We’ve partnered again with Jellyfish’s Smack Deal of the Day to offer our readers a chance at up to 80% off on products of their choice.
Jellyfish’s Smack Deal of the Day is a reverse auction: as time passes, price drops. The game is to buy the product at the lowest price possible. Towards the end it can get as low as 80% off. The trick is that you don’t know how many units are in stock, so if you wait too long… you lose out. There’s side games and a real-time chat too. Beats working!
At checkout, players pay full price, but receive the cash back via check or Paypal within 60 days. People seemed to have fun last time around.
Here’s where you come in. What would you like to get a smackdeal on?
We’ll take your suggestions and poll the results. The top picks get smackdealed at on Thursday 6/28 at 3pm Eastern .
Let us know your dream products in the comments.
Bookmark this: Consumerist Smackdeal Countdown
(On the backend, Jellyfish isn’t paying us. We just thought it would be a cool and fun thing for y’all.) — BEN POPKEN
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Only up to 80% off??
Is this legit? On the level? On the up-and-up? The straight banana?
If it is, then I’d like to play for a Nikon D40. They’re last year’s model; surely there’s a big pile of them someplace that needs to be moved.
Grr . . only US.
Even though it says in the Terms of use
“Be a U.S. or Canadian citizen or legal resident, at least 18 year of age”
She said if I had a US address I could use it. . meh.
Ben, welcome to March, when we switched to Daylight Saving time.
So THIS is “how to fix online shopping”. I see the tie-in…
@Fuzz:
Yeah, real nice for us polite neighbors to the north.
Garmin Nuvi 370.
‘Nuff said.
@Hawkins – Only anecdotal evidence, but I bought something during one of these and ended up having to do a chargeback because the company the item was from charged my card and never sent me the item, never returned emails, could not answer my concerns on the phone – said they would call me back within an hour, they didnt, called again and said if i didnt hear back by the end of the day i would do a chargeback (this was over 6 weeks since my card was charged) – they never called back.
Basically Jellyfish is an “aggregator” or sorts, selling products from various retailers – so probably depends on who the retailer is for the product, but in my case I got burned and it would put me off future participation…
Why do you have to wait up to 60 days to get your refund? Usually, there is just an authorization placed on the card you pay with and when the auction is over you are only charged the final amount, thus the rest of the authorization falls off and no waiting.
Just curious.
Sounds great, but it’s a huge time sink. I can read an entire day’s worth of Consumerist posts and comments in a few minutes, but A/V is real-time. That’s why I don’t do podcasts, or whatever the “cast du jour” is. The same text I can read in 10 minutes takes an hour to listen to. Is there some way to get these deals without taking an hour off work to watch talking heads?
At checkout, players pay full price, but receive the cash back via check or Paypal within 60 days.
Fail.
Suggested items:
1) Sippy cups
2) Totenkopf tee shirt
3) Cat toys!
4) Anything made in china
5) Home concert by Ronnie Segey
@polarogak: Agreed.
I kind of like this site so far. My first impression is that it looks fun.
TOTENKOPF TSHIRTS!
Seriously though, I’d be happy to play for a hard drive larger than 200 gigs. Be it internal or ex.
The website looks fun, but like other people I’m concerned with waiting up to 60 days to get my money back. On my credit card 60 days is the time limit I have to do a chargeback, so I would be worried about not getting the money back and being stuck paying full price.
I think Paypal has some consumer protection policies, does anyone know how those will apply?
I’ve used Jellyfish for four purchases, and NEVER had a problem before
Either a Nikon D40 or D40x would be great.
I want this guy:
Keyspan TVI-200C Tuneview For Ipod (Keyspan TVI200C)
[www.jellyfish.com]
@mishy: The 60-day chargeback limit is the reason you have to wait for the cash. Otherwise, it would be easy to defraud jellyfish by doing chargebacks for all purchases.
@mishy: The 60 days is in case you return something.
I signed up for jellyfish when it was first introduced on the consumerist, and I’ve made purchases and gotten money back. This really isn’t a scam, and you will get your money.
The reason for the waiting period is the return time. As mentioned above, jellyfish is an aggregator, you buy through a different site. The rebate, however, comes from jellyfish itself and not the store you bought it from (I believe their business model runs on ‘rebates’ from ad revenue). So, the waiting period is to prevent you from buying, returning and getting money for free. Not ideal by any means, but I’ve never heard anybody complain about not getting money back.
As a word of caution for anybody wanting buy anything, however, 80% isn’t realistic for most items. There are a lot of jellyfish users who double as ebay sellers, so many popular items will fall under the ’30%’ ish category – cheaper than ebay, but not drastically cheaper. Expect about a 25% cashback on a Nikon D40 before ebayers buy it for resale.
@polarogak: Yeah, that pretty much has “Oh, hellz no!” written all over it.
X-Box 360 Elite!
Doesn’t this seem a little tacky and possibly problematic for a site devoted to watching out for the consumer’s interest?
Sorry to be such a scold…
I participated in the last one consumerist promoted.
I ordered quicken 2007. After being backordered for over a month (and available everywhere else on earth) I cancelled it. Another 2 months to get a refund on my card.
Sorry, count me out of this “deal”.
80 GB ipod
Wii, So now I’ll spend half of my day on ebay and rest on this, is there any time left for work?
Is this some sort of test, to see if Ive been paying attention to how to properly identify a scam?
Lets see… posting an ad, and swearing you havent been paid (why on earth would you do that?)
Lots of gimmicks
Price not publicly posted
Promises a “refund” if I just pay everything now….
Its presented as a “game”
YEP! its a scam! do I win?
Lets get a Mac mini on the show! It’d be a first I think.
And for the people who don’t believe it works, then don’t go. I have a few hundred dollars in checks from Jellyfish. They’re plenty legit.
Let’s have a big batch of rechargeable batteries and an appropriate charger. I know plenty of people who want to make the switch, and it falls in line with the Consumerist’s mission statement. Sorta.
I am a regular on Jellyfish, I love it. But your statement is incorrect about 80%. We have had multiple items go at 100% off, at least 3. No one wanted to buy them, but bought them for shipping price only. This usually doesn’t happen during the smack show though, only during 24/7.
It’s fun kids, it’s legit, and tell them The Reviewer sent you, I mean besides The Consumerist.
can we get some sweet items from the chinese poison train on here?
I see from the screenshot that they copyrighted the phrase “talk’n smack,” which is a GOOD thing, because you don’t need other people making contractions of the phrase “talk and smack.”
…OH, it’s supposed to be “talkin’ smack”? Well, that makes more sense!
I weep for apostrophe use the world over.
@Firemedic510: Sorry to haer that. I’ve forwarded your comment on to Jellyfish and they are contacting the merchant to look into this.
HTC Pocket PC/Smartphones
@Ben Popken: Smackdeal has said that the issues commenters complained about concern a merchant they’re no longer working with and they’re going to give the people the same dollar amount of cash back off any other item on Jellyfish.com.
Smack Shopping just eliminated the cash-back system. All purchases are now made at the final price, and your savings are instantaneous.
For the record, I have had nothing but good experiences with Jellyfish, even during the cash-back era
The deals usually dont get that low because someone else will buy too early but the cash back is good if you get reward points on your credit card. This is not that great because there is usually only 1 product for sale at a time and someone always buys before it falls below store prices.