What the title says. Every year I hear everyone at work go buzzing about Prime Day, and then when I’d go check what items were on sale they were mostly cheap gaff and a bunch of minimally discounted tech products. Am I missing something that’s optimal to get around this time of year?
I got the best deal of all: canceling my Prime membership. I’m saving tons of money! 🤡
(but seriously, screw Amazon and their monopolistic, anti-labor practices)
fun fact, the term “monopolistic” refers to a specific, relatively competitive type of imperfect competition, and not to monopoly competition. You’re thinking of monopoloid practices, or in the case of their labor practices, oligopsonistic (having only a few buyers and many sellers).
Yeah, that. 😅
If you already had something in mind to get, and you check the price (camelcamelcamel.com is a great resource for Amazon price tracking) and it’s on sale, that’s optimal. Other than that, it’s usually Amazon devices and other Amazon products that have the best deals (Fire TV, Kindle, Echo, etc.)
There might be some good deals, but since it’d involve shopping at Bezos’, I’d try to avoid it nonetheless
If you’re looking for deals, I like dealnews.com . I’m sure there are similar sites but in my experience they’re great.
that looks like a pretty generic ad site that mostly exists to throw out as many links as possible, whether the sale is real or fake, because they make money either way.
Thanks for the criticism.
Do you have a better deals site to suggest?
I don’t think deals site show deals. I think people who want deals are better off not using a dedicated site based on the premise “we’ll show you the deals.” You’d be better off just buying things you like from any random fucking store—at least then you’re not being tricked into thinking an ad is good for you. It’s also better to avoid shopping for shit you don’t need online, where you’re more likely to impulse buy, or buy something you think you want and then realize when you see it in person that it sucks. Buying in person means you can at least see a thing and figure out if it feels cheap, is bigger or smaller than you want, etc.
But if you want a more complex strategy: figure out the particular things you actually want and figure out how to get deals on those particular things. For example, if you’re looking for suits and shirts and dress shoes, for cheaper than suitsupply and allen edmonds, I’d recommend
- Local thrift shops, if you are willing to learn a bit
- Luxeswap on eBay
- Spier & Mackay on sale / with a referral code
- Charles Tyrwhitt 3/$100, especially if you can try on in store
- Meermin for shoes if you’re near NYC (try on in person), Grant Stone or Lof & Tung if you’re willing to spend a little more, or Loake, Beckett Simonon, or Thursday Boot Co., or on t he very cheap end, Bexley.
If you want a suit for cheaper than that, say $100 new, I’d recommend just looking wherever, trying as many suits on as possible, and looking for 100% wool or some similar fabric—definitely no poly blends, and avoid elastene.
But no deal on any deal site will ever be better than the above advice, and that includes /r/frugalmalefashion, which should really be called /r/salesonmensclothingrelativetotheimaginarystickerprice (almost every post is a terrible sale and they ban any discussion of what is and is not actually a frugal purchase).
If you want advice about furniture, you’d want to look for somebody who knows a thing or two about that. If you want deals on fragrance, find an expert about that. Et cetera, et cetera. But people who run generic deal sites literally don’t know anything about anything except affiliate marketing and ads.
