Reflecting back on the good ol' days... Reel.com and other stuff (1 Viewer)

[Jeff D]

I was just looking back through some of records I kept on deals back in the day...

I think I use to make money off some of this stuff.


Check this out...

Reel.com $25GC through AMEX and get $10 I did this a bunch, ended up with quite a few GC. These GC cost me $0.60 per $1, 40% off!

BrandsForLess would do deals like $25 off a $50 order and shipping reimbursment.

I, no doubt, would use a coupon for say $10.

So fill up the card with $68 of DVD's

$68 of DVDs
-10 coupon
-----
$58 subtotal minus tax

$58 paid with GC that cost me $34.80
or
$34.80
-25 BFL rebate
-----
9.80

total cost of $9.80+tax for almost $70 of DVDs!

I see some other things here that are boggling my mind...
Buy a reel.com GC for $30 get a $20 bonus credit from Amex and a $10 pruchase discount. So $30 for FREE! How many times did I try this?

Other things... BFL $30 back on a $50 purchase, $50 purchase was $50 in GCs so $20 get's ya $50.

Many of the GC deals would later be combined with other deals and I have no idea how I ended up paying cash for the hundreds of discs I bough...

 

[Aaron Silverman]

Stop that! You're gonna make me cry. . .

Thooooooooose were the days!

 

[Ryan Wishton]

I remember those days and I very much so miss those days...

 

[Greg_P]

I miss those days too. My favorite was still 800.Com's 3 for $1 deal.

Ahhhh, those were the days !!

 

[CaptDS9E]

the 3 for a $1 days were the best. Its good to have a big family

capt

 

[JustinCleveland]

I never got in on the 800.com deal, what was that?

Reel.com was wonderful, as was Bigstar.com I don't think I used Amazon.com until after 2000!

 

[Dave Scarpa]

Reel and Bigstar saved me alot of money, when i have people looking at me in perplexment at my over 700 DVD's I have to remind them a good 400 of them were purchased on the Cheap. Those were good times

 

[Craig Robertson]

Quote:
I never got in on the 800.com deal, what was that?

when 800.com first "opened" on the web, they ran a promotion to get their name out, 3 dvd for $1. i came out very very very well with this one, like Joey said,"Its good to have a big family."

 

[TheLongshot]

The 800.com deal was only on a limited selection of DVDs, tho, so I had a hard time picking my discs. Of the three, I only have one left (The Man In The Iron Mask). The other two (The Rock, 2001) were upgraded and I got rid of the old version.

Another good deal was the Express.com/EBates combination, which I think you could get as much as 46% off.

Jason

 

[Kyle McKnight]

the original reel.com was great, and with the daily trivia to get "in store money"...fun.

 

[Jesse Skeen]

Remembering those deals is painful only because I damn near went flat broke after buying my DVL-909 and Dolby/DTS sound system, while still not having paid off all of my $2500 TV on top of that! I was about $4000 in debt and was only making enough to pay the minimum amount on my credit card, which with interest resulted in about zilch towards actually paying it off. I realized I couldn't buy any discs until I'd finally paid the credit cards off once and for all- I couldn't even take advantage of the 3 for $1 offer because even with shipping it would come out to about $5 on my credit card, and I just couldn't put any more on it!
I finally found a good second job and worked pretty much nonstop til I had it all paid off, but I missed all the great internet deals. The only one I got in on was the Troma 25-cent sale, since that happened when I was close to paying everything off.
Needless to say, I use my credit cards a LOT more responsibly now.

 

[Joseph S]

The best part about 800.com was the yummy buttery popcorn that came with each order.

Reel.com's 40-60% off retail prices, all the coupons, BFL, and AMEX...

 

[Jeff D]

My company's sales office was right next door to 800.com's at CES in like 98 or 99, whatever year they started... This wasn't an "open to the public" area, but there were people stopping by knocking on that door every 5-10 minutes wanting to know where there 3 for $1 discs were.

I never saw anyone enter or leave that 800.com office, but I must have seen several hundred folks talking about the deal.

Incidently, I too was wondering where my 3 for $1 discs were. They came, but it took a while. =)

I forgot about all the perks... 800's popcorn, dvdexpress' post-it notes, others had pens. It was a fun time to be a consumer.

I also didn't mention that I owned about 200 DVDs before I purchased my first DVD player. That's how good the deals were...

 

[Dick White]

Whenever I start missing those days too much, I remind myself of thinking how great is was using coupons to get a $30 DVD for $10 -- and now they're in the $5.88 bin at Wal-Mart. Also, I think about being the person who would never buy the same movie twice and who has replaced a bunch of non-anamorphic DVDs with newer special edititions and even bought Dirty Dancing three times. Still, I doubt I'd have over 2000 today without all those coupons and freebies from Warner. And I really miss the popcorn .

 

[Lane F.]

Not sure if anyone remembers this, but these was an online store called "Value America" where they automatically gave you $100 dollars worth of store credit just for registering with them. If I remember right you could pay for up to 50% of a purchase with value dollars, which basically equaled 1/2 off!

I cant even remember all of the online dvd stores (which have since gone out of buisness) which always had coupons for $5 off, $10 off ,etc. Back then I never payed more than $10 for a dvd! God I miss those days =)

 

[John Kilroy]

I miss the Home Theater Forum we had in those days...

 

[Marty M]

I was able to build up my DVD collection at a very cheap price. The average price I was paying for a DVD back then was around $10. That was cheaper than a CD.

Quote:
I miss the Home Theater Forum we had in those days...
When I joined HTF there were only 1,900 members. It was a very small family then.

 

[David Rubenstein]

Does anyone remember the Reel.com "Chewbacca" coupon that could be used multiple times? I believe it was $20 off a purchase of at least $20. I think it was one of their first coupons and they changes them to one time only after that.

 

[Joseph S]

I think you mean
"WOOKIEKISS"

Don't remember if it was one of the multiuse ones. A good coupon thread dealt with the ethics in using a Reel coupon from a gay website/mag. I used to have an old Apple notepad flip file with all my coupons available and redeemed with all the goodies and the breakdowns to hit the $25, $50/$60 cuttoffs for coupon use without much waste.

I only know one of my credit cards by heart now, back then I knew them all including the expiration dates because if you snoozed you lost.

 

[Erwin]

Oh yeah, I came just in time to the DVD WORLD. It was the summer of 1998. DVD was still in a very small niche. You could show off your DVDs when friends came over because they didn't have a DVD player and you didn't have to worry about them asking to borrow a movie. Sorry, but unless it's my parents, I'm not comfortable when someone asks to borrow a DVD.

Anyway, I must have purchased over 100 DVDs in 1999 at REEL.com and 800.com exclusively. I remember when you first ordered with them, you could get a free dvd. And there was another time I got a free dvd because of some offer that was sent to me by email. I remember getting the Titanic DVD for $9.99 while places were selling it for $29.99. The good thing about Reel.com was that you could get the lesser known titles for a cheap price rather than the big name titles. But, I have to admit, I mostly buy the big titles. I remember getting The Matrix for $5.99 and most titles cost me $9.99 to $14.99 on average. Buy.com had some good deals going for awhile. I think I got both Jurassic Parks (dts versions) for $14.99. As long as we keep getting thosee $14.99 deals, I'll be happy and I think we will because DVD has completely taken over VHS movies.