Hasta La Gadget!

Not digging that $299.99 on contract pricing for RIM’s BlackBerry Bold? If you’re kosher with placing previously loved gadgets in your presence, you can score one today for the low, low price of absolutely free. Apparently the deal is only valid on AT&T’s website and only for today, so you might want to pull the trigger now and think about it later.

[Via Boy Genius Report]

Filed under: Cellphones

Refurbished BlackBerry Bold free-on-contract at AT&T (today, anyway) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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They’re going out of business! It’s a liquidation sale! The prices will be crazy marked down, right? Not necessarily. Read on to avoid getting ripped off by liquidators. Photo by Cosmic Kitty.

Many an unwitting shopper can be lured into a store with an enormous “50% OFF!” sign strung across the storefront. Even more so when the closure of a chain of stores is highly publicized like the recent closure of Circuit City. Unfortunately, the entire process of liquidating the stock of a store is rather deceptive. Walking past the “Everything must go!” signs and picking up a box marked 50% off could actually mean paying full retail.

First, a brief summary of what liquidation is. When a company is facing dire straits or has already hit the wall of bankruptcy they will— either voluntarily or by legal order—try to convert as much of their assets into cold hard cash as possible to pay off debts and hopefully return some money to their stockholders. The process is usually handled by an external company whose sole goal is to turn the pile of assets into profit—and minimize their risk in the process.

What does this mean to you, the consumer? It means that for the first portion of a liquidation sale you’ll likely be ripped off. Let’s use an HDTV from a fictitious company to illustrate how you’re not actually getting the deep discount you think you are.

Last year SuperPow television company released the SuperPow H9000 HDTV. The manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) was $2500. It was sold at HappyBox electronics stores for $2200 when it first came out and as newer models arrived it was eventually sold for $1250. HappyBox has a bad run and ends up filing for bankruptcy. Their inventory is now controlled by a liquidation company. The company responsible for the liquidation advertises that products in the store are deeply discounted, some things are even 50% off already! You walk in to check on the SuperPow H9000 and see that the price is $1250. You remember the TV was really expensive and that seems like a great deal for a nice TV, after all it’s 50% off! The only problem is that you’re getting 50% off the MSRP, which nobody paid even when the TV was the hottest model on the market. It may be a month or two into a large liquidation before that TV is actually marked down 50% from the actual street value to a wallet-friendly $625—and most likely someone not realizing they aren’t getting a very good deal would have bought it well before that. Photo by mobil’homme.

How can you make sure you’re not the sucker that the liquidators count on to reap their profit? With a little knowledge and some handy tools, you’ll get the most for your money.

Know The Market

Don’t go shopping blind. If you’re heading to a going-out-of-business sale, take a few minutes to do some cursory research on whatever it is you’re looking to buy. Compare prices with price comparison engines like BeatMyPrice and make sure to check out deal-tracking forums like SlickDeals and FatWallet—both were reader favorites for finding the best deals online. You may not even know the exact model you’re going to find at the store, but checking deal sites like FatWallet will give you an idea what the general price ranges are for things and what deals can be had on them. A 40″ HDTV “marked down” to $1500 won’t look so appealing when you know that similar models are going for half that thanks to a little research. Photo by Refracted Moments.

Use Your Phone as a Price Checker

If you have an internet-enabled phone with you, it’s easy to compare prices right in the store. The quickest, if least specific, method is to plug the product name or model number into the mobile version of Google Product Search. If you’re without internet access but you can text message, you can take advantage of the Amazon/eBay price-comparison mashup provided by MobSaver. Text the ISBN or UPC code of an item to save@mobsaver.com and it sends you back the current prices on Amazon and eBay. When you’re really in a bind you can use—as I’ve often done—the most analog method and call a friend to run a quick price search online for you. A few minutes pecking on your phone or making a call can save you hundreds. Photo by gabofr.

It’s never a good sign when companies are shuttering their windows—for the economy or for the displaced workers—but that doesn’t mean you should pay extra for their bad luck. Armed with the tips above you’ll never be the sucker paying MSRP for 2007’s castoffs. If you have your own learned lessons about liquidation sales, sound off in the comments below and help save your fellow readers some cash.

This article was written on December 06, 2005 by CyberNet.

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Must use your American Express credit card to buy. This is a great deal especially since it has the 1.5GB of ram!

Get it while you can!

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I know—a juicy sale price on a gadget is hard to resist. But the extras associated with these items are the real killers. It’s time to look beyond the tag in search of values.

Game Consoles

Xbox 360: Let’s say you scored an Xbox 360 Pro bundle this holiday for $240. Not bad—that’s a 20% savings. But you still might need/want an extra wireless controller, an HDMI cable, a wireless adapter and two play-and-charge battery kits. All of a sudden, the price jumps up to $440—nearly double the initial cost.

While you may be stuck with Microsoft wireless controllers, there are workarounds for the other components that can help bring costs down. Going with trusted 3rd party manufacturers like Nyko on peripherals is one way to do this. Their version of the play-and-charge battery kit for your controllers will save you $10 right off the bat. As for the wireless adapter, you can set up a DIY version fairly easily using a cheap router, a few feet of Cat 5 cable and open source DD-WRT firmware—saving you as much as $70. You can even use your laptop as the wireless adapter and save the entire $100.

By using your own HDMI, you can save as much as $45. And if you want to send digital audio separately, there’s a simple hack to your included AV cable. All in all, the total cost of of your Xbox 360 hardware can be reduced from $440 to as little as $325.

Nintendo Wii: As far as essential add ons are concerned, Nintendo and Sony are not nearly as extreme as Microsoft. However, there are still some deals to be found on accessories if you know where to look. For example, Nyko will be offering wired versions of their Wing (classic controller) and Kama (nunchuk) for $15 apiece starting in January. A $5 savings over the official version isn’t much, but it starts to add up if you are buying several controllers for party games.

Another area that you can save with the Wii involves storage. Buying the officially licensed 2GB SD card will set you back around $25—but other than the Nintendo seal there is no difference between that and a standard $10 card.

Playstation 3: Even if you managed to score a deal on the PS3 this holiday, you are still going to shell out additional cash for an HDMI cable. By now, the world has realized that a cheap HDMI cable works just as well (in most cases) as an expensive version. Therefore, it doesn’t make much sense to shell out $50-$60 for an official PS3 HDMI cable when you can get a version that is perfectly fine for as little as $5 shipped.

Computers

Hardware: Like game consoles, picking up a new computer isn’t always as straightforward as paying the sticker price. MacBooks are a good example of this. If you just picked up your first MacBook, chances are you are going to need two things right away: an upgrade to Wireless-N and an external hard drive that takes advantage of Leopard’s Time Machine functionality. One option would be to drop $300 on a 500GB version—or $500 on a 1TB version—of Apple’s Time Capsule wireless hard drive/base station. Granted, this is an ideal solution to both problems, but MacBooks tend to put a hurtin’ on finances so there may not be much money left over to go this route.

On the lower end you could go with Apple’s AirPort Express and your own external hard drive. The AirPort is actually a decent value at $99—but you can still save a little extra cash by making a sacrifice or two and going outside of Apple. For example, you can get a decent 802.11n router for as little as $70. You can also score a 500GB hard drive that can do the job via USB for $90 and under. The throughput on the router may not be as high and you may have to deal with USB cables on the hard drive, but you are still getting fully functioning hardware at a sizable discount.

Software: It’s almost never a good idea to purchase additional software from the manufacturer of your computer as an add on. If, for some reason, you decided to get the Microsoft Office Home and Student 2008 suite from Apple they would charge you $135 extra when it can be easily had elsewhere for around $110. Dell goes even further by charging $149 for Office Home and Student 2007 when a version licensed for 3 PCs can be had for $75.

Home Theaters

Cables: Whenever you purchase home theater equipment there are a seemingly endless variety of hidden costs that can end up nickle-and-diming you to death. Again, cabling is a big part of this equation. As I mentioned earlier, in most cases shelling out big bucks for fancy HDMI cable isn’t much different that flushing your cash down the toilet. However, at cable distances greater than 6 feet or so this may not always be the case. As we learned in our Truth About Monster Series, as a general rule, it is better to purchase your cables from a discount retailer like Monoprice and give them a shot before spending wads of money on products like Monster with enormous markups.

Installation: Wall mounting televisions and installing surround sound speakers can be expensive and/or labor intensive. Of course, there are alternatives that can help you avoid these pitfalls. Even if you have your heart set on a wall mount, there are stands out there like the Synchro Furniture Mate that are designed to achieve the wall-mounted look without the hassle of tearing up your walls. As noted in our post on tips for buying an HDTV, if you decide to do it yourself to save a little extra cash, make sure you plan things out in advance. I would also suggest pricing your mount across the internet before purchasing at retail because the markups are likely to be astronomical. Case in point: Best Buy is offering a Sanus tilting wall mount for $145 when a quick visit to Pricegrabber revealed that the same mount is selling on Amazon for $78.

As for setting up surround speakers, it definitely pays to do it yourself. The old-fashioned method can be problematic, but there are solutions as simple as picking up some 4-strand flat speaker cable and running it along your baseboard. It costs under $60 from start to finish, it’s simple and it looks great. Again, plan ahead and price your mounts online before heading off to your local electronics store.

These are but a few examples of how add ons and extras can kill a budget, but the point is clear—it pays to look at the big picture. Before you jump at a sale price, do a little research and think about the total cost of ownership. If you look hard enough, you can find deals that will help you save in the long term.

Prof. Dealzmodo is a regular section dedicated to helping budget-minded consumers learn how to shop smarter and get the best deals on their favorite gadgets. If you have any topics you would like to see covered, send your idea to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Professor Dealzmodo” in the subject line.