Welcome Wednesday: It's time to hunt for a sale!

[#1]

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

I love Halloween! Even now that I’m older, I still enjoy dressing up, handing out candy and taking the kids around the neighborhood. But, I also love the day "AFTER" Halloween as all the leftover candy at the store gets discounted. My absolute favorites are Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and that is what I’m always on the hunt to find.

A couple of weeks ago was Amazon Prime Day, and I'm sure some of you are preparing for Black Friday sales.  My question for you this week is: I'm love to heard your best bargain hunting story!

Let me know in the comments below.

Have a great rest of the week!

[Andy Gladstone]

Back in 2000 when Priceline used to be a grocery coupon site my wife and I wound up bidding on a coupon that PAID us for buying Heinz Ketchup. We went shopping and when we presented the coupon at checkout the clerk was confused to see our total grocery bill as -$0.57 after scanning a basketful of groceries. She could not believe it when the register opened and she handed US money. I still miss getting 64oz Tropicana Orange Juice for $0.20.

[Carlos]

Back in 2018, I was standing in the returns line at Costco, and at the time, they didn't sell any Apple products in-store, only online. I saw the person in front of me return an iPad Pro completely new, which I really wanted at the time. So when it was my turn, I asked the clerk if I could buy the iPad, and they spoke to the manager, and they sold it to me for $400, which was like an $800 discount at the time. I still think about that to this day. 

[Dominika Kuraś-Moskwa [Deviniti]]

It is not 100% mine but def worth mentioning here :) Three or four years ago Foreo had the most memorable Black Friday and made an error with the sale price of their product. There was about a 90% discount, so taking into consideration their relatively high prices, it was a once-in-a-lifetime deal for many.

I noticed this big sale and mentioned it to my friend who I knew wanted to buy their product. So she made a quick purchase (we know it was an error and correcting it was a matter of time) and saved so much money! Foreo claimed to deliver all these extra sale purchases (she received her product). 

Now it is a go-to-tell story whenever my friend meets new people and I can say I had just a small role in this shopping achievement  :D

[Summer Hogan]

Great question @Jimmy Seddon! Many years back Southwest Airlines had a DING! app you could install on your computer. Whenever there was a sale, the app would go DING! and you could hit a link and go to the sale. One day at work, I got the DING! and hit the button, searched for flights from PHX to see where I could take a weekend trip. The first thing I saw was a flight from PHX to DC for $2. I immediately purchased 4 tickets. I thought to myself, this must be an error and some web developer is going to get fired for this. Sure enough, SW sent me an email saying it was an error on their part and they would not honor the price. They cancelled the tickets and I was disappointed. So, I didn't the bargain, but it's still a good story! 

[Dave Mathijs]

My story isn't about the hunt for a sale, but an incredible surprise "deal": I remember the time when I wanted to buy The Killing the complete series seasons 1 + 2 + 3 on DVD priced at 64,00 euro and ending up paying only 2,99 euro for it at the register.

 

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM]

Back around 1997 I wrote a few perl scripts that would scrape sites like craigslist and later ebay to find things I was looking for.  I still use these, but have moved them from cron jobs on a personal server to AWS.  Right now they are mainly looking for car parts.

[Tafadzwa Muza]

Great question!

[Vittoria Oliva]

My three special steps:

1. put in my shopping cart 100 (and more and more! 😄 ) articles;
2. check on your defined budget (black friday has more budget usually 😆)  and one by one  remove them from shopping cart;
3. buy the result

This is the only and real best bargain, bacause you choose only the real thing you want to have!

Happy Black Friday! 🥸

[kay bickell]

I just found the $39 Jira courses, so I'm happy as a pig in chiffon :)

[Courtney Ortiz]

A few years ago, I tried the crazy couponing thing, bought my binder, clipped my coupons and did the whole deal. It was interesting but it took a whole lot of time. In the end, I was able to gift my friends with some fun goodies and I'm still a thrift shopper - but that was a passing trend for me :).