For several weeks now the Black Friday sales have been being leaked — but unlike many years in the past, the leaks have been official press releases this year.
The retailers understand how bad the economy is — and they know that the first one that get’s the money from you is the only one that will get the money from you.
I do not personally endorse any of these sites — and caution you to use your good judgment when browsing these sites.
Right now Amazon has a promotion going that they’ll give you a 5% bonus for gift card purchases with an Amazon VISA card… so that ends up being 8% total (since you normally get 3%).
In fact, you might want to consider Amazon gift cards for routine purchases — particularly when you’re buying from an Amazon merchant…
Why?
Well, the Chase /Amazon VISA give you 3% cash back when you purchase items from Amazon; but only 1% when you purchase elsewhere (including Amazon merchants); so to get around this, buy a gift card for the exact amount you’re amount to spend at a merchant (just go ahead and get to the check out screen asking for payment — you can add a gift card there); then open another browser windows and purchase a gift card (for electronic/email) delivery for the exact amount… then apply the gift card number at the checkout and you’re done.
The first time you send a gift card to an email address you’ll have to re-enter your Amazon VISA credit card number (for security), and it seems like it always takes longer than it should to send the email — alternately you can select the option to print a gift card and simply take the gift card coupon number from that.
The 5% bonus program only lasts until the end of this month, and it’s limited to $2000 purchase / $100 bonus — but even after that expires you can still use the gift card purchase trick to get your 3% on your Amazon VISA.
One caveat — if you return an item, you’re going to get a gift card credit; that’s not a big deal of you’re a frequent Amazon shopper (the check out will always apply gift cards by default).
There is no reason to use a gift card for an Amazon purchase after the 5% bonus program is over (or you max out your bonus).
It’s free money… and doesn’t require much extra work to get it.
Amazon has reduced the price of the WD TV Live Plus Network Media Player to $99.99 (ships free)… the old price ($119.99) was one of the biggest stumbling blocks to me recommending this as a solution for watching media on your TV… now with the price exactly the same as the Apple TV and more in line with similar Roku devices — I’m going to give the WD TV Live Plus a BUY recommendation (make sure you get the WD TV Live Plus, the other models aren’t as capable).
You can read my earlier remarks titled WD TV Live Plus – Network Media Player.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be one of the first in line to purchase items at a retailer at or below their cost; but I won’t be purchasing non-sale items while I’m there.
Selling an item without making (or even worse when losing) money is often referred to as a “loss leader“, and it just isn’t sustainable. While a retailer might be forced to sell off inventory that isn’t moving at an operating loss to recoup part of the investment, selling a popular item as a loss leader is merely intended to increase traffic through the store.
Do the math; if a retail sells everything at or below cost, they go out of business — regardless of the volume. In fact, the higher the volume, the quicker they go under.
I personally tend to do the bulk of my shopping at retails that offer a fair price for goods and services on a daily basis; and pickup items I use at retailers who are offering them at a substantial savings when it’s convenient (and often stock-pill those items if they’re something I use).
Let’s face it — you work hard for the money you have, and as an educated consumer you can keep more of your money in your pocket; let the retailers worry about themselves.
Caveat emptor · Cavet venditor
I’ve already posted that I’ve moved my web hosting over to JustHost.com and that I’m happy with JustHost.com; but I decided it was well worth actually going through what makes JustHost.com a reasonably good choice for hosting.
UNLIMITED would have to start the list.
Web hosting with JustHost.com has unlimited storage, unlimited transfer, unlimited domain hosting, unlimited email accounts, unlimited email storage, unlimited MySQL databases, and unlimited database size.
MONEY BACK GUARANTEE would have to be the second item on the list.
Not a 30-day money back guarantee, but an any time money back guarantee. If you pre-pay for two or three or four years to get the best price, you can still get a pro-rated refund if they ever fail to meet your expectations; and within the first 30-days you get a full refund (I believe they will charge you for domain registration if they provided or extended your domain’s registration, but that’s reasonable).
COST would be the third item on the list.
And honestly I shouldn’t say cost, but rather value. After all, you’re not looking for a cheap web host, you’re looking for a reliable web hosting company that won’t break the bank.
FEATURES would be the forth item on the list.
Web hosting plans include one domain (they will pay the registration fee, but they don’t provide private registration — so you may well find that you can get a better deal using another service for domain registration).
They use a fairly standard cPanel for controlling web hosting, domain, and email features. Though, one thing to note is that just because you see something on their cPanel demo does not necessarily mean that it will be included with the hosting package you order (it may be an extra charge item — though realistically none of the “must have” features are extra charge items).
They have a fairly complete list of applications that can be installed directly from their control panel, and likely any LAMP based web application will run without issue (you may need to change some of the default Apache settings via .htaccess in order to make a LAMP application run optimally).
They support Server Side Include (SSI), PHP5, cron jobs, private/custom CGIs, SPF/DKIM, custom DNS records (you have to request customer service to add records for you on a shared hosting package; but they entered a CNAME for me in just a few minutes) and just about everything else other than Apache Tomcat (Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages framework isn’t include on shared hosting packages).
SUPPORT would also need to be on the list.
Their pre-sales support is great; they’ll answer any question you might have, and generally they’re right on the money (I always test pre-sales by asking them some moderately difficult questions that I already know the answers to along with any real questions I need the answers to).
Their technical support staff is good; I probably should rate them very good. They generally take care of any issue immediately; occasionally you’ll end up having to provide them a little more detail in a response to the original ticket in order to get a resolution, but even then I’ve yet to have any issue that took them more than a few hours to resolve (though keep in mind, when it involves DNS changes they don’t control how quickly that propagates through the net).
By default they organize your hosting account with a primary domain and all secondary and external domains are “under” that in the directory structure. To avoid this you can do what I did and register a fictitious domain as your primary domain <your name>.justhost.com works well since you can be sure there’s not likely to be any collision with a real domain / zone (it would be great if they would just give you this as an option).
RATING would also be on the list.
And by that I mean that you don’t have to blindly trust what I’m saying, JustHost.com consistently ranks high on comparisons with other hosting providers. While you might find some negative comments out there, overall the reviews are positive and when viewed side-by-side with their competitors (many charging far more for less) they get great marks.
One note, the price you see advertised on the web site isn’t the lowest price you can get… if you decide you are interested, when you attempt to navigate away an automated “bot” will offer you a lower price (potentially a very low price). There may be different restrictions with the promotional price than the normal packages (I could only get the price I paid per year for a maximum of three years, but it was substantially lower than their normal four year plan — in fact, three years ran me a little more than the published rate for 12 months and a little less than the published rate for 24 months).
When you decide to buy hosting from JustHost.com, please use the advertising panel on my site so that I get a referral credit (it won’t increase the price you pay in the least) or use this link: JustHost.com.
Microsoft is offering students Windows 7 Home Premium (well, Windows 7 Professional if you say you must join a domain) for $29.99.
The offer requires that you have an email address ending in .EDU (which of course many schools provide lifetime email addresses for their students; my Alma Mater [GaTech] only started doing that in 2003 [a little after my time]).
So if you’re interested in Windows 7 at a good price, and have an email address in the .EDU domain follow the link below; but hurry, the offer is only good until 3 January 2010
Which will redirect you to a Microsoft page
In general I find Amazon.com a good place to shop.
Prices there are fair, selection is good, shipping is reasonable (often free), and with an Amazon/Chase credit card you can score a good bonus.
However (isn’t there always a catch)…
I find Amazon Market Place shopping to often be a less than satisfying experience.
I’m sure there are some vendors there that are fine, in fact I know there are; but you can buy from them direct through their own web sites. And there are some individuals who sell on Amazon Market Place that are fine. But you’re going to find the bad apples if you buy much there.
To Amazon’s credit they do have an A-Z guarantee when doing business with merchants through Amazon. But even Amazon must realize that the more business you do on Amazon Market Place the more likely you are to get burned since they limit you to five lifetime refunds under their A-Z guarantee. Yep that’s right, a person who places an order every day can get five, and a person who only places one order a decade can get five.
So if Amazon won’t really stand behind merchants in the Amazon Market Place, why do they expect you and me to buy from the… oh that’s right — I use a credit card, and I can open a charge dispute myself, I don’t need Amazon’s A-Z guarantee at all, but since I know they don’t stand behind Amazon Market Place I’m likely to take my business elsewhere.
Many credit cards offer cash back awards (or other awards) just for using the cards.
You should familiarize yourself with each card’s bonus cash back, and try and use the card that pays you the most back (yes, consider the closing date and how long you will get the use of the credit card company’s money as well, but at the moment you can’t really get much interest back on your money, so the only real concern there should be cash flow).
Many credit card companies also offer bonus points if you use the shopping links on their web site (generally you have to sign into their online account management, and often you have to explicitly register you card).
Some credit card companies require you to always launch the shopping experience through their web site, others will recognize the merchant once you’ve registered the card — and may of those will also pay you bonus cash back at brick-and-mortar stores once you’ve registered your card.
The bottom line is, you have to read and understand each card’s reward program, and you have to be diligent in exercising the program.
So how much cash back did I get last year? $1981 — and no, most of that was not at 1% back; over half of it was at 3% and much of it was at 4% and 5%, and a little was at 10%! And the really great part of it was, a lot of that was from paying cell phone bills, telephone bills, gasoline, groceries (all at least 3%)… or money I would have spent regardless. The fact that much of my discretionary spending was done at places offering great prices and bonus cash back just sweetens the pie!
For some good deals on electronics checkout Woot! — you can read in their own words what Woot! is and does…
And, check the price search engines before deciding to buy — be an informed consumer!
Tomorrow is “Black Friday” — so named because it’s the day many retailers start to make money for the year (black verses red ink on the ledger).
I personally don’t have the desire to wake up at the crack of dawn and fight the crowds for a handful of great deals… I’m more than happy to slumber in my bed while the hoards fight their way through retailers who create a frenzy in the hopes that they can make their sales quotas.
This year has shaped up a little different than many in the past…
In years before there have been “leaks” of Black Friday special (whether they’re really un-official or not I’ll let you decide).
This year it appears that many retailers have actually provided “previews” of the Black Friday sales; and others have slashed prices in advance of the holidays.
My guess is Black Friday will have record sales (after all, it’s a down economy, and many who will spend money this year will be looking to make it go as far as they can)… but my guess is that the rest of the weekend will no have spectacular sales (unless retailers keep up the insanely low prices and continue to offer lots of lost-leaders).
Remember, many retailers had to place orders for the holidays before Labor Day; and the “public” melt-down of the economy happened after that… so if retailers were in denial about their own numbers at that point and believed “the economy is strong” lie the administration perpetrated then they ordered and ordered and ordered… which means there’s stock that has to be sold.
My guess is that we might not see really deep discounts the week and weekend after Thanksgiving weekend, but by the next week and weekend through xmas we’re going to see retailers panicing to clear out as much inventory as they can and minimize the potential loses for the season.
Some retailers will probably make money this season (typically discounters do moderately well in a down economy; so if there’s money to be spent it’ll generally be at retailers that offer value); though we may find out just how bad the economy is.
Bottom line, if you’ve got money, and have a shopping list (or are open to big ticket purchases at great prices), you’re probably not going to have to deal with Black Friday — and just wait until after xmas; retailers that don’t sell will have to clear out the merchandise (just to pay the interest on the money they borrowed for the inventory).
It’s starting to feel a little bit like xmas! HO HO HO!
