Here's my Question of the Day, presented to you as part of the juggernaut that is JLP's Question of the Day Marathon:
What's the best deal that you've ever gotten in a store?
Here's my best deal:
My wife was looking for a trackball a couple of years ago because her arm was bothering her and using a mouse was aggravating it. We went into Office Depot to see what they had. After looking over several trackballs she found a Microsoft one that felt comfortable. It was marked $50. We looked for the boxes below the display, but couldn't find any.
We went up to the front desk to see if they had any in stock. The associate came back and said that there weren't any in the back. We asked if we could purchase the display model for a 20% discount. (Nothing to lose by asking, right?) The associate thought about this for a second, and then said, “Let me check something.”
He grabbed the trackball and went up to the front desk where the inventory terminal was. He checked the inventory, and told us: “The price is a penny.” Like that. Then, as I got out a penny (!) for this $50 trackball, he said, “We shouldn't even have this in the store. Take it.”
So we got a $50 trackball for free!
What's the best deal that you've ever gotten in a store?
And after you've answered, be sure to catch up on previous questions dealing with such varied topics as financial success, saving, shopping sprees, financial crossroads, expensive nights out, money strangeness, and character. Tomorrow's question is over at Journey to Financial Freedom.
Buying shoes I don't need really doesn't fall into the 'bargain' category, but I found a pair of $100 Donald Pliner shoes for $9.95 once. But I've worn them for 2 years and they are still one of my favorite pairs.
My best deal probably has been clothing-related. I remember one time my wife and I bought something like $700 worth of clothes for $150 or so. It was the end-of-season clearance and things were marked way down.
This just happened to me on Friday. I am helping a girlfriend shop for some new work clothes. While at Sears, looking at the Lands' End dress shirts, I see jeans and decide to browse a few pairs. I agonize between getting two pairs for $40. My friend talks me into both of them since that's still a very good deal. But these are on *clearance*. As I checkout, they ring up for half of the marked clearance price! I end up getting them for $21 total! woo!
FWIW, this is at Sears RIGHT NOW.
The other story I was going to mention is that I have very small feet, even for a woman, so I tend to get very good deals on shoes at the end of the season. One time in San Francisco, I was at Stompers and I bought a pair of Danner boots for $45, cushy and Gore-tex. Very nice. I later looked them up online and found out they are normally $200 list! woo! 75% off!
I got a huge discount on my bike for pointing out a very small dent. It was on sale anyway- can't hurt to ask about these things!
My most recent score was five pounds of flour for .20 cents. I found it in one of those out of the way discount bins at the grocery store. I have no idea why it was there- it was not opened, not leaking, not expired, etc. Score!
Does getting the pregnant-guinea pig 4 for the price of 1 special count? 😉
In high school I bought a pair of good expensive hiking shoes off eBay for $6 with free shipping. Wore them for about three years every day.
We went out shopping for a treadmill a couple of years ago. I found the one I wanted at Sears. It was listed for about $1000 and on sale for about $800. As we were looking around, we saw about 20 treadmills in the center aisle folded up, but out of the boxes. We saw the exact treadmill that I wanted there, so we asked the salesperson how much. He says, "$700 because it doesn't come with a box." hmmm…I don't need a box! My husband doesn't stop there; he says, "We'll take it for $600." The salesperson says, "I don't think I can do that." So, my husband asks him to call his manager. He says, "yes" and we walk away with my treadmill for $400 off the original price.
Maybe it was nerve-y to ask for another $100 off, but we sensed that they wanted to move these treadmills. It was a great deal and a win-win situation for all!
I used to get GAP jeans 2 for $9.99 at the distro outlet (different than the outlet stores), but you had to make sure one leg wasn't shorter or there were holes.
My other good deal was getting a MP3/CD/Tape/AM/FM boombox for $34 instead of $108. Being able to burn 180 MP3 files to one CD for listening to at work was awesome!
My wife works at a large department store and, in most cases, it can't return clothing to the manufacturer. To clear it out, they mark it down. Over time, they mark it down again. Then they mark it down some more. At that point, the stuff's already been charged off so they try to get what they can for it.
Dress shirts for men are usually classic: patterns and colors come and go, but the tailoring stays roughly the same. I get shirts by the armload for about $2 each (regular price $29 and up). I got a pair of $100 Michael Kors slacks for five bucks.
With back-to-school time here, I've been thinking about it even though I am not in school and have no kids. After some major convincing, my mother agreed to spend $50 to buy me a leather-bottom JanSport backpack in the 8th grade. 13 years later–after high school, college, trips around the US and to Europe–it looks about as good as it did when I bought it, and I have never been one to take terribly good care of things. (I just throw it in the wash if it gets grimy.) If at some point the zipper breaks, JanSport will fix it for free.
I get a lot of good, low prices on things by shopping at discount places, but I think my expensive bookbag was one of the best buys I've ever made.
This is kind of lame, but I got really excited at the grocery store on Sunday when I realized that a 22oz bottle of Listerine that I had a $2 coupon for was already marked $3 off. So, I got a $6 bottle of Listerine for $1!
Once in Macy's I found a Tommy Hilfiger skirt originally priced at $49.99 onsale on the rack for $4.99!!
A few weeks ago, my wife happened to be near an Albertson's grocery store that was closing down permanently that day. She heard an announcement from inside the store that everything left in the store was 99% off, and ran in and bought a whole bunch of spices and things. She spent a total of $6, for a savings of over $500…
A few years ago, a good next door neighbor which was a friend for a while had to leave the country on business that he knew wasnt coming back for another 5 years. Sold his car to me, a young venturing teenager for $500 cash. 1994 Honda Civic with low mileage. It still runs today but I gave it to my sister.
Hearing about 90%, 95%, and even 99% discounts makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Great deals all around!
I'm not sure about my best deal ever, but I always get mindboggled when I'm shopping at an off-price store and I see what the original price was– once I got a $90 dress for $5!
I was in Safeway on Christmas Eve last year. I heard an announcement and then saw everyone scrambling to the front of the store. It was a $1 or less sale on all the Christmas stuff they had left. I got there late, saw people with carts full of stuff. I bought some very expensive chocolates for 25 cents, then I spied a HUGE and I mean HUGE stuffed dog on the top shelf. Even though I was 6 months pregnant, I jumped up and snagged it. They charged me 25 cents. It was my fiance's absolute favorite present.
When I worked in loss prevention for a department store, I was contacted by the local police department that they had some of our merchandise in police storage from a few years back. I went down and picked up enough merchandise to fill a pickup. Our old pricing system used to continually clearance out merchandise, so after I cleaned up all of the fingerprinting powder off of the items, I entered them all back into the store's inventory. Everything was marked way down! I got a pair of Docker's mens shoes (reg $80) for 25 cents, a KitchenAid 5-quart mixer (reg $349.99) for $25, and a FoodSaver (reg $249.99) for a quarter. I wound up with a whole cart of stuff for about $75.
Gee, all my super buys are at yard sales. Hmmm, a few years ago I went to buy a leather jacket with NFL logos on it. Normally $300-$400, but they had just reduced the price to $150 to clear out the few left. After making money for two days teaching seminars I decided to treat myself that weekend. I went there and for just that weekend they lowered them to $100, and then I got an employee discount (my wife worked for them) which lowered it to $70. I get lots of the after Christmas 90% off deals, but that jacket was my only great buy on a large ticket item.
This week at target, I got 4-paks of redbull for 5.99. This was like getting 1 can free. Redbull is one of the best mixers – I bought a bunch to stock up for a party I am having soon.
I guess it depends on whether you mean "most money saved" or "greatest percentage saved". We're in ACE Hardware's bonus club (whatever it's called), and we're always shocked at all the $5 coupons and other discounts we get. We feel like they're paying us.
Other than that, I'm not sure.
Probably the best deal that we obtained was on the purchase of our second vehicle. Through the wonderful powers of the internet, we were able to get two dealers fighting each other to sell us the same vehicle. In the end we saved so much that the car cost about as much as the blue book said it was worth once we drove it off the lot.
I use the Walgreen's rebate program a lot. Recently, I bought two boxes of personal products for $10, used a $1 off coupon bringing it down to $9, and got a $10 rebate. So, they paid me $1 to buy their products. Smokin' deal.
Buy.com when they first started up…I got 2 monitors for the price of one. I miss those days when online retailers were still trying to figure things out. 🙂 Hey I was in college…I couldn't passup a free $400.00 monitor! Nor did I want to do through the hassle of sending it back…
I am a grocery shopping nerd, and I have used coupons (doubled or trippled) to get stuff for free, or just for tax. Lates deal:
8 tubes of tootpaste for a total of .48.
I love colored bell peppers (red, yellow, orange) but rarely buy them unless they are on special, and even then they are a buck apiece. Last week at the grocery store, I happened to see a little shelf with a few bags of bell peppers, about 6-7 peppers of various colors in each bag. I didn't have peppers on my list, but I picked up a bag to see how much: 99 cents!!! Even at the sale price, that was a savings of 6 dollars!! We enjoyed lots of bell peppers that week!!
A few years back I got 3 pair of $100 wool slacks for $9.95 each. It seems somebody had them tailored (to exactly my size) and never picked them up. So, the department store put them on the clearance rack.
My best deal story is similar to yours. We'd been looking for MONTHS for additional shelves for our IKEA bookcase. I wasn't about to order them online & pay the shipping charge, and the store kept telling us they'd be in soon, but they weren't. Finally a check of the as-is department paid off – they had a bookcase similar to ours in there, so I asked if I could just buy the shelves off it. They said yes. We got them for 10 cents each, instead of $10.
I bought a small calculator, hot pink in a hot pink plastic case, for less than $5 in 1978. It worked fine until a couple of years ago.
Thanks to a fortunate coincidence of manufacturer rebates, store rebates, promotional offers, and an "everything 15% off" sale, I once arranged for a store to pay me to take their blank CD-Rs away. I carted off as many as would fit in my car, and when the rebate checks arrived I'd made a net profit of $86.74. Plus a lifetime's supply of blank CD-Rs. 🙂
I have gotten numerous things for free on a Black Friday deal, but nothing that I really needed. I saw a brand new Weber Gold B grill that retails for $499. My price was about $187 on a Massachusetts tax free day. The discounts were largely due to it being the end of season. I think there was an additional discount that rung up when I got to the checkout that I didn't know about either.
My best deal was buying wardrobes from the as-is department in IKEA. We bought 3 for $1 each, then a desk for DH's brother $40. We sold two of the wardrobes for $40 in the boxes not put together so we made $39 x 2. Then after using it for 3 years we had to move, so we sold our wardrobe for $40.
Basically we paid nothing to have a wardrobe from IKEA. And the desk we bought for DH's brother was orignially $200. He still has it and people like it a lot.
I work for a high end electronics store and recently they closed one of the stores nearby. Everything clearance was given another 25% off. I picked up a 42" lcd tv, regular 1200, on clearance for 780, with another 25% off 585. now plus a 10% employee discount 526.50 but not done there. if you pay with one of their credit cards you get 10% back not instantly but credited back to you later. i had 280 earned in previous credit plus i got 10% back on this new purchase meaning my final out of pocket expense for the tv $221.85…and it was brand new in the box
God is on everyone’s side … and in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies.
I once bought a $300 boots for $50. It was exciting