Black Friday video card & hard drive deals

[Barry Watzman]

These are no longer available now, but there were some video card deals
today:

-Circuit City had ATI Radeon 9800 Pro cards for $150 after 2 rebates

-Best Buy had Radeon 9600XT cards for $99 after a rebate (this was
actually available on the web site for mail-order delivery on Thursday,
if you didn't want to fight the crowds and hour-long checkout lines at
6am today).

[Both of these were "the real thing", full retail "built-by" ATI brand
cards]

If you missed out, I would expect that tons of both of these will show
up on E-Bay within the next 72 hours or so.

Also, a notch or two down but still not bad, CompUSA had some high-end
NVidia GeForce FX5200 cards, VGA, DVI and TV-out, for $29. These may
still be available on Saturday, the had tons of them at the store that I
visited and they were not moving very quickly.

Also, there were tons of drive deals, Western Digital "JB" series drives
(8MB cache, 7200 RPM):

-160 gig for $29 (Best Buy)
-200 gig for $49 (OfficeMax)
-250 gig for $79 (Circuit City)

[All of these were rebate (or even multi-rebate) deals, of course.]

 

[SL]

The problem with Circuit City is the mail in rebate. By the time you
recieve your rebate, the card would cost 150$ anyways. Still, not a bad
price if you dont mind the holdout on your money.

I lost 40$ to BestBuy buying a WesterDigital HD. It was bad, I returned it
to BB and mailed in the new reciepts along with the old reciepts (appx 5
hours difference in buying them). BB did not honour the receipt as being
an original product code etc.... Which was bogus. I took digital photos of
all the stuff I sent them just for this kind of foul play. WD did
understand and gave me a coupon for future purchases. They were not
responsible, but helped me out with that bungled "rebate" mess these stores
love.

sorry for my rant, I just hate rebates. They could probably sell products
at cost. They make a fortune off all that rebate money being held up in the
banks drawing interest for weeks/months.

 

[Beekay]

The problem with Circuit City is the mail in rebate. By the time you
recieve your rebate, the card would cost 150$ anyways. Still, not a bad
price if you dont mind the holdout on your money.

I grabbed the last 9800Pro at my local Circuit City. There's a total of $70
in rebates which means I have paid $219 for the card so far, not a bad price
in and of itself. I've never had any major problems with CCity rebates and
I expect to have my $70 back in Feb. I've been watching this card for
awhile and I don't think it will be $150 by then but who knows. All I'm
sure of is my card is great and I'll be ready for HL2 on Christmas morning


I also picked up an 80gb HD from CompUSA for $28 with no rebates. They had
the 60's in the ad, but my store was out of those and letting the 80's go
for the same price, also a very nice deal.

 

[Stan]

I bought All-in-Wonder 9600XT for $125 (after rebates) at CompUSA. I think
that is a very good price.

 

[Flash]

The problem with Circuit City is the mail in rebate. By the time you
recieve your rebate, the card would cost 150$ anyways. Still, not a bad
price if you dont mind the holdout on your money.

I lost 40$ to BestBuy buying a WesterDigital HD. It was bad, I returned
it to BB and mailed in the new reciepts along with the old reciepts (appx
5 hours difference in buying them). BB did not honour the receipt as
being an original product code etc.... Which was bogus. I took digital
photos of all the stuff I sent them just for this kind of foul play. WD
did understand and gave me a coupon for future purchases. They were not
responsible, but helped me out with that bungled "rebate" mess these
stores love.

sorry for my rant, I just hate rebates. They could probably sell products
at cost. They make a fortune off all that rebate money being held up in
the banks drawing interest for weeks/months.

I too got scrwd with the WD rebates at BB. I got mine after a threat to
contact the Attorny General
to expose their scam. I followed the instruction but WD said I didn't turn
in the original UPC, which
I did. The other bad thing is you pay sales tax on the price before the
rebate, that is a rip too.
I got to wonder how much they make by not paying out. Check out
http://www.ripoffreport.com/

 

[Barry Watzman]

Best Buy had the same card for $99 after rebates (a better price). AND,
it was available for ordering on-line at Bestbuy.com on Thursday -- no
need to stand in line or fight the crowds.

I like the trend to offering the Black Friday specials online on
Thursday. Getting into the store at 6am can be bad; checking out,
however, is the real nightmare, some of the checkout lines were
estimated to be 3 hours long.

 

[NightSky 421]

sorry for my rant, I just hate rebates. They could probably sell products
at cost. They make a fortune off all that rebate money being held up in
the banks drawing interest for weeks/months.

I hate the whole mail-in rebate thing myself. Personally, my policy is that
I only go for products with a mail-in rebate if a store (1) has a proven
reliable track record for mailing out rebates in a timely fashion and/or (2)
the before-rebate price that I actually pay in the store is a good deal even
without the rebate. This way, I don't feel as bad if a rebate doesn't show
up.

The only time I've had a problem with any rebate was when I bought a Mylex
computer desk two or three years back. It basically never showed up. It
was only a $10 rebate anyway, and I felt that my purchase price of the desk
was low enough even without the rebate.

Overall, I mainly avoid mail-in rebates. My theory is that if lots of
people buy stuff on the pretense of getting some of their money back
afterwards via rebate, it only encourages the stores to offer more mail-in
rebates rather than in-store rebates. People ultimately vote with their
wallets. If enough people make their feelings known by avoiding mail-in
rebates (and optionally telling the store that the mail-in rebate is the
reason why they aren't buying something), things will change. Stores and
the companies that supply them are businesses. If they want to make (good)
money, they have to cater to the market since it's our dollars that feed
them.