotten from a local store. When I looked very closely, I did manage to see one small imperfection. It’s more noticeable in the below photo than it is in person.
If Logitech hadn’t advertised this item as dented box, I wouldn’t even have thought to complain about it. Either they have very high standards for the packaging of their products or this is just a way for them to sell items at a lower price without lowering the retail price. As long as I get a cheaper price, I don’t really care!
Posted February 12th, 2012 by John
The New York Times wrote an article, ”Is This Living Room Big Enough for My TV?“, that’s gotten a lot of attention over the weekend. Rightly so as a BestBuy salesman told me not too long ago that the biggest regret people have with their purchase of a new TV is that they hadn’t gone bigger. However, we have a couple problems with what The Times wrote.
image via nytimes.com
First, the title is backwards. Unless your living room is smaller than 10′x10′, then any TV is going to fit in it. If we’re talking about a pool table or sofa, then it’d be smart to ask: “Is This Living Room Big Enough for ____?”
Next, let’s talk about the “rule of thumb” for picking a TV size they came up with out of thin air: “take the diagonal measurement of the display and multiply it by 1.5. That number will tell you how many inches you should be sitting from the screen.” Additionally, they say some “groups” advocate a 1.2 multiple is fine and others recommend a factor 2.5. So, with the New York Times’s direction, a 40-inch TV would work if the viewing distance was 4-feet or 5-feet, or even, 8-feet! And there’s one possible answer their question, “Is this living room big enough for my TV?”, a 40-inch will fit in most any living room… Duh!
Now, whether that 40-inch TV would be big enough is a whole other question. A year ago, we spelled out things clearly by passing along THX’s screen size recommendations. Trust us, THX knows what they’re talking about.
Posted February 1st, 2012 by John
Our first ever giveaway! Now through the end of February, we invite you to become a fan of Bountii on Facebook and enter our giveaway for a chance to win an 8GB iPod Touch (4th Generation).
Posted January 4th, 2012 by John
Note: This is the second installment in a series of posts about saving money with one of my recent purchases– a Kindle Touch with Offers.
I haven’t been to a movie theater in years. Don’t get me wrong, I like movies as much as the average person. It’s just that I spend all my movie watching time at home on my couch. While my movie library at home excludes all the flicks in the theaters, it’s not too shabby thanks to Amazon’s Instant Video service.
With Amazon Instant Video, one can buy or rent any number of movies and TV shows. Often you’ll find they have specials on popular movie titles ($0.99 or $1.99 to rent) or TV series ($15.99 to own an entire season of NBC’s “The West Wing”). I use it all the time.
Given how much I like this service, you can imagine how happy I was to see an offer from it show up on my Kindle last week. What was the offer? “Get $3 off Amazon Instant Videos”. All I had to do was enter a coupon code on Amazon site and I could use $3 just like a gift card on the Amazon Instant Video site. That’s $3 that I would have spent on the service regardless of getting the special offer.
So, with my $3 off coupon, I can now say that I basically paid $92 ($99 - $5 - $3) for my Kindle!
Posted December 16th, 2011 by John
After flying from Boston to San Francisco a while back, I was standing in the back of the aircraft waiting for everyone in front of me to deplane and overheard two women comparing their phones. One showed off a new Android phone while the other flashed an old, non-smartphone saying something on the order of “Look at this old thing I use…” The Android phone owner responded, “Did you know you can save a lot of money by going to Best Buy instead of the Verizon store when you go buy a new phone?”
As a frugal shopper, I was thrilled to hear someone share such a great money savings tip! Even I had not learned of this cell phone shopping tip up until a recent dinner with friends. Surely many folks are like my former self and assume they are getting good deals at Verizon stores because you were paying them for the service so they shouldn’t be charging too much for the phone itself. Heck, they always have tons of phones available for free or buy-one-get-two-free, so you’d think they were a surefire bet for getting a good deal on every phone purchase you make (Keep reading, they’re not!). Plus, buying a cell phone from a third party like some “Verizon Authorized Dealer” in a strip mall always seemed like a way to get wrapped up in a poor buying experience. These days, it turns out many stores you can trust, both online and off, sell cell phones. Best Buy, Amazon Wireless, Target and Costco are just a few of the places often offering great phone deals for new and existing customers on the major carriers (Verizon, Spring, AT&T, etc).
I was reminded of this airplane chat between two Verizon users earlier today when I was looking at recent cell phone deals discovered by Bountii shoppers. And there it was, a deal on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus: $149 at Amazon compared to $299 at Verizon Wireless stores (prices as of 12/16/2011 at noon ET). This cutting edge phone was just released today! If you aren’t familiar with it, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus is the latest in the line of “Google Phones” whose releases are always much-anticipated. You can read more about it on here on Google.
Right now, it doesn’t take much work to find other cases where you save hundreds of dollars by not walking into a Verizon store to upgrade your old Verizon phone or to become a new Verizon customer. You can save $200 by buying the Motorola Droid 3 elsewhere… save $100 by buying the Samsung Stratosphere elsewhere… save $150 by buying the HTC Thunderbolt elsewhere… I could go on and on with this list. And, trust me, it’s not just Verizon Stores where you could easily wind up overpaying. This same money saving rule applies for the other carriers (AT&T, Sprint and so on).
Its 100+ million subscribers make Verizon the largest wireless service provider in the country. Think about how many of those subscribers weren’t fortunate enough to sit next to a savvy shopper on a plane at some point and are spending hundreds of dollars more than they could have otherwise kept in their pocket.
Posted December 10th, 2011 by John
Note: This is the first in a series of posts about saving money with one of my recent purchases– a Kindle Touch with Offers.
Amazon offers two versions of most models in its Kindle line of e-Book Readers: one with offers and one without. The offers shown on a Kindle display couldn’t be less distracting and are often very good. This version is the one I ordered for $99 a couple weeks ago.
A week or two after receiving my Kindle, I spotted an offer that was as good as cash: “$5 off an Amazon.com purchase of $10 or more”. I say “as good as cash” because Amazon sells most everything you need to spend your money on anyways. [Update: One Bountii user tells me they saw a similar offer a few months ago: “Buy a $20 Amazon.com Gift Card for $10″]
So, with my $5 off coupon, I can say that I basically paid $95 ($99 - $5) for my Kindle. Provided these offers keep showing up from time to time, it’s quite possible that my Kindle will pay for itself! This journey is just what I’ll be chatting about here on our blog. Stayed tuned.
Posted October 4th, 2011 by Samir
This year, Samsung released eight different models of blu-ray players. Figuring out the differences between them isn’t easy. We’ve added a new feature on Bountii that should help with this task. Say you’re looking at pricing on the Samsung BD-D5300. Over on the right side, below the pricing chart, you can see the pricing on all of Samsung’s current blu-ray players. Click the “compare” link next to any of the models, and you’ll see a side-by-side comparison of the two. For example, here is a table showing specifications for the Samsung BD-D5300 vs. BD-5500. This page gives a pretty good snapshot of the differences between the two.
We’re still working out some bugs in the feature and collecting specifications for more products, but we wanted to release this feature quickly, because we’ve found it pretty useful in our own shopping. Let us know what you think!
Posted September 25th, 2011 by Samir
We’ve recently started listing bundle deals on our product pages. Looking at the bundle prices carefully, you can see a lot of odd pricing. Take a look at our product page for the Samsung UN55D8000.
Vanns is charging $518 more to include the Samsung BD-BD5500 Blu-Ray Player and the Samsung Megamind 3D Starter Kit. If you buy these individually from Vanns, you’ll pay only $479.
Amazon will include a 3D Kit and Blu-Ray Player for only $73 more. That’s $250 less than buying them separately. This deal seems to make sense.
Buydig charges $249 for a bundle including a 3D Kit. The kit contains some HDMI cables and two pairs of Samsung SSG-3100GB 3D Glasses. The value of these items on Buydig.com? About $125.
TigerDirect is charging less for a bundle then just the standalone TV. The difference in price comes from charging less shipping on the bundle (try zip code 60563), for many people.
Dell doesn’t even sell the standalone TV. You can buy a bundle including the BD-D5500 and a $400 gift card. Or, for $1 more, you can upgrade to the Samsung BD-D6500. You won’t get the $400 gift card in that bundle though! You’d be better off buying the BD-D5500 bundle and using the gift card to upgrade the blu-ray player. You’d still be left with $250 on your gift card!
Posted August 10th, 2010 by John
With the falling prices of HDTVs each year, large screen TVs are within reach of many people such that a common concern among TV buyers is choosing too big of a TV.
To address this issue, we recommend you turn to the people at THX for a rule of thumb (FYI: THX is an expert at bringing the best cinema experience to your home): According to THX, “To determine the best seat-to-screen distance in your living room for a 1080p display, THX recommends dividing the diagonal screen by .84. For example, a plasma or LCD TV with a 65-inch screen divided by .84 equals a 77-inch viewing distance (6.5 feet).”
To save you from doing the calculation yourself, THX spells things out:
- If you’ll sit 3.5 to 5 feet away, buy a 35-inch class TV
- If you’ll sit 4 to 6 feet away, buy a 40-inch class TV
- If you’ll sit 5 to 7.5 feet away, buy a 50 inch class TV
- If you’ll sit 6 to 9 feet away, buy a 60-inch class TV
And don’t forget how easy Bountii makes it to shop different sizes of HDTVs with our “More to Explore” feature! For instance, checking out our Samsung UN55D7000 55-inch HDTV page, you can easily see how you can save or spend hundreds of dollars by purchasing the 46-inch or 60-inch version.
Posted June 29th, 2010 by John
As we mentioned on our Twitter account earlier this month, Microsoft is shutting down their Bing Cashback program. You still have until 9PM PST on July 30, to receive cashback on Bing Shopping purchases. After that, you’ll no longer be able to get cashback through Bing and won’t see a Cashback Price from Bing in Bountii’s price listings.
You can tell from our previous posts on Bing Cashback that we were never fans of the program…
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