Blessed by the Potato

Well, it looks like the group deal fad may finally be getting to its final phase. About two years ago new group deal sites were popping up like crazy, offering steep discounts on everything from restaurants to meat to rock climbing.

I quickly soured on the concept after finding a few deals hard to redeem (one $10 offer ended up expiring before I could use it, and it ended up being a real last-minute rush to finally use my rock climbing pass the week before it expired). Some people got burned bad by the various butcher offers. Plus after the first few months there didn’t seem to be any decent deals, and far too many individual deal sites to track. I ended up signing up for Red Flag Deals’ roundup, which monitored most of the deals and just sent you one email… and really, there’s been nothing to get me excited. Many recent deals have you paying for coupons, which is confusing and stupid.

Then recently I noticed large discounts starting to come back, such as today’s wireless iphone keyboard for 60% off ($50 normally $120!!). Except… that’s not the regular price, or at least it shouldn’t be. Futureshop has it at $90, and Amazon (US) as cheap as $19. Plus the small print in the email says you have to pay for shipping as well, making that a paltry 30% off the futureshop price. There are plenty of other examples, so be sure to check if the huge percentage off advertised by the group deal is actually what you’ll be saving: it may not be worth the hassle if the so-called discount isn’t remotely realistic.