I was just interested how being a tight arse is celebrated on this website.
I mean by all means pay the right price for the product, but should being a tight arse really be celebrated and applauded?
Should we not be a more community based giving society and not one that focuses upon self interest?
Food for thought…
OHHH it makes sense now. lol
so apparently this is all about 7 extra days been given to potential customers?
No I dont think thats what this is all about. Its only a side issue. I guess it was a little cheeky of me to cross reference things.
Tomjbeer's references seems to be more on what people post in relation to deals etc, although it is non specific
Cheeky, but appreciated :)
We all should analyse the motivation behind why we are tight arses. What fun. However the way I see it is that if true self interest was governing this site there would be no deals and we each will have Brodened everything.
I will NEVER understand why people send off for free CRAP though, like toothpaste rollers and other junk, just wasteful clutter destined for landfill.
Tight arse rule No.1 you shall take a day off work on your birthday to get all the free ice creams, taco's & subway
And clothing (remember Tarocash)
They send the voucher out before your birthday and you have 3 months to use it.
BORING!
I'm not seeing a deal here at all…
I Don't see how it's being celebrated?
And this is about community based giving. People find a deal and we share and give it to the community! :D
(Tight arses would keep it to themselves)
I love this site, but I've got to admit that being a tightarse is celebrated on here.
But that's not a bad thing. In Anglo-Saxon countries, money is a bit of a taboo subject especially among the working classes. That's why people are ashamed to talk about getting good deals.
This attitude leads to people spending too much and getting in to debt.
This site addresses the issue and provides a bit of balance. People who are careful with money have fewer stresses in life and have more control in their life - where and when to work, retire, etc.
They also have extra cash to invest or spend on something that others can't afford to, like a trip to Malaysia (on Air Asia with tickets bought at 00:01 on the first day of the sale which was broadcast on here - others would say "It's imposible to get those prices/the planes are unsafe/It's unaustralian/the service is poor, virgins/champagne/huge suites in the premium economy, blah, blah, blah")
Of course it gets abit OTT sometimes and people get a bit carried away and miss the whole point of saving money, buy stuff they don't need just because it looks cheap.
People find a deal and we share and give it to the community!
Thank you thank you! That's exactly what OzBargain is about.
I do not think being a tight arse is celebrated here in the sense of just looking out for self interest. OzBargain is a community site and we celebrate, give people kudos and cheer together when someone shares a good bargain for everyone else to enjoy.
give people kudos and cheer together when someone shares a good bargain for everyone else to enjoy.
Comments like "Thanks for posting" are few and far on Ozbargain these days.
Now the most we hear is "Put PRICE in title" and then followed by a negative vote. Specially that someone who overuses that bold formatting…
Yes the anonymity of the Internet does make people say things and behave in a way that they don't usually do IRL.
Reminder for myself — appreciate the good deals other people have shared by posting more "thank you"
You can only spend each dollar once, might as well get VFM.
Of course, "you get what you pay for" = I don't need to think, just buy the expensive one.
tomjbeer you make no sense.
We are celebrating not letting big companies rip us off.
We are celebrating being educated on a product and their alternatives before purchasing it.
We are celebrating the fact that we are a community of people all interested in saving money and using that saved money for awesome things.
voteoften in the other thread had a good point, people that a lot of small competitions have a decent chance of winning and that opening it up again can heavily reduce the odds of winning.
Just a wild guess:
(As you have beer in your name)
You drive a ute/v8
You have tatoos
You are exactly the working class stereotype (above) and feel the need to distance yourself from these 'daggy' (not sure if that's the adjective you would use) people as his friends would laugh at him for being like them.
I could well be completely.
Oh yes - neg away!
Hey tightwad - keep the comments non personal please, it adds nothing to the discussion, whatever it ends up being.
OK Boss! Will do….
I did get 3 +'s :D
But no more personal stuff.
Weird as I assume this outlook may be more suited to a vegan hippy not a suburban bogan with a V8 ute.
don't waste your time on assumptions, cos you couldn't be further from the truth.
I get called that all the time, I just shrug it off as i know people are usually just jealous I find a good deals. They always seem to come to me when they want something tho.. Bastards! Im proud to save money never been in debt in my life, its a good feeling ;)
Should we not be a more community based giving society and not one that focuses upon self interest?
I don't see that these are mutually exclusive. If I save a dollar on my own spending, I have a dollar more for other uses. Why should I give that dollar to vendors who can take care of themselves very well? The false dichotomy is in your mind.
by the same token i guess it's "community minded" to pay more tax than you legally have to…
This is a great site and has thousands of dedicated followers like myself. It is about bargains and that's fair enough. It is not about posting products or services unless they are bargains. Yes in the sense that we like to buy a bargain we are all " tight arses ", but I am almost 100% sure that we all still buy other products that arn't bargains.
Where the site fails is the inane endless discussion when a seller, big or small has made a genuine mistake and will not honor it. We talk about consumer affairs and the ACC etc etc. If a notebook is advertised at $59 down from $799 pretty obvious there is a genuine mistake, yet many buy it and complain when the purchase is not honored , to me that's ridiculous. If it's bait advertising that's different or a pricing error that is done on purpose then we need to act. But the latter is rare, particularly as applies to companies like Dell etc etc. Yes we should be community minded but 99.9% of the bargains that appear here are from sellers out to make a buck and there is nothing wrong with that and nothing wrong with wanting to get a product at the cheapest price. Perhaps we should start a fund and donate something to charity if we are saving dough then that's one way to give some back. Just a thought.
For obvious pricing errors, once reported, moderators would normally move them to forums + adding [Pricing Error] to the title.
TIGHT ASS is hard to be one at times. U lost some friends along the way… but u save urself distances with others
"Shirley", you must be joking.
It is ironic that just a couple of hours ago I was reflecting on how generous the people of OB are. Think about all the time given to help others out when technical or other advice is sought. This is people helping strangers - people they'll never meet. If that isn't giving, I don't know what is.
Glass half empty?
You're right, voteoften. On the whole the regular posters do it to share the bargains they've found. Those that are in it for themselves are the ones that simply click through and never even bother to acknowledge the existence of the post .
Sure there are those who abuse an offer, and some who are only too keen to brag about the fact, but on the whole, we're here for each others' benefit.
:)
The only friends that you get for being a tightass are Ozbargain friends. IRL - nobody likes tightasses!
I consider there are 3 major advantages to being frugal. Firstly, you should be wealthier as you receive more value for money. Secondly, you should be healthier as you would avoid takeaway and walk/ride more often.thirdly, it should be more environmentally friendly as you avoid wanton spending on landfill.
CS. Not always.
I'm not saying the above are always true, but being tight could be good or bad.
Agree. There seems to be two camps on ozbargains. The spenders and the frugals. A good deal can create a lot of hype and it can be difficult at times not to buy into. I have used ozbargains to significantly lower my cost of living on nearly every item I buy. But I am sure there are many that have gone the other way.
Sometimes I think it was just a way consumers adapting to the retailer's scheme of selling with high profit margin normally and big discount at certain time, instead of selling with modest profit margin at all time and no big discount at all.
I guy at work(who likes to brag) called me a tightarse when he was babbling on about the sony monster LED TV he had bought from Myer for $XXX (after haggling the price down by $50 by paying cash) after I had mentioned he could saved at least 20% of that price.
I calmly responded that had he spent 2 minutes on the web then he could have found the same TV at BingLee 20% cheaper.
arrogantly he said "that's no use, BingLee are miles away and Myer is accross the road"
I explained price match guarantee.
I also explained that for the couple of hundred dollars he could saved would have only taken less than 5 minutes to achieve.
I then asked him to compare that savings amount to his hourly wage and consider how many hours he would have to work for the amount he overpaid.
I then explained that I'm not a tightarse but that he was an idiot for wasting his money.
2 months later he showed me a Myer flyer where their were clearing out the same TV for $100 less than the BingLee price. I explained that if he had of paid with a 28degree card then he would have been able to claim the price difference therfore saving a third on what he had paid originally. he shoulders slumped some more.
Ouch. That hurts.
I bet it felt good though.
These people are common and they annoy me a lot…
They make stupid impulse buy purchases all the time and are a complete ass about it if you tell them how they could have saved hundreds of dollars or how their product was a bad choice.
They ask for technical help from me all the time, but a lot of men and sometimes women seem to like to do the purchasing themselves and then check if it was a good purchase later…
Even if I play along and tell them their Harvey Norman computer was great it also means I often have to listen to them brag about it or keep up the lie for a very long time while they talk about the great deal they got.
Hey look at it this way, those people are subsidising us. Pity about having to listen to their stories though.
Thanks for everyones comments, I just wanted to get a discussion on the topic.
I know from personal experience, you don't want to be classed as a tightarse as you never loose that… sterotype. Or it is very hard to shake.
And a lot of people don't understand the Frugal side to things. Its not always about being a tightarse its about saving where possible, and making that dollar so just a bit further. But always being a very giving human being.
Share the love…
you don't want to be classed as a tightarse as you never loose
Yup, let's all be loosearses. :)
Well with the actual WORD "Tightarse" in my name… I'd like to chuck in my 0.1c
The way I see it is simple:
There are times to fight for the last dollar and there are times to let it go and spend freely.
Simple as that. For the mundane day to day purchases. I say "why be a chump?" - save every penny you can. But for birthdays, drinks with friends etc… time to let it go and enjoy (note: set enjoyment budget first)
But yeah, basically there are times to be tight and times to be loose ala Risky Business "WTF."
I suppose the wisdom is knowing when to apply each mode.
And being frugal in the normal things allows you to be more generous in other things.
Yep, completely agree with King Tightarse and voteoften.
If you're a "tightarse" in certain circumstances that's not a reputation you want to have - eg giving lousy cheap presents, not shouting your round, quibbling over who had an extra slice of garlic bread when you're splitting the bill…
But if you can save money by spending an extra 10 mins researching prices, waiting a month or two before getting the latest "must have", stocking up on grocery specials, filling your car at the low point of the price cycle - I do not get why any rational and not insanely rich person would not do this at least some of the time. And I guess OzBers have this in common, and if this makes us a community of tightarses, then so be it.
I'm sure there are some amongst us who are stingy in the bad sense, but that's going to be true of any community, OzB or not.
exactly, I also look at future use-
e.g. canned tomatos are on-special for 50cents instead of 89cents. I know I use 4 cans a weeks. 49 cent diff times 4 is (rounded up $2) over a year $100.
so by buying a years supply (looking first at the BBdate) of on-special canned tomatos will save me $100.
however if The Age is on special for 1 day for $1 then buying 365 (a years worths) is not a bargain.
I'm not sure why tight arses at Ozbargainer seem to have about the best sense of humour I have ever seen on a web forum .. even better than those like Onion.com especially dedicated to sarcasm with and humour.
The best thing about Ozbargainer is that I don't have to subscribe
and get my laughs for free!
hey being a TA is a lifestyle for me! I'm generous at the right times of course but when it comes to shopping it's all about the deal. "Never pay full price for anything" is my motto and I have been bargaining for decades. Comes from italian peasant upbringing I think watching my grandfather. I have saved a MOTZA I am sure from cars, houses big stuff right down to little stuff. OB has helped me heaps finding deals and I have shared a couple. Bargaining is different to being frugal (which I also have a taste for). Best frugal joke: the scotsman who took batteries out of his clocks when going out to save $..
One of the big issues you were referring to? :)