frugal underground

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

A month or two ago, I received an email from someone who had seen this blog and wanted to tell me about his own frugal site. I get a few of these emails each month, but this one hit me at a crazy busy time, and I didn’t take the time to look at his site until now.

Because the gentleman was kind enough to include a summary of what the site does, I’m copying it here:

DealMine.com is aggregating member discounts and rewards from loyalty programs, credit cards, associations (AAA, AARP), unions, etc and matching them up to comparison shopping technology. The idea from a consumer perspective is that as popular as comparison shopping is, the information they provide is limited to price, tax and shipping info and that does not provide all the information and consumer needs to make a purchasing decision. For example, the average consumer has nine credit cards, belongs to four rewards programs and at least one association or club (sources: FairIssac and Colloquy) all of which have member benefits and have not been aggregated anywhere before in a way that makes them easy to use. We help consumers discover deals they didnt even know they had available like 10% off at Target.com with AAA or $15 off at Bluefly with Visa cards…

The site features two types of searches. The first is into the directory to compare discounts or rewards like this one for car rentals currently featuring over 100 deals: http://www.dealmine.com/deal-directory/Travel-discounts/Car-Rentals/49

The other search on the site is actual comparison shopping where prices at various stores are matched up to affinity/membership discounts and benefits. See below for an example of a “Compare Prices” search on jeans: http://www.dealmine.com/compare-prices.php?s=jeans

The site currently features discounts and rewards from 29 member programs and is growing quickly.

I was impressed at the concept when I read the email. It seems like a tool that could help a certain market segment (namely, us, “the cheapskates”). And goodness knows I’m part of way too many rewards programs, and don’t keep track of them nearly as well as I ought to.

I tried out the site to see what I thought. My impression: a touch clunky, but extremely useful. The registration process includes a spot where you tell DealMine what rewards programs you’re part of, and then future searches are customized to your actual memberships.

I was impressed at the options for filtering and sorting on a product search. For instance, I did the example jeans search, and found loads of bargains on pants. But then I saw I could filter to show only five-pocket jeans, or bootcuts, and limit it to deals under $20. That’s handy.

I went on to find a lovely pair of bootcut jeans at Sierra Trading post that were under $20 shipped, and would net me 4 hotel rewards points per dollar. I didn’t buy them (that’s still a lot of money for jeans, in my opinion, and I don’t need any right now), but it was a good exercise in seeing the potential benefit of this site.

My biggest concern? Whether I will remember to use the site. I’d like to see them offer a search plugin to the Search Bar in . That would make it much more likely that I’ll return when it’s time to buy.

ShareThis