Results tagged “shopping” from KPAO

I was looking for an inexpensive USB flash drive on TigerDirect to fill out an order for free shipping. I noticed what I thought was a great deal on a 4GB one: only $9. But after I added it to my cart, I noticed the price of another item had changed. It went up by $4. Curious, I checked the TigerDirect site in a different browser.

Nearly all of the items I was looking at buying had different prices in the different browsers. The wifi networking cards were $2 more expensive, the headphones $5 cheaper... it was odd. After a bit of math, I ended up buying the cheaper cart (saving $4!).

If you do buy from TD, be sure to use Google Checkout for an additional $5 off.
 

I suppose it was about 10 years ago when I told Amazon to close down my account. There was news of them storing and sharing personal data inappropriately, and I got all indignant and exercised my power as a consumer. Yeah! Take that, big corporation! Maybe now you'll learn how to treat customers.

Well, it turns out Amazon does know how to treat customers. Granted, I've had my share of issues with them over the years, but overall they continue to impress me. While they don't always have the best price out there, they do a lot of the time. And when they don't it's pretty darn close. If you didn't shop around and just bought from Amazon, odds are you'd be doing pretty well. Even in a category you know nothing about, if you sort by best-selling (the default) or user ratings, you'll find some pretty good options. (Still, I always check any purchase against eBay and Google Products before buying; you never know…)

Plus the free shipping is simply genius. I know I tend to buy more stuff because shipping is "free". Even though we all know it's baked into the cost of the item. That's ok. Psychologically it works better for me this way. And with Amazon doing it, it puts tons of competitive pressure on the little guys to do the same. In the past week I bought an $8 USB flash drive and a $17 motherboard from smaller shops, and both had free shipping. Love it.

Amazon has even gotten better with the returns process. I did 2 returns over the past year. The first they had me use a pre-paid shipping label. They ended up charging me for the shipping, but it was using the Amazon negotiated rate, so it was really low. And the convenience of not having to go through a whole 'nother transaction was great. The other time I had to pay up front, but they reimbursed me. Apparently they were doing a "free shipping both ways" trial taking a page from Zappos' book.

Amazon Marketplace is great, as both a buyer and seller. I've sold a bunch of books and CDs over the years. The cut they take is definitely steeper than eBay, but it's a lot more convenient. And I've found the liquidity of the market to be a lot higher. You can sell an item faster and for a higher price on Amazon than on eBay.

Amazon MP3 is still my favorite place to buy music. They were the first big player to go DRM-free, and they are the only one to offer 256kbps, as far as I know.

And of course their affiliate program was the first and is still one of the best ways for an average person to earn a little cash on the web (in addition to Google AdSense). I use Amazon affiliate links for the majority of my product and service reviews on Rated Best. It's making me enough money to cover the cost of the domain and hosting.

While I don't use it, the Amazon Web Services have also been a trendsetter in the cloud computing space, and they are enabling a lot of small web startups to bootstrap and not worry about IT infrastructure or scaling.

Lest you think I'm a fan boy, I should point out that I've never had an Amazon credit card, and only signed up for Prime once as a free trial. I don't own a Kindle (and don't plan on buying one), and I think the Gold Box and other time sensitive deals are just BS to get people to buy stuff they really don't need.

That said, overall they have an amazing selection, great prices, good customer experience, and free shipping. And that's why I keep coming back.

Yesterday I bought an item from Amazon that was $24.33. The cutoff for free shipping is $25. So I used the Amazon Filler Finder site to add an 80¢ book to the order, bringing the total to $25.03 and qualifying me for free shipping.

Today, I got an email telling me the items will be shipped separately. Now that's really inefficient, especially considering I didn't really want the book. I only ordered it to get free shipping.

What I want is the ability to round up to free shipping. Let me just pay the extra 77¢ without actually buying anything else. It reduces consumerism (buying crap I don't really need), and eliminates the waste of shipping something that isn't wanted. The rounded up cash could either help subsidize the free shipping program. Or—for bonus PR points—it could be given to a non-profit of my choice.

(Oddly enough, the item I bought yesterday for $24.33 now costs $25.23 today. Hmmm.)

On a tip from Pete in the comments of my previous post on credit card logos, I headed over to Brands of the World. I found vector versions of 3 of the 4 credit card company logos.For completeness, I created the AmEx one myself in Illustrator (so it may be a bit off from the real logo). You can download the set of all 4 vector credit card logos in this ZIP file. Enjoy!

I was at Target yesterday, and someone had a table set up asking for donations for some random cause (children's cancer? hopefully they were against it.).

Now I consider myself a generous guy; I give at least 3% of my income away every December. But I really don't appreciate having to walk a gauntlet after making my purchases. It's stressful. Even girl scouts selling cookies bother me. I can't buy them because they're not vegan, but I don't want to get into a big discussion with them. So I have to just say no, and that makes me look and feel like a jerk.

Retailers take note: By giving permission to these people, you are stressing out your customers. And I will take that into account the next time I'm deciding where to shop.

The title of this post aside, I actually like Country Sun Natural Foods in Palo Alto. They have a pretty good selection of vegan and vegetarian products, lots of locally grown organic produce, and a knowledgeable staff. Of course, one-quarter of the floor space is dedicated to supplements and homeopathy, but if they want to sell worthless-crap snake oil to clueless morons that's their business. Hey -- it's capitalism -- give the customers what they want, right?

Well almost right I suppose. I won't complain too much that Country Sun doesn't accept American Express, even though the Amex Blue Cash is my new favorite credit card and every other grocery store in the county accepts it. And I certainly can't complain they there is now better produce available cheaper right outside their own door every Sunday morning at the local farmer's market. After all that's not their fault. What I will complain about is their refusal to accept more than one coupon of any kind. That's their rule: one coupon per household per day. The only reason I that I can think of for this policy is that it must be too much of a hassle to redeem tons of manufacturer's coupons. (Cue the tiny violins).

Maybe there's some other reason? No clue -- they wouldn't say. The helpful clerks just kept repeating the rule: "one coupon per household per day." There's no shortage of organic groceries available in Palo Alto these days (we invented "earthy crunchy" in the Bay Area). Even mega-corp Safeway has good organic food these days, and since they're based in the Bay Area they even qualify as local I suppose. Plus they take all of my coupons, and my American Express card.

I stopped to run an errand on my way to work today and when I came back out, my battery was flat. Given that the battery is the original that came with the car, and thus it is 10 years old, it's not too surprising. But still annoying.

After getting a jump from AAA, I drove straight over to Sears. And I have to say the experience was great. There were two options: DieHard Standard and DieHard Gold. That was it. No other brands, no need to decide among a whole line of different levels and options. Just decide whether you want the basic model or the Gold.

I bought the Gold. It cost only 15% more, and I was moved by the unexpected absence of a paradox of choice. It was a bliss of dearth. Plus they had it installed in less than half an hour. I highly recommend them for your car battery needs.

I was working on a shopping cart UI recently, and I was shocked by the dearth of hi-res credit card logos out there. Not only that, but there are a lot of previous brand logos kicking around out there. You think with all the e-commerce going on, the credit card companies would want to go out of their way to provide high-quality, up-to-date images of their brands. Not so. I could find nothing of the sort on any of the credit card web sites. So I created my own.

I started with the largest logos I could find (Tin Eye was a great image search tool for this), then used Photoshop to remove the compression artifacts and correct the colors. The Amex logo was impossible to fix, so I ended up recreating it in vector form in Illustrator, then applied the blue gradient in Photoshop.

Here is a ZIP archive containing all four high-res credit card logos. Enjoy. If you like them, link back to this page from your blog, Delicious, Digg, or wherever.

Update: After a tip in the comments, I compiled this set of vector credit card logos. I had to re-created the AmEx one myself, so it's not exactly right. But good enough until these companies get their act together and provide these assets on their own sites.

Craigslist is fantastic -- I've used it to buy and sell all kinds of stuff. But why won't they let me search for things in a reasonable way, and beyond my local area? Say (just for example) that I want to buy a BMW K75S motorcycle. I might be willing to go from the SF bay area to Sacramento to get a good deal on a nice used bike. But Craigslist does not let me expand my search beyond the local area -- I have to search multiple times. Worse, searching for "K75" produces different results from a search for "K75S".

Searching Craigslist is so bad, that a whole industry has popped up to fix it:

• http://craigshelper.com
• http://crazedlist.org
• http://www.craigspal.com
• http://www.craigslistcompanion.com
• http://www.craigslist-search.com
• http://www.craigslittlebuddy.com
• http://www.motiont.com/craigslistreader.aspx

I have a suggestion for craigslist: fix the problem. Clearly your users are trying to tell you something.

I live in California, and starting tomorrow (July 1), drivers must use a hands-free device for all cell phone calls. Now I know the iPhone comes with a set of headphones with a built-in microphone, so technically there's a free solution. But that doesn't make for a very good story. It turns out the iPhone ear buds simply do not stay in my ear. So for better or worse, I needed to find a different way to go hands-free.

About a month ago I ordered the new Jawbone when it first came out, thinking that would be my solution. It was $140. Yow. But it had great reviews about the performance, especially in noisy situations. And I really didn't like it. I just feel weird wearing a headset on my ear like that. Besides, it turns out I use my iPhone a lot to listen to podcasts and music. So I already have earphones. I just need a microphone to go with my existing headphones (Nike Earhooks).

Turns out these exist; they are short extension cords with an inline microphone. Both Monster Cable and Griffin make one, and they cost about $10-15. As I was looking around a bit more, I found no-name versions for $5-10. Then I found Cross Mark.

They are a wholesaler in China, who will sell you electronic gadgets and accessories at pretty amazing wholesale prices. You can get a cheap knock-off iPod for $23.16, or an LED light bulb for $3.17. Or, an inline iPhone microphone for $2.79. With shipping and handling (from China!), it cost $3.62. And if I wanted to buy 50 of them, it'd cost only $1.80 each. Gotta love the disintermediation power of the web.

So who wants to go in for an order of 50+ LED light bulbs?

I just ran across two sites today that are useful for bumping your Amazon total up to the $25 minimum for free shipping. Cheap fillers lists the cheapest items on the site, whereas Filler Item lets you search based on the price you need.

At some point, Amazon should just have a "round me up to $25" check box. I'd be inclined to check the box for a few dollars, especially if they donated that money to charity, or did something equally compelling with it.

This is a purely tactical move when buying something online. As I go through the checkout process, when I come across the field for a coupon code, I immediately open up another browser tab and do a search for ›name of web site‹ coupon code (or whatever terms they use to refer to it, like promo, discount…) I just bought a CD from yesasia.com, so I searched for yesasia.com coupon code. The first site in the results has an extensive list of codes including WGASIA5 which saved me $5 on my order.

It doesn’t always work, but it works often enough to make it worth the small effort each time you buy something.