Coupons without cutting
Finding sales in everyday shopping is something most people have to hunt for, but with daily deal websites becoming more common, the sales find the buyer, instead.
Chelsea Jepsen, a senior majoring in nursing, said websites like LivingSocial and Groupon contact buyers through email.
“It sends you the email, and then tells you a brief description for the offer of the day,” Jepsen said. “There’s a lot of variety, and if you’re interested, you click on the link and purchase it.”
The bigger companies give deals for cities around the country, but there are also local sites, like Cache Daily Deals.
“One of the downsides for big sites like LivingSocial is that the closest city it has as an option is Ogden,” said Tim Hammond, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering. “You can still get deals for Logan, but it bases it out of Ogden.”
Hammond said he looks for deals all of the time, which is why he shops for clothes at Deseret Industries, Ross and KSL.com. He also subscribes to both LivingSocial and Cache Daily Deals.
“The way it works for Cache Daily Deals is they need a certain number of people to respond in order to make the deal available, so it’s kind of hit and miss that way,” Hammond said. “You can’t always get the deal, even if it’s advertised.”
Another drawback, Jepsen said, is the websites don’t always provide deals on things that students need.
“There are not a lot of deals for basic necessities,” Jepsen said. “As college students, we try to be really frugal, but (the deals are) a lot of extra things that we students don’t always have the resources for.”
Hammond also said sometimes the deals don’t apply to him.
“I think some people don’t sign up just because it is random, hit and miss,” Hammond said. “The other day I got an email deal for a photographer, but I don’t have any need for a photographer.”
Jepsen said there were also advantages to getting these deals.
“I think it gives you a lot of ideas for places, activity-wise,” he said. “It tells you things you wouldn’t know about normally and gives you a good discount on them.”
Jepsen said her best purchase was a day pass to Seven Peaks Water Park. She said if she hadn’t seen the deal, she wouldn’t have gone.
“I got it for 19 bucks, and it’s normally 30-something, so it was a really good deal,” she said. “It also came with lunch and a free tube rental.”
Hammond agreed, he said the emails come in handy.
“When I first signed up, I didn’t get any emails confirming it or anything,” Hammond said. “But then I asked this girl to the corn maze, and the next day Cache Daily Deals sent a coupon for the corn maze. It was totally serendipitous.”
There are more daily deal websites than just the kind that send email updates.
Eric Larsen, a sophomore majoring in computer science, said he subscribes to Cache Daily Deals, but his favorite sites to check are Woot and Whiskey Militia.
“I like Woot.com because I’m kind of a nerd, and they sell a lot of electronic or technology-oriented stuff,” Larsen said. “And Whiskey Militia usually has more clothing-type stuff.”
Larsen said he heard about Woot a few years ago from friends but didn’t begin checking it regularly for a while. Now, he said, he uses the sites more often, but the frequency of his visits depend on his finances.
“How often I check them depends on how poor I am at the moment,” Larsen said. “If I have extra money, I check them quite often. If I don’t have extra money, I don’t.”
Larsen said these types of sites have both advantages and disadvantages.
“One of the best deals I’ve gotten was an $80 HDMI cable for $8,” Larsen said. “You can save a lot of money, and college students are generally broke. But sometimes you’re tempted to buy stuff that you don’t need because it’s cheap.”
Regardless of where students go for deals, Hammond said it’s important to be sure to use credible sites.
“Definitely make sure they’re legitimate,” he said. “Make sure they’re not just ripping you off. There are a bunch of legit ones, like LivingSocial, Groupon and Cache Daily Deals; you just have to find them.”
– m.noble@aggiemail.usu.edu