What Is a Bargain?

Lmitsy on 10/04/2009 - 14:30
Last edited 31/08/2022 - 18:39 by 1 other user

I am so $%@##$ annoyed of people posting stupid and petty comments about other people's bargains. People posting these bargains obviously feel that it may be of good use to someone, clearly not everyone is going to agree with it because he/she may not be interested in that particular bargain. Seriously! who gives a (profanity) if the bargain is 10% or 50% off or if it applies to 1 or 100 items, it's still a discount of some sort.

If this is what OzBargain is all about then maybe there should be a bargain specification clearly stated on the website so that we are all aware of what you class to be a bargain. But I guess that will limit the amount of users and traffic to the OzBargain website. So instead people that are trying to do the right thing by others will just have to put up with (profanity) from other people who seems to think that strangers will actually give a (profanity) about their opinions.

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Comments

  • Davo1111 on 10/04/2009 - 17:12

    Many companies have just been using this place for advertising and making marginal discounts to get 'viewers' from this site.

    A bargain is relative, i can go to Just Jeans and buy a pair of levis for $99, or i can go to David Jones and buy the same pair for $115 (after 30% discount), so which is a better deal?

  • AntMan76 on 10/04/2009 - 17:12

    Ok, so admittedly some people make stupid comments and vote neg for stupid reasons. But the way I see it, a bargain is when the item/deal falls into one of the following categories:-

    • is a huge discount/very cheap price not normally seen
    • is truly discounted and not just a regular slightly cheaper price.
    • is for an item that rarely gets discounted (like Apple products)
    • is a % off store wide type deal where you can then choose the item that is discounted (the item could be anything and therefore the end price could fall into the above categories after discount)

    Some deals are region-limited so the 'bargain' won't apply to everyone but I think a bargain is a bargain, regardless of whether you can benefit from it personally. But then that's not gonna cover for the idiots.

    I am sure there are other categories but thats all I could come up with off the top of my head.

    Just my opinion.

  • Davo1111 on 10/04/2009 - 17:24

    yeah, i completely agree about your neg region voting comment, but i'm just getting irritated at sockpuppeters + people using this place as an advertising site.

    http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/11693
    http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/11452

    • AntMan76 on 10/04/2009 - 17:46

      TOTALLY agree Davo.

      Lucky we have the power to get rid of the listings though. I wonder if there should be a rule where a user/IP should be reviewed once they have submitted x number of 'bargains' with more than 5 negs (voted down by OzBargain users from the first page). Reviewed by the mods/admin of course.

  • scotty on 14/04/2009 - 19:05
    +2

    @mitsy — I hate to pull people's legs when they start a helpful discussion that's actually providing good feedback to OzBargain, but I really want to know your intention in posting this.

    From our records you are actually posting your own sales under another alias. So are you simply not happy because your "deals" got criticised?

    However I also understand that "bargain" is all relative, and the demographic of our members might put a bias on what gets voted up (or down). Currently a lot of our members came from Whirlpool/OCAU so I guess that would put a bit of weight on technology related offers on this site, and most of those into technology are usually clueless on fashion stuff (myself included :)

  • Nezuji on 22/06/2010 - 18:00

    (Posted here instead of in http://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/27430 to avoid overly-derailing that post.)

    dragonrabit said:
    question to Nezuji. what is your definition of a deal? for limited time only? or any time but the price is cheaper compare than similar product on the market?

    Well now, I’ll readily admit that that’s a pretty grey area. I did spend a long time looking at all the guidelines here on OzBargain before I voted and made my comment, and there’s nothing in there against making a post like this. But the reality is that if everyone made a post every time a company changed its lineup of regular offerings (products or services), or someone found a company with a price that was lower than the lowest-known competitor, this site would be knee-deep in something very close to spam advertising, with its current format.

    I may be wrong, but I think that the “vibe” at OzBargain is not to be an index of lowest prices (something that I believe is indicated in the deal-posting guidelines when they say you should check price-comparison sites before posting your deal, implying that OzBargain itself is not a price-comparison site), but more a listing of bargains to be snapped up before they pass you by. So, in light of that, yeah I think that “limited time offer” would be an important part of what I would consider to be a deal on OzBargain.

    I’m aware that this is slightly hypocritical of me, as I’ve commented on other’s posts regarding online savings accounts and never raised this issue before, but honestly, I’d never really thought too hard about it until now. But at least with online savings accounts, the offer is almost always still in the format of “get more interest until such-and-such-a-date”.

    Am I wrong? What are other peoples' opinions on this?

    • Nezuji on 22/06/2010 - 18:03

      dragonrabit said:

      i guess, we just need to as moderator to update the rule. so it will makes easy for us to point out this is bargain or not bargain.

      coz for me definition of bargain, if i can get more with the $ amount or i can get cheaper price elsewhere for similar product.

      when we talk about time frame, may be iinet update their products every 6 months. In this case, this post has fulfilled your requirement about the time frame?
      again about time frame, you might argue, 6 months too long.
      some people might argue, time is a relative. no one can say long or short.

      at the end, i just want moderator update the rule, to makes everyone more clear what u can do, what u can’t do. and less argument and less work for them as well.

      • Nezuji on 22/06/2010 - 18:05

        You're quite right to point out the blurring of the lines between an offer valid for 6 months, and a company that changes its offerings every 6 months. Or, indeed, an offer which is initially only supposed to run for a few weeks but is extended and re-extended due to popularity. But I still think that the distinction is an important one; in the case of a limited-time offer, I would assume that this is a special, one-off deal, likely to be an excellent bargain when compared to all standard offerings; with a company that changes its pricing structure quite frequently, I would assume that this is due to the rapid change of that company's market, and that I would find similar prices at their competitors. Indeed, some of the comments related to the iiNet offer indicate that the new plans bring them more in line with their competitors, and that people have been waiting for this to happen.

        Some kind of easy-to-follow rule in the guidelines would be the best solution, I agree, if it can be done. I think it really boils down to whether OzBargain is a price-comparison site, or a limited-time sale site. Of course, it could be both, but I don't think that the current site format (single tagged posts) lends itself very well to price-indexing.

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