Whenever I See an "Associated" OP on a Deal, I Just Scroll past. AITA?
I'd say 99 out of 100 deals where OP is tagged "associated" are negged to hell and are, majority of the time, price inflated drop shipped garbage that can be found elsewhere for a fraction of the price.
"I'd say 99 out of 100 deals" "can be found elsewhere for a fraction of the price."
You're missing out on the 1% then?
.
If I see any tag and it's an Amazon post, I always stop in to drop a neg because they are 99/100 dropshitting useless shit where they have jacked their prices to give a fake discount.
Post a link to the AliExpress item first and then neg away.
NTA.
There are some associated OPs that post very good deals. Ones that come to mind are @IWantThatFlight and the guy that does pharmacy deals @jason101
Jason refuses to answer any questions about the efficacy of the cold and flu medication that he bundles into many of the deals he posts.
Can't you google it or ask your doctor?
That's a silly suggestion for two reasons
1) seeing your doctor when you have a cold is a waste of medical resources on something they can't really help you with. "rest and have lots of fluids" is generic advice that wastes an appointment for someone who may actually need it.
2) the role of a pharmacist is to control, formulate, preserve and dispense medications and provide advice and counselling on how medicines should be used to achieve maximum benefit, minimal side effects and to avoid drug interactions. It is their job to understand the medicines they are dispensing and how they work.
@Domingo: I haven't read any of his posts, but is he obliged to provide medical advice or information over the internet? If you have questions wouldn't it be better to see a pharmacist in person?
It reminds me of people asking for technical help over the phone. If I was in front of their device I might be able to fix it in a minute, but because I'm going blind and can't see cues that may be obvious to me but not to the person, a one minute job can turn into a 20 minute job.
In this case it can take even longer if each reply takes a long time because each party is leaving posts on an online forum. It might not be worth his time to spend 10 minutes per person selling a box of tablets at a discounted price. If he starts answering you, 20 other people might have various questions and he'd have to spend half the day answering questions.
If I buy a cheap laptop from MSY I don't expect them to spend 15 mins helping me choose.
If I want good service I'd go to JB and pay JB prices. :)
@eug: A laptop is very different to medicine.
And not only that, I expect a laptop to do the things a laptop should reasonably be expected to do, eg turn on, boot, run an operating system, accept inputs from a user etc etc.
Numerous people have linked to peer reviewed studies in deal threads that show that orally administered phenylephrine has no effect as a decongestant, yet he continues to sell it as such.
It's like selling you a laptop with a 1440p screen, except the screen doesn't show anything - although in that instance I'm sure you'd be able to pursue a refund.
A laptop is very different to medicine.
You're missing my main point. I was referring to the service level. If I want the cheapest prices, I wouldn't expect the seller to spend time explaining things to me. I'd do my own research and let other people buy that $400 laptop with 4GB RAM, or the PE tablets.
If I wanted the seller to spend time answering my questions, I'd walk in to a JB or a pharmacy and ask them, and pay more for the service. Or I'd ask the cheapest seller anyway and if they can't spend much time answering I won't hold it against them, then I'd do my own research and decide if I should buy it or not.
Answering people's questions takes time (especially when it's over a slow medium like forum posts), the store has to pay for that staff member's time, that drives up their operating costs, which means they have to charge higher prices to cover their overheads.
Of course there are businesses that offer low prices and provide good service too; that's not the norm though.
@eug: That's fine in a non regulated industry.
Pharmacists are regulated and are registered with AHPRA. Part of that registration is adhering to the Shared Code of Conduct, an extract of which is below:
1.2 Good care
Maintaining a high level of professional competence and conduct is essential for good care.
Good practice includes that you:
a. ensure you maintain adequate knowledge and skills to provide safe and effective care
b. ensure that, when moving into a new area of practice, you have sufficient training and/or qualifications to
achieve competency in that new area
c. maintain adequate records (see Section 8.3 Health records)
d. consider the balance of potential benefit and harm in all clinical management decisions
e. communicate effectively with patients to ensure they have enough information to make an informed decision
about their current and future care and respect their decision if they choose no treatment or care (see Section
3.2 Effective communication)
f. provide treatment options that are based on the best available information and are not influenced by financial
gain or incentives
I'm not suggesting he start doing extensive consultations with every person on OzBargain, but he answers many other questions while repetitively ignoring that one. My preference is that healthcare does not become a commoditized industry where practitioners are just looking to make a buck and give poor advice that is not in the best interest of the people who depend on that system.
If that's unreasonable then call me unreasonable.
To clarify, I do not have a problem with jason101 or his deals in general. I have purchased from him in the past and will likely do so again in the future - as long as they don't include a product I have concluded is ineffective according to peer reviewed published studies. I have an issue with him both pushing and bundling such a product and then dodging questions about it.
If another seller was to post say a USB-C cable that had a high rate of not working according to official reviews and individual experiences, people would take issue with it. The same standards should apply to medicines at a minimum - in fact better standards should apply to medicines, given the information I've provided above.
TA's associated Lenovo posts normally get a sh!tload of positive votes.
Edit: my bad. It's 3rd party not associated
IMO, there is two different Associated reasons.
One that is pushing a deal from the company. The other is OzBargainers who have approached the company to get better deals.
Usually, it's easy to see the difference (one is a bargain, the other is not!).
The FuseTechAU deals are quite decent, so are the TechFast ones too. Those are posted by reps. But yeah, there are lots of crap posts posted daily.
i got some good nut deals over the years so ymmv. you snooze you lose?
that can be found elsewhere for a fraction of the price.
Then start posting those at a fraction of the price in the original thread…
I been thinking about asking a few restaurants I've worked with if they want to give away some meals to OZB members, but too lazy, and I don't want you guys knowing it's me/or the restaurants knowing my own username here. I don't know why it doesn't happen more often, a bakery could give away 50 donuts to people who walk in on a day and ask for the OZB special and it'd introduce 50 new people to their business for the cost of a donut each.
Your typical OzBargainer isn't the sort of traffic you want, just turning up for a free donut then never showing up again
This is why cafes have coffee cards, encouraging repeat business
Your average OZB would probably leave a negative review on Google Maps, now that I think about it.
yeah it will backfire badly.
over the years i've seen even places where you have to pay a bit for groupon implode because of the unexpected costs and traffic.
small locales just can't scale that well.
even during covid times, i've seen small shop online deliveries go down because someone decided to abuse their ordering system (because who invests in cyber security ay?)
Bargain hunters usually shop for their own benefit and are not really brand loyal but moreso bargain loyal.
Im interested to see, for example how many ozbargainers only buy from the addidas 30% extra off clearance items versus buying at discount AND buy normally at addidas. I assume not many.
So, imo, advertising a small/local businesses and introduce them to new audience - Oz bargainers may not work in their favour.
If you bypass storerep deals you would’ve missed this. I didn’t.
and the cheap Samsung tab
when ever I read the forum I just scroll and think sweet trolls are out
it's me everytime i see this sort of title: "I did something , AITA?"
I resist the urge everytime to say "Yes you ATA sam, you always has been sam."
I should've done the classic 'first forum post, be gentle' openers
Scrolled this far down & still trying to work out who the hell Aita is
It's possible that you are ;)
bradstud/shitpost untagged association
I don’t think it makes you TA, but seems like a petty reason to potentially miss out on a deal.
A bargain is a bargain, why does it matter who’s offering it?
"negged to hell"
I dunno what site you're using; I've found it incredibly difficult to neg bad deals here without a moderator removing it.
ALso, WTH is AITA?
“am i the arsehole?” popularised by a Reddit page called r/AITA
If you are genuinely not looking at them at all, you may like to go here and click "Do not show deals posted by Store Representatives on New Deals listing". For everyone else, it is in my account menu > settings > edit > deals .
If you use that setting, you will still see the front page store rep deals. 5/20 of the most popular deals in the past 30 days were posted by reps.
You can also click 'hide' under a particular deal to hide that poster or store from future deals.