reel.com always had a coupon going. When they changed over, my dvd purchases near stopped.
800.com didn't last very long after they did that dollar promo.
Freeride was a daily visit in order for me to get points for Amazon certificates.

Whatshotnow didn't have too many dvds but was the easiest to get free points for rating stuff. I got tons of swag from them. They had no business model.

Buy.com and Amazon had great coupons, 20 off 20 and 15 off 35 respectively, but they somehow were able to sustain business.

awww...the old days. :( wow, forgot about some of those. loved the real trivia.

I did most of my purchases from Reel.com back in the coupon days. Reel coupons combined with Brandsforless rebates were the best way to buy a lot of cheap DVDs.

Probably because DVDs weren't their primary business.

The interesting thing about the Amazon 15 off 35 was that if you ordered two items (with one being a pre-order), the $15 discount was applied to the first item that shipped and you could cancel the pre-order with no penalty.

Ahh, yes I remember these guys...and a little program called 'ghostmouse'. Using them together I raked in lots of crap.

Can't believe no one has mentioned the greatest free money (not just DVDs) site ever: Pointclick.com.

You could click on links (I think up to 3x a day) and receive anywhere from .01 to .15 per click depending on the site (and if Pointclick was awarding money at that time). The site was flakey and it took a ton of work to find out which sites paid well since in the beginning your balance only updated ever 2 hours or so, but there were probably 50-100 sites you could click on. The catch was you had to spend the money you earned on one of the sites, then Pointclick would cut you a check.

I made about $1200 in 4 months or so before they dropped their payouts considerably in early 2000. Paid for Christmas '99 and a got me a new TV in the deal as well. Sadly the site went under with $90 still in my account which they encouraged you to spend soon as they were filing Chapter 11 and never paid anyone anything. It only cost me about $60 in the fiasco, but it was stuff I needed anyway so I couldn't complain too much.

On the flip side of the great deals, how about flooz? I still curse Whoopi since I had $40 left in my account from the American Greetings promotion that I didn't spend before flooz went under.

They opened and ran the 3 for $1 promo in 1999. They closed in 2002. So, they were around for a little longer than you might think but were still another victim of the bubble. Sad, IMHO, since they had pretty good service - especially compared to some of the other etailers. Bought a 16:9 TV off them in 2001 and got a great price.

People still got money back after the bankruptcy. Only it was around 8 cents for every dollar.

Lets not foget ValueAmerica.com. I don't think I use them much for dvds. But I enjoyed the three Sega Dreamcast Consoles I was able to buy for was it like $99.99 each.

What was the name of the etailer that had like $100 of $200 type coupons all the time and they had that huge error in mailing out duplicates of items ordered that was in news...people received an extra tv or dvd for instance and were told to keep it(I forget what dvd I got to keep but the email telling me to keep the merchandise was nice touch) ...they were one of first to go belly up...It was like buyusa.com or some name...that kinda told me internet stocks were heading for a fall...

Hey maybe it was valueamerica :)

Toshiba DVD in 1997 for 1/2 price...those were the days...

I bought the first batch of DVD's from VA and miss them. :-)

Ha! Been a long time since I heard of "ValueAmerica"....I did buy a DVD player from there for half-price....oh, the good old days of the internet!

If I remember correctly there was a $100 coupon code you could use on ValueAmerica. And ValueAmerica would match that with another $100 off. So you got $200 off anything on their site.

They sold so many Sega Dreamcasts that they ran out of stock. They sent their employees to Toys R Us and brought the Dreamcast at full retail from them to fill all rest of the orders. I read that they lost a lot of money with that $200 off offer.

That Toshiba combo player/receiver was my first ever unit. It was a GREAT deal. I think it was $600 at the time and I got it for way under half price. I was the most popular guy in my dorm with my five movies, including Austin Powers and the matrix

I brought one of those Toshiba Combo Dvd Player/Receiver and one of my kids recently told me it still works.

What was the store that sent out a propeller type thing on a stick? I never did know exactly what you were supposed to do with it. I think maybe it was checkout.com but not sure there were so many back then.

-popcorn-

Does not surprise me. The player got used by me or someone in my family until 2003. That was five years of pretty hardcore use. When I sold it, it still worked like the day I bought it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fincher Fan
I used to score most of my discs from DVD North back in the day before using Reel.com. I forget which site it was but I used to get my international shipping rebated from them!


It was probably what lasermovies mentioned, Brandsforless.

I remember combining brandsforless (they had $25 rebates in addition to the free shipping rebates), reel coupons, and reel pricematching to get some great deals.

And my first DVD player, a Toshiba dual discer, was bought back in 1999 at 800.com. It still works great (knocking on wood)!

What was the website that had you do surveys to earn points which you could use towards DVD's and other stuff.
I miss the old coupon days, most of which I found out about at this site.

I'm still using the Panasonic DVD player I got from the ValueAmerica deal. Nothing like getting paid to buy DVD's from Reel.com either. Ahh the good ol' days.

This thread takes me back to my freshman year of college. I owe my first 100 or so DVDs in 1999 to Freeride, Reel Trivia, ValueAmerica, and others (got my first DVD player - a Toshiba SD 1200 which still works, has never not been able to play a disc, and has my favorite on-screen options of any player I've ever owned - on one of those group buy sites where the prices improved depending on how many people ordered the item. I think it was $125 shipped, a great price at the time. I used to spend and hour Freeriding every night while watching TV and collected hundreds in Amazon gift certificates. I once spammed e-cards back and forth between hotmail accounts, earning $10 at Amazon for every 10 I sent... I think I made $80 overall.

My worst addiction was Reel Trivia though. I was impatient so I would only continue with an account until I got a gift certificate, because you'd get one automatically or practically right away for referring five people. I wound up creating dozens if not a hundred hotmail accounts, which I kept in big lists all taped to my desk.

Oddly enough, I didn't make a whole lot of friends that year.

I never got in on 800.com, but I did get a lot of cheap shit via Orderbox. anyone remember them?