The RedFlagDeals.com Blog

We’ve finally heard from all of the winners in our MOMumental Mother’s Day contest!  Here’s the list of winners.  We’d like to thank the contest sponsors CanadaFlowers.ca, LUSH.ca, and Anitec for contributing the great prizes!

The Grand Prize Winner of the Asus Z71VP Intel Pentium M 760 (2.0 GHz) Centrino Notebook from Anitec.ca:

• Marilyn Baker of Nova Scotia

Winners of the “Thanks Mum” gifts from LUSH.ca:

• Muhammad Azhar Karim of Ontario
• Sandy Choi of British Columbia
• Adam Hien Phi Tran of Ontario
• Cindy You of Ontario
• Donna Lyn of Ontario
• Marie Soulsby of Alberta
• Debora Miscione of Ontario
• Carla Cui of Ontario
• Patrick Reilly of Ontario
• Linda Chan of Ontario

Winners of the Designer’s Choice fresh flower bouquet valued at $55 each from CanadaFlowers.ca:

• Tim Wang of Ontario
• Carole Green of Ontario
• Karen Yeung of Alberta
• Dave Rolfson of Alberta
• Tarek Shoukry of British Columbia

We’ve added a new Fitness & Beauty deals category to the site!  Previously these deals were somewhat clumsily assigned to the other categories, but now you will be able to find deals on fitness equipment, spa packages, makeup, et al in one place.  If there are any other category that you think would be helpful, you can make suggestions in the comments for this story or in the Comments & Suggestion forum. 

Hi, I’m Jessica and I’m a deal addict, but as I’ve discovered, when you work at RedFlagDeals.com, that’s a good thing.  I started here about a month ago after responding to a job posting looking for a shop-a-holic and I’ve been posting deals on the site ever since.  I’m RedFlagDeals.com’s first female employee and I was hired because the guys here claim that between the 6 of them, they just couldn’t figure out if something like 50% Off @ La Vie En Rose was a hot deal (it is).  I’m a glutton for freebies and I also spend a ridiculous amount of money on books, travel, and food, so it looks like I’ve found the perfect job to make me go broke.  Every job involves some sacrifice and sometimes you gotta do, what you gotta do.

We’ve heard back from 4 of the 5 Early Bird winners in our MOMumental Mother’s Day Contest! They have won a Designer’s Choice fresh flower bouquet valued at $55 each courtesy of CanadaFlowers.ca!

If you have Hotmail address check your junk folder because the 5th winner only has until the end of tomorrow before their prize is redrawn!

Congrats to our Early Bird winners:

• Tim Wang of Ontario
• Carole Green of Ontario
• Karen Yeung of Alberta
• Dave Rolfson of Alberta

sully from the forums noticed that in March 2007 “redflagdeals” was the 14th top gaining search query on Google Canada!  Very cool!  However, we were once again behind our mortal enemies… the elephants. 

You can check out the list of top gainers here.

We will be doing some back-end software upgrades tomorrow, April 28 at 9 AM EST.  The upgrade is expected to take about an hour, but during that time the forums will be unavailable.  If there are any unexpected delays, we will let you know.

Statistics Canada released their 2006 report on the state of the electronic commerce and technology in Canada last week. You can read all about it here.

Overall public and private sector online sales grew 40% to $49.9 billion. Business-to-business transactions still account for the majority of sales ($31.4 billion) but the business-to-consumer side is also picking up steam with more retailers selling online, up 5% from 10% to 15% in 2006.

That’s definitely good news for everyone. More online stores means more choice, and more choice will drive more competition and innovation. If you haven’t seen it already, Home Depot’s new Auction system is quite a hoot. I bid $11 for a personal putting green last week just to try the auction system but was outbid :( Next time I miss a putt it’s all Home Depot’s fault.

When Derek founded RedFlagDeals.com six and a half years ago, it really was because he loves deals.  In the last few days he taken advantage of Burger King’s Free Coffee promotion and Popeye’s Free Chicken promo.  I fully expect him to get his Free Starbuck’s coffee on Earth Day.  I’ve know Derek since we were kids and since he’s had money to spend, his bedroom/dorm room/apartment has been full of unopened boxes ordered because there was a deal he just couldn’t resist.  Yes, Derek truly is a Deal Addict. 

It’s April already! How time flies! One of our goals for 2007 is to do much more charity work, but we were busier this winter than expected so we’re a bit behind on our planning. 

Last year the RedFlagDeals.com community was able to raise over $5000 for Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank and that was awesome!  This year we’d like to find a charity that has a national focus so we can get more people involved and we’re hoping the RedFlagDeals.com community can help us identify one.  We do have a few things we are looking for in a charity:

• A nation wide presence
• A charity that uses 90% or more of their donations on charitable acts (we’re all about saving money after all )
• A charity that would be willing to form a closer relationship with us and our members

Any suggestions?  You can either post them here or send them to us via the Contact form!

Earlier today, we launched the new design for PriceCanada.com!  Head over and check it out!  There are now over 200,000 computer and electronics products that you can search, compare and buy on PriceCanada.com, so it’s a great site to start with when you are looking for the best deal on a specific product.  Our team has put a lot of time into the project, so we hope you like it.

It literally launched a couple of hours ago, so if you run into any issues, let us know.

We’ve taken some time to update the Link to Us page with our current banners and we also created a new button:

120x60 Button

If you are so inclined, you can put this button or the other banners on your blog or MySpace (Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, whatever) page. 

If you put one of the banners on your webpage, post a link in the comments so everyone can check it out!

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.