The RedFlagDeals.com Blog

One nice thing about having such a large group of Canadians online together in one place is that we can share things that are uniquely Canadian… such as Tim Horton’s and more specifically the Roll up the Rim to win contest!  So how are you doing so far this year?  There is a thread in the forums about the Roll Up the Rim to win contest where RedFlagDeals.com users are sharing their experiences.  If you haven’t checked out the forums before, this is a good place to start. Let everyone know if you’ve won (or how many times you’ve lost).

For a double double shot of Canadiana you can check out threads about the best poutine in Toronto, the best poutine in Montreal, or the best poutine in Ottawa.  You do know what poutine is, right?  (Here’s a link if you don’t)

Today is the one year anniversary of RedFlagDeals.com moving into our current office, so I thought I would give you the Bargain Hunters Guided Tour.  Our office is towards the west end of Toronto in a retrofitted industrial space (hence cheaper rent).  It’s around 1300 square feet and we usually have 6-8 people in the office.

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On the left you’ll see Derek’s desk (mine is on the other side), he has had it all through university so the cost to us: $0
To the right are four desks where most of the PriceCanada.com work is done.  Two of the desks are from IKEA and cost about $60, the other two desks were bought at an Office Depot clearance sale for $29 each, we have four of these in total and Derek often laments not buying the remaining stock when he had the chance.  Great deal!  All of the office chairs here are from Sam’s Club and cost $50 each, which as office chairs go, is pretty cheap.  In the far right corner you’ll see a server rack that we got for free.  It holds our telephone system and a file server.  The actual site is hosted at another location.

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Much of furniture and desks you see in this picture and the first picture was purchased for $500 from a friend of ours when he was moving offices.  For $500 we got 3 desks, 3 chairs, 12 tables, several whiteboards, 7 CRT monitors, and some other miscellaneous furniture and computer components that we donated to charity.  It was quite the haul, literally and figuratively!

Speaking of computers, nearly every computer in our office is a $299 Dell from past sales.  The monitors and LCDs were either bought during a Days of Deals sale or from the RedFlagDeals.com BST. 

Also in this picture our Pinball machine (free courtesy of one of our employee’s wives who didn’t want it in her basement anymore ), a plastic tree free from our old office, and many cases of bottled water that was bought on sale from No Frills.

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The RedFlagDeals.com office is always stacked with snacks.  This week, as with every week, we have whatever is currently on sale at the Dominion across the street.  Also in this picture is our coat rack.  Can you guess how much we paid for it?  Yup, it was free too!

Thus concludes the Bargain Hunter’s Tour of the RedFlagDeals.com office.  As you can see, we don’t just talk about deals, we live them!

This past Monday, Derek Szeto, the founder of RedFlagDeals.com was on Breakfast Television in Vancouver offering tips for computer buyers.  If you’re not in the media, you probably haven’t visited our Media page, but on that page we have a list of some of the places RedFlagDeals.com has been featured.  Here are a couple of highlights from last year:

• September 2006 – “Where to find Back to School Shopping Deals” Good Morning Canada
• October 2006 - “Let’s Make a Deal” - Financial Post Business Magazine
• December 2006 - “Top websites for coupons, deals and freebies” - CanadianLiving.com
• December 2006 - “Do comparison shopping at bargains site” - Montreal Gazette
• December 2006 -“Boxing Day Begins With Big Bucks And Eager Shoppers On The Line” - CityTV News Toronto

How did you find RedFlagDeals.com?  Did you hear about it on TV or in a magazine?  Did a friend tell you about it?  Post your RedFlagDeals.com discovery story in the comments!

During our 6th Anniversary last November we asked RedFlagDeals.com readers which retailer they would like to see offer online shopping in Canada that currently does not. The question was totally open ended so readers could type in whatever they want (and they did… Target and Dollarama both had a few votes). After sorting through and compiling the over 2000 type-in results that we received, here are the top 5 responses in order:

• Wal-Mart
• EB Games
• The Gap
• Old Navy
• Shoppers Drug Mart

Not surprise at all at the top, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Wal-Mart to offer online shopping in Canada later this year. What was suprising was the huge percentage of people that wrote in Wal-Mart as their pick - over 25%! The rest of the top five had less than 3% of the votes each. Wal-Mart Canada, if you’re reading this, we’re ready and waiting.

It’s also interesting to see two clothing stores near the top of the list. Traditionally, Canadians have bought less clothing online. Maybe that’s just because there isn’t enough choice yet.

Anyone want to guess the next 5? Post them in the comments and I’ll update the list later this week with the results from the survey.

Back in the fall when we launched the redesigned site we introduced a voting system for deals.  So far the system is working as intended, better deals end up getting more votes, but we’d like to see more people voting.  You do have to be registered to vote, but that only takes a minute.

Why should you vote?  Voting helps us figure out what sort of deals you’d like to more of and most importantly it helps readers who may not have a chance to come to the site everyday find the best/most popular deals!

So if you see a deal you like, vote for it and help your fellow readers!

We’ve got 2 of copies of Sam Roberts latest CD, Chemical City, that have been autographed by Sam Roberts and his band and we’re giving them away!  How can you win?  Easy, just post a comment to this post before the end of the day on Friday (11:59PM EST, March 2, 2007) and we’ll randomly draw 2 commenters to win!

The contest is over!  The winners have been sent a private message and will be announced when we confirm their details!

Due to popular demand, we’ve added a Parenting discussion forum to the RedFlagDeals.com forums.  Now you can discuss parenting issues and money saving tips with other RFD parents!  You can start chatting with other Canadian parents now!

Yesterday, RedFlagDeals.com user Justin was diligently reading his marketing text book for a first year marketing course when he stumbled upon this tidbit: “online services such as Red Flag Deals list and link to discounts and special offers in a directory format.” Yes, it’s official, RedFlagDeals.com is part of the curriculum!

That piece of text is from page 377 of Marketing: An Introduction, Second Canadian Edition by Gary Armstrong, Philip Kotler, Peggy Cunningham, Peter Mitchell, and Lilly Anne Buchwitz.

The founder of RedFlagDeals.com, Derek Szeto (Queen’s Commerce ‘05), offered a possible explanation in the original forum thread:

“Cool… thanks. Found the link. Peggy Cunningham is a Queen’s professor:

http://business.queensu.ca/faculty_and_research/faculty_list/peggycunningham.php

I didn’t have any courses with her but I took one course with her husband Paul Cunningham:

http://business.queensu.ca/faculty_and_research/faculty_list/pcunningham.php

So I guess I have to send Paul a thank you e-mail. Unless Peggy found this site herself - which would be cool as well!”

Pretty cool!  Have you seen RedFlagDeals.com mentioned in any interesting places?  If so, post them in the comments! 

If you only joined RedFlagDeals.com recently, you probably missed our fund raising drive for Toronto’s Daily Food Bank.  Now that the drive is over, I wanted to highlight one last time just how great the RedFlagDeals.com community can be.  We began the drive on Halloween and within 24 hours RedFlagDeals.com readers had donated over $1000!  Having surpassed our original goal, we set a new goal of $2500 and within a week we had beat that goal too!  We set a new goal of $5000 and by the end of the drive we had beat it!  In total over 100 readers donated $5171 to help feed Toronto’s less fortunate.

Here’s a link to the original thread.

Great job everyone!

We had over 750,000 unique visitors in January on RedFlagDeals.com?  Want to know a little about your fellow RFDers?

Here are a few numbers from Google Analytics (a stat tracking program):

Browsers:

• 1. Internet Explorer - 53.61%
• 2. Firefox - 41.21%
• 3. Safari - 2.21%
• 4. Opera - 1.67%
• 5. Netscape - 0.55%

So it seems that Firefox is very popular among RedFlagDeals.com readers.  Much more so than the general Canadian population!

Operating Systems:

• 1. Windows - 94.72%
• 2. Macintosh - 4.19%
• 3. Linux - 0.91%

So far in February, we’ve seen about 3% of users using Windows Vista.

We’ve gathered other stats from the annual surveys we run.  For example, there are many more women on RedFlagDeals.com than you may think.  About 40% of RedFlagDeals.com visitors are female!  But whether you’re out west or out east, whether you are a devotee of Windows or Mac, all RedFlagDeals.com readers are united by their love of a great deal!

We’re happy to announce that the winners of the 2007 RedFlagDeals.com Valentine’s Day Contest are:

• Terri Miller of Ontario wins the 1 Carat Ruby and Diamond 14K White Gold Heart Ring
• Sharon Sharen of Ontario wins the 1/7 Carat Diamond 14K White Gold Heart Pendant w/Chain
• Richard Chong of British Columbia wins the 1/4 Carat Diamond 14K White Gold Heart Hinged Hoop Earrings

All prizes were provided by our contest sponsor, ICE.com! We hope you had a great Valentine’s Day!  Stay tuned to this blog for information about future contests on RedFlagDeals.com!

Welcome to the RedFlagDeals.com blog!  This blog is the new place to find the latest info on what’s going on at RedFlagDeals.com and provide your feedback.  If you check this blog regularly you’ll get early word on upcoming contests, get a chance to provide feedback on new and/or upcoming site features, find out a bit about what goes on at the RedFlagDeals.com HQ, and more.

You can comment on this and any other post in this blog using your existing RedFlagDeals.com account.  If you don’t have an RedFlagDeals.com account, it’s free to sign up and takes about a minute to do so.