After months of preparation, the new beta version of BargainJack is now live!  Please proceed with caution, as a few links are still broken, and some of the content pages still need to be updated.

Nonetheless, if all goes well, we will be launching this site as soon as possible!  Look for a target launch date of somewhere between Saturday, 9/19 and Sunday, 9/27.

As always, we love feedback!  Just send your comments to jack@bargainjack.com.  We read everything that comes through, and will try to reply to as many as possible!

Thanks!
-Jack

TwitterUntil further notice, each Sunday we will be providing one lucky winner with an Amazon gift certificate worth $100, just for following BargainJack on Twitter and getting active on our new BargainJack hashtag, #bjack!  The rules are simple:

To accept the award, you must respond to our direct message on Twitter, as this will be our means of verifying whether you’re the winner or not.  We will need your email address to process the gift certificate and have it emailed to you.

As this is a random drawing, it’s obviously to your advantage to tweet more, as we’ll be picking a random tweet and providing that tweet’s author with a $100 gift certificate.  However, the winning tweet must have content relevant to BargainJack, and must not constitute spam or any sort of gaming of the system.

In other words, just post relevant content to BargainJack.  Relevant content includes responses to the products we feature, responses to comments made by other users and their tweets, etc.

This contest will continue indefinitely, with the first winner being announced this Sunday, and the following weeks’ winners being announced every Sunday after that.  Contest participants are eligible from now until the time of drawing on Sunday.  For future weeks, participants are eligible from the time of the previous Sunday drawing to the time of the next Sunday drawing.

Good luck and help us get Twittified!

After a long hiatus, our newsletters are now back up!  We have been painfully going through a server migration, including some reconfiguring of our mail servers, which caused us to temporarily suspend the newsletters.  So, if you’re wondering why you’re suddenly receiving a newsletter after several weeks without one, this is the reason.

Hope you enjoy the speed on the new site with our new server.  We’ve got some exciting things planned in the short term, so stay tuned!

For all of us, it was quite a shock earlier this week when Circuit City announced they were closing their stores.  It’s really a shame actually.  Sure, Circuit City may have been a little higher in price at times compared to the online-only retailers, but what I liked about Circuit City was the convenience.  I could go online, purchase a product, and choose in-store pickup and have the item within 24 minutes.

Anyway, despite the recent news, I can only hope that other brick and mortar stores follow Circuit City’s lead when it comes to bridging the gap between online and in-store shopping.  The ability to apply your coupon code online, research products, etc., and still be able to pick them up same day is what made Circuit City one of my favorite retailers.  I was sometimes willing to pay an extra 5-10% to cover tax or other markups, just so I could get my product on the same day.

Other stores offer this same great approach, like Best Buy, Sears, and Office Depot.  We can only more stores follow this example, despite the tough economic climate.  I think it’s the only way these local retailers can truly add value, as impatient buyers will certainly spend an extra $10 or more at times just to get their product same day.

So with that, Circuit City will be sorely missed.  Nonetheless, I’d like to thank Circuit City for pioneering the way with a revolutionary in-store pickup system that will pave the way into the future for other brick and mortar retailers.

All,

We have a wonderful way of timing things perfectly, and this summer weeklong vacation down to the coast was no exception.  Right now, we’re right in the path of Ike, on the dirty side of Ike to be exact, so we’re in an evacuation mode right now.  The site updates may be a little slow today, but we’ve called in the reserves, so hopefully we’ll still be able to serve up some great deals.

I hope everyone else in the path of this storm along the Texas Gulf coast stays safe.

I receieved some interesting feedback today on the Olevia 65″ HDTV we featured at Buy.com for $2600.  This has reignited a debate I thought I had already put to a close in my mind, so I’m proposing my thought process through the form of a poll on the forums.

Specifically, I’d like to know if the intrinsic value (customer service, return policies, etc.) matter enough to you to affect the price you’d be willing to pay.  In other words, would you be willing to pay more for a TV at Buy.com because they have a real return policy and customer service, compared to Woot, who featured the same TV the day before for $2300 ($300 cheaper)?

Please use this forum poll to record your votes and/or comments, and I can promise you, this will be considered going forward as we hand pick the deals we want to feature on our site.

Thanks!

After months and months of torture and agony, the new site is ready to go!  We hope you enjoy it as much as we’ve <cough> enjoyed developing it </cough>.

Some of the exciting new features in the site include:

  • New look and feel (obviously)
  • Interactive commenting on all of the individual product pages, so you can comment live on the deals!
  • Voting functionality added for each deal
  • Featured daily deal is now styled in wordpress, allowing users to comment on the write-up
  • Improved categorization functionality, allowing you to quickly narrow in on the types of products you’re looking for
  • Better filters for getting rid of the deals you don’t want to see, such as mail-in rebate deals or deals without free shipping
  • New and improved forum based on vbulletin
  • One login to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them: use your single login for commenting in the blog, or posting messages in our forum
  • BargainJack TV! (coming soon)
  • Product recommendations as you browse particular products
  • Separate one day deals site: http://www.onedaybuys.com

And probably several other little details that I forgot to mention, including some under-the-hood functionality that allows us to support the site and our content better.

We really hope you enjoy the new look and functionality as much as we do.  We know our previous site, though intuitive and successful, was a bit of an eye-sore and didn’t have all the great features we now enjoy.

If you have any issues, problems, or concerns, please feel free to let us know!

-Jack

Stores