Staples Archive

Galaxy Tab Deal

This morning I noticed that DailySteals is running a deal for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″ model for $349. The unit is a WiFi-only unit and has 16GB of storage. Also important to note is that buried in the product description is that the units are refurbished and come with a 90 day warranty. The new retail boxed version sold on Amazon costs $499 and features a one-year warranty. I have never purchased anything from DailySteals so make sure to do your typical merchant research before purchasing.

Blackberry Playbook Deal

If you are looking for a Blackberry Playbook (that’s Blackberry’s tablet device which runs Flash), Staples is sending out coupons to their email lists with coupons that appear to be ranging from $100-$200. The talk on the deal boards is that not everyone is receiving the coupons – I know that I haven’t on any of the email addresses I have registered with Staples.

Amazon lists the 16GB Playbook at $492 but other merchants list the device at just under $400. If you get in on the Staples deal,  you may also be able to grab a $100 rebate from Blackberry.

Assuming you received the $200 Staples coupon and stacked it with a $25 Staples coupon and also got the $100 rebate, you would pay $125 for the 16GB Blackberry Playbook – very close to the HP Playbook pricing! That is one hot deal if you are part of the Blackberry family.

If you receive a coupon from Staples but don’t plan to use it – you might be able to swap it for $20 or so with someone on SlickDeals.

To help get more business cards out into the world (so that our team at CloudContacts can process them!), I found a deal from Staples that is worth checking out. Staples is offering 100 free black and white business cards from today through June 18th. Just print out this coupon, take it into your local Staples store and the copy center employees will help get your order placed and printed.

There are two great parts of this deal:

1. If you normally use Vista Print for free cards that include the Vista Print url on the back, this deal will get you cards that look a bit more professional.
2. The coupon value ($20) can be applied to any business card order so if you decide to print color or with other options, you can just use the coupon towards the total purchase.

If you already have business cards, you might use this deal to run a test with another business card concept for yourself or your company.

I’ve been a rebate guy for as long as I can remember. Back in the old days before the Internet we know today, rebates were a hot mess. You purchased an item that offered a rebate, printed out all of the forms, copied the UPC codes, made your copies and send the envelope off to some PO Box. Then you waited – usually about 10, 11, 12 weeks – and after no check arrived, you called the company and were told that either the rebate was invalid or the check was sent, just wait a bit longer. Many times I had to resubmit the rebate and wait another 3-4 months for the check. The whole process was just a pain – but everyone knew that the way companies offered such great deals was to use “float” on the cash from the rebate (and that not everyone will submit the rebate offer) – so another 12 weeks delayed payment meant the company earned more on the money I was due.

In my opinion, Staples was the first large retailer to make the rebate process easier. They allow you to submit almost all of their rebate offers online which removes the delay in mailing along with the postage cost and there is no worry that Staples didn’t receive the rebate. You can track the rebate online and so far I haven’t had any issues with rebate payment.

What’s interesting is that I am more likely to purchase an item with a rebate at Staples because I know the process will be smooth — perhaps this counter balances the “float” I noted above because more purchases are completed.

Today Staples is now offering rebate payment via PayPal. This new form of rebate payment should actually make receiving the money quicker and easier as there is no wait time for the check to arrive. This new option should help ease concerns from many rebate shoppers who note that the rebate postcards often get lost in the mail.

Staples has a short FAQ about the Paypal rebate payment option.

Tomorrow in the U.S. is the special online-only holiday of Cyber Monday. I just left my finger workout class at the local gym to get ready for all of the exciting and quick moving deals that will be available. If you are new to Cyber Monday or are looking for information on how to find the best deals, I’ve shared a bunch of tips and techniques on my InformationWeek column.

Some online retailers have started their Cyber Monday sales early so if you are waiting until tomorrow to start searching, you might try searching tonight.

On Friday we reported that office supply retailer Staples was having issues with their website and ordering during their Black Friday sales. Today’s issue is even more fun than if the Staples website was down.

Staples posted their Cyber Monday deals a day early — one of the deals is for $25 in free Sharpie markers and pens. The purchase should be simple…add $25 in Sharpie products to your shopping cart, apply the coupon code 96140 and bingo — $25 in free Sharpie products. The deal was to begin at 6am this morning. The deal hunters lined up in massive lines with their products chosen just waiting for 6am. When 6am came, the code was not working. In fact, as of 5pm Eastern, the code is still not working.

The coupon issue sent the deal forums into mass panic. SlickDeals shows over 115 pages of replies related to this deal and over 155k topic views. Other deal forums show hundreds of reviews and tens of thousands of pageviews. So while Staples gets some egg on their face, the deal forums make out well in ad views. I guess we can say that for today, Staples was the Digg for the deal forums.

Big kudos to the customer service team at Staples – so far I haven’t read one complaint with how the coupon issue was handled. I sure hope that Staples management provides a bonus for the entire call center. At one point there were over 2,000 people on hold. The greeting on the phone line tells customers to call back later if they are looking for the Sharpies coupon and it will be validated later in the week.

Many of us are wondering why they didn’t just fix the coupon code so it worked. I grabbed a bunch of markers and pens – I wonder how long they last before they dry out.

Online deal hunters are a bit upset that the online website for office supply store Staples is down and not functioning on the busiest shopping day of the year. Staples is my favorite store in the world and I was hoping to score a Logitech illuminated keyboard which was supposed to be reduced from $80 to $30.

There’s no doubt the Staples website is getting hammered with people looking for deals ranging from computers to printers to even the most basic paper clip.

The site is providing the following error message:

An error occurred while processing your request.

Reference #102.d148453f.1259320024.0

For now, eat your breakfast and get your credit cards ready to shop, shop, shop.

Update 7AM Eastern: Staples is back – that was easy!