The Deal Addiction

Over the past year or so I've found out about some very cool, and some not so good, deals sites. Some of them have adopted the woot! style of one item per day until it's gone style and others are compilations of great deals around the web.

I got started with this while looking at I hacked, a pretty cool site dedicated to making things work better. And a few things that could get you into trouble if someone saw you do it. While cruising around their site I found a link to what is now my favorite deal page around slickdeals.net, a forum page dedicated to online and offline deals around the country. Most of the people that post here are linking to technology deals, but you can find everything from restaurant coupons to kids' toys. Some of the items are even free after rebates and price matching to other stores. It all depends on how far you're willing to go to get something free, cheap, or even get money back. So far I've managed a free hard drive and a free coffee maker. Along the lines of slickdeals are two other pretty good sites: Fatwallet and gottadeal.

Now for the addiction part. Every morning I get up, make coffee, and sit down at the computer. The first page I visit is Woot! and if there's nothing of interest I have a bookmark for about 10 other one item/ one day sites that I check out. Then if I have time I'll cruise around slickdeals for a little while and see if there is anything I just have to have.

THE DANGER

Eventually you're going to find something you don't really need but it's such a good deal that you have to buy one and find a use for it. Like the hard drive and the coffee maker. Or worse, one of the one item per day sites will have a mystery bag for $5.00 and you order one on the chance that you're the one who gets the x-box 360 or the LCD tv. What you end up getting is crap most of the time. They don't lie, though, when they say that whatever comes will be worth at least what you pay for it. You just wind up with crap worth $5.00.

So beware. Once you start in on the deal hunting it gets very time consuming. All the rebate forms to mail and keep track of, trying to find deals to post on the sites for other people to find, and staring at forum after forum can take up hours at the blink of an eye. Other than that it's pretty fun.