Best Kept Black Friday Secret? Compaq V2402US Laptop $188.19 @ CompUSA...

[jpeyton]

What do you think was the best kept secret or deal that many people overlooked on Black Friday?

 

In my opinion, it was the CompUSA AOL Giftcard deal. Sign up for AOL For Broadband at $14.95/month for 12 months and you get an instant $250 CompUSA giftcard.

 

$14.95 x 12 = $179.40

 

I grabbed a black 4GB iPod Nano and a Sony PSP so far, $179.40 each out the door, and I still have some giftcards left. I might cancel AOL right away and just pay the $179.40 upfront (cancellation fee equals monthly fee multiplied by months remaining in contract) or let AOL finance my Nano and PSP for free for 12 months and cancel at the end of the contract.

 

Either way, I was really suprised at how few people were signing up. Especially since there were so many people buying well over $250 worth of items; saving $70 is nothing to sneeze at.

 

EDIT: BTW, I have no intention of ever installing or using AOL on my computer. I just did the deal for the giftcard.

[RossMAN]

EDIT: BTW, I have no intention of ever installing or using AOL on my computer. I just did the deal for the giftcard.

Good, otherwise you'd be banned

[CarpeDiem]

Where was the PSP at for that price?

[RossMAN]

Where was the PSP at for that price?

It's in the second line of his post, CompUSA but you had to sign up for the AOL $250 discount.

[Kingfalcon]

The PSP for that price was the $249 minus the $70 savings on the AOL GC deal. I would know b/c I did it three times... :)

[CarpeDiem]

ok so I should go to bed lol I missed that one that would have been nice

[Genkii]

AOL Rebates are definitely not the best deals....just a hassle to cancel....they will try to keep you on the phone forever and even give u free months (they want to you to hopefully forget about it and bill you for it as soon as the free months are up). One thing for sure is that I will never load up AOL software....it's like spyware and it screws a lot of things up in your computer. Best keep secret was probably the PSP at Meijer for 199.88. I got two more of them for 199.98 at Walmart with a PM. Another best deal was the PSP games at Meijer as well......buy one at regular price get the second one for 60% off. Overall, Walmart and Meijer are probably the winners this year. BBY, CC, Compusa didn't have really good deals.....it was mostly junk they wanted to get cleared off the shelf. Went to BBY at 9am and they still had a good quantity of junk there. Hope it was fun for everyone!!!

[jpeyton]

AOL Rebates are definitely not the best deals....just a hassle to cancel....they will try to keep you on the phone forever and even give u free months (they want to you to hopefully forget about it and bill you for it as soon as the free months are up). One thing for sure is that I will never load up AOL software....it's like spyware and it screws a lot of things up in your computer. Best keep secret was probably the PSP at Meijer for 199.88. I got two more of them for 199.98 at Walmart with a PM. Another best deal was the PSP games at Meijer as well......buy one at regular price get the second one for 60% off. Overall, Walmart and Meijer are probably the winners this year. BBY, CC, Compusa didn't have really good deals.....it was mostly junk they wanted to get cleared off the shelf. Went to BBY at 9am and they still had a good quantity of junk there. Hope it was fun for everyone!!!

No Meijer in Oregon, unfortunately.

 

But for roughly 30% off giftcards, I think I can spare some time cancelling AOL over the next year. Maybe I'll cancel one account per month, after I have a few beers in me :) That way the conversation will be enjoyable for both of us.

[Genkii]

If you can put up with them at AOL then you got your deal alright......yeah I could use a nice beer too. Keep on coming with those best keep secrets!!!

[jpeyton]

Just a little update. I guess the Compaq V2402US that CompUSA advertised for BF ($299.99 AR w/ AOL sign-up, or $549.99 AR w/o AOL sign-up) wasn't such a hit with consumers, because MANY CompUSA stores had the laptop in stock on Saturday. Probably the AOL thing that scared people off.

 

Anyways, in response to that, CompUSA released a special Saturday only rebate that made the laptop $399.99 AR, no AOL sign-up required.

 

I'm haven't explained the good part yet. As I mentioned earlier, if you sign-up for the $14.95/month AOL plan, you end up paying $179.40 for a $250 giftcard. The deal was supposedly only good on BF, but it ended up working on Saturday too. Now the giftcard deal is dead, though; instead of $250, you only get $125 for signing up.

 

So Saturday afternoon, long after the BF crowds had gone, I walked into CompUSA with three $250 giftcards that I got for three separate AOL signups.

 

I asked the salesperson for the laptop, which was $729.99 with $330 in rebates, for a final total of $399.99.

 

I paid for the laptop with my three giftcards, which cost me $179.40 each.

 

$179.40 x 3 = $538.20 minus $330 MIR = $210 minus $20.01 remaining giftcard balance = $188.19 final cost after rebates and AOL fees.

 

Seems like a lot of work, but it really wasn't. Three AOL giftcard sign-ups took me 10 minutes each; cancelling three AOL accounts (now or later) will take a few minutes on the phone with an AOL CSR; and the rebates will take about 15 minutes to fill out and mail. Significantly less time than waiting 10 hours overnight in front of WalMart or Best Buy.

 

CompUSA rebates are golden, BTW. Ever since they were investigated for rebate fraud a while back, they have mailed every rebate I've submitted in one month or less. For comparison, HP took almost three months to get my rebates to me.

 

The laptop itself is great (check it out here). Added a cheap 256MB stick of memory for $25, and a WiFi card for $15. I love the BrightView screen, and the Sempron feels snappy. Best of all, it came with a full 6-Cell battery; most cheap BF laptops came with 4-Cell batteries.

 

EDIT: Even more good news; the $300 CompUSA rebate can be submitted online, which I am doing right now. The $30 HP rebate must be mailed in.

[DaleRider]

I'm glad you got what you wanted in that notebook. I looked at that one, too, before deciding on the CC Toshiba. Why? A few reasons:

 

The 15" screen was a small factor.

 

The slightly larger, but noticeably faster hard drive was a bigger factor. (The Compaq has a 4200rpm spin rate vs. the Toshiba's 5400rpm spin rate....and will make loading and accessing programs a tad faster on the Tosh.)

 

The built-in wireless in the Tosh was a plus.....don't have to sacrifice either the card slot or a USB port for wireless.

 

Already came with a stick of 512MB RAM....and adding a similar stick will give dual-channel function, something the Compaq cannot do.

 

And the batteries are actually quite comparable.....even though one is a 4 cell and one is a 6 cell, run time will probably be close to even. Notice that both Toshiba and Compaq offer an upgraded battery for the laptops.....the Toshiba is an 8 cell and the Compaq is a 12 cell. I'd honestly suppose both are going to achieve 1 1/2 hours or so on the stock battery and approx. 3 hours on the larger battery either offers.

 

Glad you're happy with it!!! Sounds like you did well!!

 

 

BTW........what was your sales tax rate on that $730? In GA, it'd have run around $51.10 for tax, which would be just over $37 higher sales tax than the tax on the $200 Toshiba.

[jpeyton]

No sales tax here. The CC Toshiba was $380 after AOL fees, right? Not a bad deal; probably the best BF laptop deal (mine technically wasn't on BF).

 

And you're right, after I'm done upgrading it, the price will be closer to $250. The hard drive isn't such a big deal for me because most of the things I do are not hard drive intensive (Word, Frontpage, Outlook, etc.). I personally did order an internal WiFi card because the unit does have an open MiniPCI slot accessible in the bottom; I didn't want an external adapter either.

 

While the Toshiba does have a 15" screen, it is XGA and 4:3 format, which means 1024x768 resolution. The Compaq has 14" widescreen WXGA with 1280x768 resolution, so technically the Compaq has more room to work with.

 

The power capacity of the batteries is 29WHr (2000mAH) for the Toshiba and 43WHr (2900mAH) for the Compaq. Not sure how actual battery life plays out though.