Summer Sale: Update 1

Two weeks ago I wrote about my plans to sell all the stuff floating around in my flat that I no longer need. To start with I listed 10 items on eBay ranging from old work shirts that no longer fit me to computer games that I haven’t played in years.

In total seven of these items sold for a total of £46.06. Posting these items cost me £15.49, with eBay and PayPal taking £3.23 and £2.97 respectively for their part in the auctions.

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Are we blind to the best offers?

The BBC News have a feature this morning about a market stall holder in Derby that is offering customers the chance to purchase a £5 note for just £4. You would be hard pressed to find anywhere else today where you could get a 25% return on your investment within a matter of seconds, but despite this most people reject his offer as they believe it’s too good to be true.

This reminds me of my own reaction when I received an email from the eBay research department offering me £5 simply for taking part in an online survey. I was pleasantly surprised when I received my money as I am sure many others were, but I wonder how many people turned this offer down because they were thinking it was a scam.

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First payment from Quidco

I received my first cashback payment from Quidco this week. A total of £16.24 was credited to my bank account with £20 of this being earned from my first steps into matched betting. Another 72p cashback was earned when I purchased a computer game from Play.

What I haven’t yet included is the first £5 of your annual earnings that Quidco take as a subscription charge so that reduced my earnings and I earned another 52p cashback from another Play order that I had not posted about.

The true cost of going organic

Tempted by a leaflet from Abel & Cole that dropped through the letterbox last week offering a free £15 fruit and veg box if I spent more than £25 with them, I decided to give organic food a go. Whilst the choice may not be as wide as a supermarket I have to say the selection on offer was certainly very tempting and if I hadn’t been watching the cost of my shopping basket carefully I could have easily spent a fortune. But I remained frugal and my shopping came in at £26.79 entitling me to the free fruit and veg box.  (more…)

15,000 Estate Agents to lose their jobs

According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research the current economic downturn will result in 15,000 estate agents losing their jobs over the next two years. While this may not be good news for those individuals, I believe this is great news for consumers as estate agents are now both unnecessary and costly as far as I am concerned.

Yes they may have been useful in the pre-web era by aggregating information on which houses were available to buy for potential homebuyers and further adding value by explaining the process to both parties but their position as intermediary was costly for both the buyer and seller.

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