December 31st, 2007 by admin

Quick update before I sign off for the night…  there is a new section added in the UsedShoe Forums for Sweepstakes and Instant Win Games so if you’re a fan of those check it out!  I was not familiar with them so I’m just learning about them but they seem pretty fun from my first experiences with them (the instant scratch and win games are like instant lotto tickets except you don’t need to dish out $1 every time). 

I’d like to welcome/recognize the first official UsedShoe Forums moderator, SCC76, who will be moderatoring the aforementioned Sweepstakes board along with the freebies board.  SCC76 is an expert deal hunter and I think she will bring a lot of great things to the Forums, so if you see her in the Forums section feel free to say hi.

Not much deal hunting going on tonight, I’m taking the night off to celebrate and you should too!  And then I’ll be back tomorrow to start off the New Year right with some amazing deals - hopefully :)   Be safe, don’t drink & drive, and watch out for the other guy.

December 30th, 2007 by admin

This is smoking hot and it works. Read about it in the Forums HERE.  Basically you could wind up with $25 Gift card for $5, and you can keep doing it over and over and over and over!

December 28th, 2007 by admin

Kohl’s is having a Gold Star Clearance sale and until 12/29 they are offering $0.99 shipping on each item (which is cheap is you know about Kohl’s shipping). Gold Star Clearance Link I personally don’t need any new clothes but I did check out the sale for a little bit. Skirts and pants start out at $3.40, sneakers at $9, and there’s also some decent seasonal stuff that they are trying to clear out. To further discount the items, there is a 15% off code “grcp5007″ to save you more. While we’re on apparel, Sears is having a 60% off sale on 12/29 from 9:00a.m. to noon. I posted in the Forums a few 50% off DVD Complete series box sets (Family Guy, Addams Family, Angel) if you’re a fan.

The new Restaurant.com code (good for 70% off) is “countdown”, it expires on 12/31 so stock up for the new year. Their certificates are good for one year from date of purchase. I always try to ad a few freebies in the Freebies section of the Forums, if you didn’t catch it you can get MIT classes online for free HERE, which I think is pretty cool.  Speaking of the Forums, I’m slowly but surely learning some of the ins and outs of adding features to the Forums section.  If you log into the Forums section the Amazon ad near the top of the page will disappear which opens up the screen a bit more and is nice.  For the people who don’t log in, sorry, you still need to see the ad.

If anyone has ever had aspirations of becoming a part time Forum moderator let me know.  The Forum section is still in its beginning stages but I could use a part time moderator within the next month or two.  This could possibly be a paying job, it is up for discussion.

December 27th, 2007 by admin

I just posted a way for you to make a $70 profit by buying MacAfee Total Protection for $9.99 which you can read about HERE. Thought I’d mention this on the homepage before it sells out. And what is nice (for me at least) is that I was looking for a virus/spyware protection program and this is the 2008 version release from MacAfee which is one of the top names. Read the rest of this entry »

December 26th, 2007 by admin

This is pretty hot, I just jumped all over it and got myself the first four Harry Potters for $40 shipped (anywhere you looked they want $105 for the first five in a box set). This will sell out before the day is over I predict.

Buy 1 Get 1 Free HD DVDs

December 24th, 2007 by admin

No post today, busy with the holidays - and cleaning

Merry X-Mas, Happy Holidays, catch ya on the 26th!

December 22nd, 2007 by admin

Let’s start off with some good deals: Kodak C813 8.2MP Digital Camera $89.77, Amazon.com Movie Downloads for $0.99, $15 Off any Purchase American Eagle Coupon, Free USB Powered Desk Lamp.

I ordered something from Amazon.com on Dec. 15th and received an email the other day saying that the item was in stock so I would not have it by Christmas.  That didn’t really fly with me because on Amazon’s site they had plastered all over the place banners saying if you ordered by Dec. 17th it was guaranteed you would have it by Christmas eve.  I wrote Amazon.com an email and reminded them that I am a good customer who trusted Amazon.com’s guarantee, and if they couldn’t live up to their guarantees then I would take my business in the future elsewhere.  I received an email 24 hours later saying that they were going to locate this item for me and ship it Fedex (at their expense).  I just received this item an hour ago on my front doorstep.  Now that is some quality customer service, normally I have to get pretty angry and yell at some people to get the ball rolling but this was one of the best service experiences I’ve had in quite some time.

There is a website called Brring.com that is going to Pay You to get phone calls.  Their service is just starting out so it’s not in every state yet, but it is definitely something to keep your eye on.  How it works: Brring will give you a free phone number and they link this number into your home phone line, so whenever someone dials the Brring number it will ring your home phone.  Ok, so you give this phone number out to people (or to telemarketers, hehe) and when they call your Brring phone number, they will have to listen to a ten second advertisment before they get to talk to you.  Brring will pay you between $0.05 to $1.00 per each call you receive.  If you get a lot of calls at home, you could probably pay off your phone bill using Brring!  I have yet to test this site out, I only just heard about it from a friend and I checked out their homepage, but I will look into this more after the holidays.

I thought I’d rate my experience with all the stores I dealt with during my Christmas shopping this year.  This rating has nothing to do with prices, it has to do with my Experience (i.e.  timeliness of receiving the order, customer service reps if I had to talk to any, any problems with my order, etc…), so here’s a little report card:

Amazon.com: A

Fast shipping, good responsiveness to my emails, problem resolved quickly

CircuitCity.com: A+

Surprising as I’m not a CC fan, but my orders were shipped within 24 hours after they were placed and they were received quickly

DeepDiscount.com: D-

Orders took a long time to come, they shorted me an item on one order, waiting for their customer service to answer the phone is very frustrating as it takes FOREVER

FYE.com: F

I ordered something over 2 weeks ago, WHERE IS IT FYE?  They also do not provide any tracking information which is frustrating, and there is no customer service number that I can find

Sears.com: D

They really need to work on sync’ing up their online site to their store.  I always have a problem when I purchase online and choose instore pickup.

Walmart.com: F

I ordered something which said ‘in stock’.  A week or two later they say it is out of stock so the ordering is cancelled, what is up with that?

I’m a tough grader, but I’m a fair grader.  I think if these retailers received grades more often then maybe they would get their acts together and provide better service to the customer.

Dinner tonight: Fried Chicken (I’m cooking it, watch out for the grease fires)

Have a good one!

December 21st, 2007 by admin

I’ve had the movie Bladerunner in my DVD collection for quite some time but I never happened to watch it until yesterday, and I watched in only because of all the hype surrounding it and I got curious. The movie was made 25 years ago and it’s funny that a lot of the futuristic things in Bladerunner from 25 years ago are still in the movies today, but anyways, I thought the movie was good, though I admit I was a little confused by it. I have come to find out that there are multiple versions of the movie and I was watching the revised 1992 director’s cut version which removed the happy ending that was in the original. After watching the movie I went online and did some searching because I didn’t fully get the ending. After reading a bunch of chatter I’ve come to learn that the movie is a lot more in-depth than I had originally given it credit for, and I’ll have to watch it again to understand it better. For the 25 year anniversary of the movie they created a new boxed set with all 3 versions of the movie along with a special “workprint” version of the movie. If you’re a sci-fi buff or a Bladerunner fan then you’ve already probably picked up the anniversary boxed set, but if not there are a few different versions of that:

5 DVD Ultimate Collector’s set in Metal Suitcase $54.99 (30% Off)Link
5 HD DVD Ultimate Collector’s set in Metal Suitcase $69.95 (30% Off)Link
5 HD DVD Complete Collector’s set $27.95 (30% Off)Link

I’m personally going to picking up the 5 HD DVD complete collector’s set because I’m interested in watching all 4 versions of the movie, and I don’t need the metal suitcase, but if you’re a diehard then maybe you do…

I changed the freebies message board permissions so that you can only view the freebies if you are logged into the message board. I figured if you’re going to use up the UsedShoe bandwith to score some freebies you should at least register (which is free).

And now it is time to run. I have to go to a birthday dinner celebration which is taking me away from valuable deal searching for tonight (some things in life are rough). But I will be back full throttle tomorrow… up, up and awayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy……..

December 20th, 2007 by admin

If you procrastinated buying some presents and are in a bind or are dreading visiting the shopping mall tomorrow in all it’s overcrowded glory, Overstock is offering free overnight shipping on things ordered by Noon tomorrow (this is not sitewide on their site, so not everything is good for this promotion). Just wanted to throw it out there for those who have their backs against the wall.

December 20th, 2007 by admin

If you didn’t catch it in the Forums, you can get a free CD, DVD, or Video Game by registering at the Barter Bee website. What does registering consist of? You give your name, address, and phone number (must give your real phone number) and that is it. It took me two minutes and I ended up selecting the DVD “8 Mile” for free (the selection is pretty decent for the free items). This site is a competitor to the site that I mentioned here which does the same thing (except they only deal with video games). And who says you can’t get something for nothing?

So there was some crazyness today which I’m guessing you probably didn’t catch because it happened in the blink of an eye, but I was there firsthand and so I have the inside scoop… Read the rest of this entry »

December 19th, 2007 by admin

I wrote a post a while back about a site called Blingo, and I recently won a free movie ticket from them (which I’m using this weekend to see National Treasure 2 so I don’t need to pay to see it ) so I thought it was a good time to mention this site again since my original blog post from months ago is buried. Imagine if every time you used Google you had the chance to win a prize just by doing a search, pretty cool…right? Well this is what Blingo does. For the first 10 times each day when you run a search using Blingo as your search engine, you have a chance to win a prize. Prizes start out at movie tickets and $5 Amazon.com gift cards and go up to new cars and $25,000 cash. And guess what, Blingo uses Google’s search engine when you run your search, so you are getting a Google quality search WITH the chance to win a prize. Once you sign up you can then refer your friends to sign up too, and if a friend that you referred wins a prize, you will win that same prize for referring him. If you’re interested in signing up I’d be honored to refer you (hehe, I could use more free movie tickets) so if you sign up through here you’ll officially be referred by me .

If you are a fan of comfy and cozy blankets then I’d suggest you check this one out… Read the rest of this entry »

December 19th, 2007 by admin

I’m running a little contest to test my deal hunting skills out against YOU, and YOU, and YOU, and yes, even YOU! Check out this message thread in the Forums. Basically, a UsedShoe member asked for some help in finding a deal on some magazine subscriptions but I struck out swinging in finding a good deal (I personally think because there isn’t a good deal to be found), so we’re putting my skills to the test. Find a better price then I found and win yourself a FREE brand new, factory sealed “A Bronx Tale” DVD which is selling for $57 on Amazon.com (see here), because this is an OUT OF PRINT DVD! There is only one DVD to be had, so whoever posts a link in the message thread to the site selling the magazine subscription at the lower price wins.  Let’s get it on!

December 18th, 2007 by admin

If you live in NYC or LA and are free this Thursday night you could go a free screening of National Treasure part 2. I am a fan of the original movie and I will be seeing part 2 probably in the theater - though I’ll have to pay . You can sign up here to create a confirmation ticket which is good for you and one guest. But beware, you should arrive early because the theater will take people on a first come first serve basis and I have a funny feeling that there will be a lot more people trying to get in then there will be seating.

In the forums I set up a “help me find a deal” section in case you are in need of help finding a good deal on something that hasn’t been covered on UsedShoe. I cannot guarantee a 100% success rate, but I can guarantee that I (hopefully along with other UsedShoe members) will take some time to at the very least make an effort in helping search for the deal you need… Read the rest of this entry »

December 16th, 2007 by admin

Let me start off by saying that the UsedShoe weekly free giveaway got underway last night and is off to a pretty decent start, I just purchased today the free giveaway items for the next three weeks - though I won’t tell you what they are, we’ll leave ya a little something to look forward to

I have been finding freebies all over the place in the past 24 hours and I have been posting them all in the freebies forum. What kind of freebies you ask? Read the rest of this entry »

December 15th, 2007 by admin

That’s right, I am going to give something away every single week until I turn 99 years old and I finally retire. Entering to win is very simple. Simply enter a message (it can be anything, you can say “hi” and that’ll count) in the thread of the weekly giveaway item. You can find the rules (all 3 of them) and the Giveaway item HERE.  This week’s giveaway is the James Bond GoldenEye DVD.  You must register in the Forums section in order to post a reply which enters you into the giveaway for the weekly prize.  I thought this will be a fun way to increase awareness (and hopefully participation) in the Forums section, and it only takes 2 seconds of your time (literally) to enter to win a (cool) prize each week.  Good luck!