Spot a Bargain - even if you didn't know you need it! (hotukdeals.com)

Member Name: Pharmtastic

Product:	hotukdeals.com
Date:	15/10/08 (168 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Helps you to spot bargains, online and off

Disadvantages: Don't buy what you don't need!

Hot UK Deals is website that allows members to post information that they think will be of interest to other members of the site.

Specifically, the posts are generally there to help consumers. They can be posted in one of several sections:

Deals
Vouchers
Freebies
Competitions
For Sale/Trade
Misc
Feedback

The most active section is that devoted to deals. This allows people to flag up sale items, special offers, end of line reductions and sometimes mistakes or misprices. [I don't really use the other sections at all, so can't really comment much on them.]

Offers may be available online, or in conventional stores. The off-line deals can vary is their usefulness: a bargain may be available in, say, Waitrose, but if you have to travel for 50 miles to get to one, it may not be much use to you!

Examples that I've benefitted from include Star Wars DVDs at £6.00 each, a Dell desktop [no monitor] for £211 delivered, an ethernet cable for 23p delivered [compare that to PC World!]; Dirty Harry boxed set for £15.00 [please don't judge the site on my choice of DVDs!!]. The Dell was a great example as, for one day only, the Dell website was offering free delivery on everything [probably by mistake] - to save £60 delivery on a £211 machine is a huge percentage.

Members can vote on each deal by clicking to increase or decrease the "temperature" of a deal: the more members who like a deal, the "hotter" it becomes, hence the title of the site.

The site does have over a hundred deals posted each day, and so it can be difficult to keep track. You can subscribe to an RSS feed, though, and just track the hottest deals at the top of your browser. This way you can just visit if you see something that takes you fancy. The deals often have a short life, and so this a good way to keep up to date.

You need to be careful, though, especially at first: it can be easy to feel you "need" something just because it seems to be a bargain.

Summary: Use RSS to keep on top