Curious what is Considered a bargain?
30% off retail Price 40? 50? 60? 70%
I come across a few bargains. So many things available online these days! Noticed Most of the deals on this site are geared towards electronics.
So many Vendors Even International shops With Free or very reasonable shipping. Most of the time not advertising anywhere but there homepage. Just looking on opinions what is worth worth posting ?
I guess the question of "what is considered a bargain?" is very subjective and the answer to that varies from person to person.
I think anything with a true bargain value (e.g., the absolute cheapest you can find the item for) that benefits a substantial number of members is worth posting. From then on, let the voting system decide on the popularity of the bargain. Of course not all deals appeal to everyone. For instance, savings of a few cents off a bar of chocolate may be seen as a bargain for most chocolate lovers. However for someone like me who only eats chocolate about once in several months, the bargain may be insignificant. Although this is not a bargain for me, it is still a bargain for many others, hence worth posting.
In my opinion, percentage off a certain retail price is misleading, in a sense that there are so many products out there with highly inflated RRPs. Of course, merchants (especially the growing list of web-based department stores) love the word 'RRP' as they can manipulate this to make you feel as though you've made a big saving on your purchase. So say if there is a 70% saving of the RRP but you end up paying about the same market price anyway, then I wouldn't consider this a bargain. Personally, I always use 'market' price as a price reference on purchases I make, and quite often you can get a rough idea of the market price by doing a bit of research.
It also depends on how often you would buy those things. For something like petrol, bread or milk, even a small discount could be considered a bargain, but if it's for something you only buy once every year or few years, a much bigger discount would be required for it to be a bargain.
A 'bargain' is what gets 10+ votes on OzBargain ;-)
Even so, with marketing and advertising these days in some circumstances it can still be hard to say whether something that's 70% off is a bargain. New technology will often become old and then retailers will clear it at up to 90% off, but because it's so unwanted you couldn't say it's a bargain.
With what we've become used to on OzBargain, I think we generally expect that a 'bargain' will be the not only the cheapest price anywhere but it also must be sufficiently cheaper than what we're used to, and it has to be something that others will actually appreciate. A specialised large and bulky laminator for example will rarely become a 'bargain' even if it is 80% off.
If you're unsure whether to post something you've seen, why not just take the 2 minutes to submit it and see what the community thinks? This way you'll also get a better understanding of what represents a 'bargain'.
Bargains products/services that appear here usually are things that are identical or directly comparable with another product or service. I think RRP is pretty useless in most cases for these comparable products, rather, it would be much better to talk in terms of how the bargain is $X cheaper or X% cheaper than the next cheapest. As many companies sell below RRP these days, a bargain price is generally something that is substantially cheaper than the second cheapest price.
Sometimes we get bargains from less comparable products (like beef jerky). In these circumstances I generally find that people will vote on it if it is a product that is fairly well known and liked, and can also get a discount that isn't usually available.
I also find that most people would consider free delivery from online shops as a bargain, and any discount for buying gift cards are also considered bargains.
Hope that helps
Nice topic. This will always be a sticky wicket as it's always down to opinion because many people can see one product at different values if that makes sense. What is considered by someone as a bargain, may not be considered by others.
If I believe there is a genuine saving on an item than it's normal every day value and it represents good value for money, I will give the deal a positive vote even if it's not in my state or available to me. The idea is to promote the deal so that others who it may be available to can take advantage of it.
Also sometimes its forgotten that yesterdays bargain is no more, that the bargain today while it's not as good, is the best that is around. If I want a large screen TV, I would like to see whats on offer when I want to buy. Being told its not a cheap as last months offer, which has expired really doesn't help me now.
Yes…..I am confusion as well.
I think its pretty obvious.
If BigW are selling an item for $100, and an online shop are selling it for $95, then that's not a bargain when you count warranty, delivery costs etc.
However if a shop like Fluidtek are selling something for $50, and MSY have it on special for $55, then MSY is still a bargain as Fluidtek is only available to those in NSW. However fluidtek's offer should still be posted and go on the front page if enough people think its a bargain.
I understand there are people in Tasmania and inner Australia that don't have most shops near them, but if try to appeal to everyone then almost everything becomes a bargain.
The other thing to remember is that a bargain is only something that doesn't happen often.
Most weeks we always have olive oil for $26 save $20, continental pasta 4 for $5, Cadbury Chocolate block $2.99 save $1. I could go on :)
These are not bargains, 4L of olive oil for $22 is a bargain, continental pasta for $1 each or 5 for $5 is a bargain. Cadbury Chocolate for $2-2.50 a block is a bargain, even if it has vegetable fat.
The other thing is that these can be bargains, even though people negative vote them:
1KG of Lard
100pack of mother energy drinks
1KG of MSG powder
Anything that has reports of increasing the risk of cancer but isn't banned yet (sugar free, alcohol mouthwash etc)
Icecream/chocolate
Negative votes should be revoked for anyone doing it because its bad for you, they should just make a comment without voting.
I would normally say that any deal you think is not a bargain should be negative voted, but the problem is that if you get in too early you can prevent other people from seeing it.
The problem I have is that I can make an online shop and sell and item on purpose $2 below the price and get a ton of traffic to my new shop because ozbargainers vote because:
It technically is a bargain even though it doesn't interest them.
The shop owner has got friends to vote on the bargain
Because many people here don't take notice of what clearly is not a bargain, they won't negative vote it, leaving the shop owners friends to get it on the front page.
I understand your comments. But the point about the negative vote needs to be understood by you and others.
In effect a positive vote is saying I like the deal - there are no degrees to that liking.
A abstained vote is saying I don't consider it's a deal to me.
A negative vote is to say look out there is something that can be wrong here. Warning Will Robertson etc etc
Why? Because negative votes were designed to get deals off the system, a sort of self regulation by the community. Problem is now that the community has grown then the threshold hasn't changed, so as you rightly point out the deal disappears before others have had their "say".
Until this is fixed, by increasing the threshold or by the alternative of having a deal stay alive for a minimum of 6 hours as Scotty is proposing, then we will always have this conflict.
Part of the problem was fixed for a time, by having comments mandatory for negative voting, so we could at least understand why a vote was made.
But as yous aid, an online price compared to a store price in say Sydney isn't a bargain, but for our Perth and Tassie friends it is a bargain. So one person's bargain isn't the same for another.
Also again as the community grows so will the positive votes. And we need to be mindful taht a deal with 20 votes is probably more like a deal of 2 a year ago. Some here think that if a "not so good" deal is being voted up they need to vote it down as a reality check.
Again the issue of the of thresholds, so if the neg vote threshold goes up, so should the positive threshold before it's classified as "popular"
Electrolux Vacuum Cleaner Z8280 has a cheapest price in Australia of $544.00. On our website it is listed at $499.00 RRP is $899.00. Now that is a bargain.
now thats spamming -
I guess it's dependent on the price of the product. 5% off a $10 item say Pepsi is nothing but 5% off a Dell computer say $1000 is pretty good.
I think electronics are easily comparable with price like a Samsung 50" HDTV but green sweaters are difficult to compare. What did you have in mind?