Flubit (New site for buying online)

Gaw_

I can see this coming back to bite them on the ass. Demands will reduce significantly, and I can't see Flubit lasting more than a few months unless they double back. If they were having too many demands to handle in a reasonable amount of time, why not hire more staff? Limiting the site to only Amazon is like a restaurant only cooking one dish because their tables are always full. A very silly way of dealing with a common problem.

god's toy

me no like this change...

Darn it! things like the new nexus from google wont show up on amazon for ages now. was the only reason I used them really... oh well

bmaxi

Bad move IMO, of all the things I bought through Flubit only one was an Amazon URL. J can smell a bit of "you scratch my back" enticement from Amazon in this.

sweetie

amazon stuff is usually free delivery, flubit won't be thus wiping out the savings.
I recently did an offer for a £99 bluetooth speaker and I would have saved 3 euro on the amazon price (which was the best I could find) after Parcelmotel

cruhoortwunk

sweetie wrote: »

amazon stuff is usually free delivery, flubit won't be thus wiping out the savings.
I recently did an offer for a £99 bluetooth speaker and I would have saved 3 euro on the amazon price (which was the best I could find) after Parcelmotel

That for the Cambridge Minx speaker? So they only gave a few quid off? I notice that Amazon won't ship that to Ireland though for some reason, so would have to use Parcelmotel anyway

rubadub

sweetie wrote: »

I recently did an offer for a £99 bluetooth speaker and I would have saved 3 euro on the amazon price (which was the best I could find) after Parcelmotel

The amazon price would increase if you went to checkout since the irish VAT would have been added. So typically we see a 20% vs 23% vat difference.

So if something is £99 on amazon this is £82.50 + £16.50 uk vat. So the basket would become £18.98 VAT here. So a difference of £2.48 which is about €2.90.

So above a certain amount the parcel motel cost will be cancelled out. If stay is €3.50 (£3), the difference is 3% so the break even point where parcel motel charges cancel out is about £120, which would be £123 in an irish basket.

The UK government get this vat though, while the irish government do get the 23%, so expect a hike in your property taxes etc if everybody does it!

cruhoortwunk wrote: »

I notice that Amazon won't ship that to Ireland though for some reason, so would have to use Parcelmotel anyway

This is the other advantage of parcel motel, getting past amazons oddball restrictions of sending stuff here.

snubbleste

Put in a demand.
They came back in two hours. That is much faster than previous demands. Only offered 6% saving on the product that I can get cheaper elsewhere...

rubadub

Sounds like amazon might just have bought them out, and use it as a fake third party site as a way to offer discounts, the quicker response might be due to this too, possibly have it fully automated. There is some market research going on with flubit too, which amazon might value.

I had wondered if different people would get different offers. e.g. if I always bought memory cards on amazon they would know this, and perhaps not offer me much off. Entirely new customers might get more off.

Mad_Dave

The results of my test are back.
Amazon price: £59.74 + £9.00 delivery = £68.74
Official UK stockist of product (from product website) = £49.99 + £4.10 delivery = £54.09
Flubit Offer: £51.17 + £9.00 delivery = £60.17

A 12.5% saving over Amazon, but 11% more expensive the cheapest price I could find myself.
On the plus side there was a quick turnaround from demand to offer of just under two hours.

It's just a one off test, but it's not a good sign for flubit unfortunately.

rubadub

snubbleste wrote: »

Put in a demand.

Mad_Dave wrote: »

The results of my test are back.

Can you tell us what the demands were for? -if its not personal or anything.

I would not expect much off certain things. e.g. memory cards, as there is so much competition they are probably making a small margin.

I got a hayfever device on flubit a good bit cheaper than amazon, I expected more as its not sold in many places. The price I gave them was already cheap as it was on offer in a pharmacy, the offer ended up coming from the same pharmacy.

If you buy from amazon via flubit do you still effectively have dealings with amazon? e.g. I would often pay a few euro more for amazon as I really value their service & returns policy.

L5

Have 2 demands in at nearly 3 hours now, will keep updated with the offer.

Gaw_

rubadub wrote: »

If you buy from amazon via flubit do you still effectively have dealings with amazon? e.g. I would often pay a few euro more for amazon as I really value their service & returns policy.

You're implying that your theory of Flubit being taken over by Amazon is true - when this has not been confirmed. Your post here was just an unsubstantiated claim. While it is somewhat plausible, it's silly to act like it's the truth in posts here. Perhaps try e-mailing Amazon or Flubit for a comment?

rubadub

Gaw_ wrote: »

You're implying that your theory of Flubit being taken over by Amazon is true - when this has not been confirmed.

I wasn't trying to imply that. Some things from flubit come through this "fireworks" crowd, but not all of them. I was wondering if people had put demands in the past and got stuff sent direct from amazon, i.e. not via fireworks -and if this was the case was their return policy via amazon.

e.g. I put in my demand and got it from a pharmacy, there was no hiding this fact. I think the sheets I got in my package were saying if there were problems that I would return it to the pharmacy, not flubit. I am not sure of that, but there was certainly no attempt to hide the fact it came from the pharmacy.

alastair_doom

D-Link Boxee Box Digital Media Player

What you would have paid at amazon.co.uk :
£69.99+ £0.00 = £69.99
The best offer our team created for you:
£61.59+ £0.00 = £61.59

We're saving you £8.40 (12%)

Took just under 5 hours

Kenny Logins

alastair_doom wrote: »

D-Link Boxee Box Digital Media Player

What you would have paid at amazon.co.uk :
£69.99+ £0.00 = £69.99
The best offer our team created for you:
£61.59+ £0.00 = £61.59

We're saving you £8.40 (12%)

Took just under 5 hours

+ €3.50 for Parcel Motel?

alastair_doom

Kenny Logins wrote: »

+ €3.50 for Parcel Motel?

yeah, and paypal can be a bit mean with their exchange rates.

Still tho, should save a few quid, and parcel motel is really handy for me

L5

Put in a demand , item is 169£ on amazon , 4£ shipping
Flubit offer is 162£ with free shipping, plus 3.50 parcel motel. 4.7% saving.

Not enough of a discount to sway me from amazon.

mik_da_man

Surely if they are using Amazon now we can just use our ROI address and not require parcel motel?

NATLOR

I see a couple of people have had success using an Irish address,has anyone else had any success/failure trying this?
Have an offer created saving me £6 on a £40 item, not really worth it if i have to use PM

Gaw_

NATLOR wrote: »

I see a couple of people have had success using an Irish address,has anyone else had any success/failure trying this?
Have an offer created saving me £6 on a £40 item, not really worth it if i have to use PM

I tried it a while ago to no success (via Fireworks). They ignored my order for 8 days, before I sent them a message and got them to cancel it. I then ordered the product from Amazon. It's not worth it. You'll waste a lot of time.

Nollog

terrible decision.
I guess this little website's time is over with, wonder when all the clones of their old format will pop up.

joe250

alastair_doom wrote: »

D-Link Boxee Box Digital Media Player

What you would have paid at amazon.co.uk :
£69.99+ £0.00 = £69.99
The best offer our team created for you:
£61.59+ £0.00 = £61.59

We're saving you £8.40 (12%)

Took just under 5 hours

I only got a saving of 4.7% on the boxee

Red Silurian

Did anybody notice that it seems now you can buy anything at all from Amazon whereas before it had to be UK sourced? I remember a demand or 2 I put in and it came back saying the item wasn't UK sourced despite the £ symbol and it coming from amazon.co.uk

rubadub

mik_da_man wrote: »

Surely if they are using Amazon now we can just use our ROI address and not require parcel motel?

I don't see why, the stuff is not necessarily going to come from amazon (not stated anywhere anyway). Even if it is all through amazon they still might want you to use parcel motel.

e.g. if you buy something on amazon with "free delivery" then it might be cheaper for them to send this to a NI address than here.

I wonder if flubit will still publish figures about how many offers are actually taken up, and how big the drop will be.

Their page about the change is pretty funny. Nothing but negative comments at the bottom, can't spot a remotely positive comment
http://blog.flubit.com/demand-changes/

mik_da_man

While it's not stated anywhere if say they will be just using Amazon from now on.
It's more than likely that's how they can do such a quick turnaround by not having to contact other retailers

And if amazon ship for free to the UK or ROI shouldn't really affect it, they have warehouses here so shipping costs should be fine.

I popped them an email. anyway to see what they say.

dcGT

Hi All,
I've used Flubit a few times now but recently the savings have dwindled and now that I'm restricted to Amazon, I'm not sure how good it will be. I guess the jury's out on this one.

Just wondering, is there any way to request demands for multiple items at the same time? I was ordering a few things from Amazon today. Had I requested a demand even for the most expensive item, it would still probably cheaper to buy all items directly from Amazon in one shipment and one parcel motel fee.
...or am I missing a way on how to do this?

Thanks,

DC

ronanc1000

Help!

I've bought a phone case through flubit , I purchased , paid with PayPal BUT , forgot to put my parcel motel address in the PayPal window...
Who or how is it delivered now??
Can I edit the PayPal for to add the parcel motel address?

Right now on flubit it just says delivered via parcel force?

Danger781

ronanc1000 wrote: »

Help!

I've bought a phone case through flubit , I purchased , paid with PayPal BUT , forgot to put my parcel motel address in the PayPal window...
Who or how is it delivered now??
Can I edit the PayPal for to add the parcel motel address?

Right now on flubit it just says delivered via parcel force?

Should default to your PayPal billing address I believe.

ronanc1000

Does this mean the item will be sent straight to me in Tipperary ?
That's my default PayPal address..
I ordered another item and I entered the parcel motel address and it says payment can't be completed ? And I was charged and it was put to my PayPal default address again!
So now I've two items bought thought flubit payed with PayPal and not with parcel motel...
What will happen now?

NATLOR

ronanc1000 wrote: »

Does this mean the item will be sent straight to me in Tipperary ?
That's my default PayPal address..
I ordered another item and I entered the parcel motel address and it says payment can't be completed ? And I was charged and it was put to my PayPal default address again!
So now I've two items bought thought flubit payed with PayPal and not with parcel motel...
What will happen now?

did you get your stuff delivered ok?

abbir

The deals I'm getting offered now, since they've switched to only Amazon, are very poor. I've been able to find them cheaper elsewhere myself.

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

abbir

Captain Morgan wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

I might keep trying them, rejecting the offer and telling them where I found it cheaper. Hopefully they'll get the message A whole £1 they offered me off the last thing I put in, with parcelmotel what's the point? I found it a further £5 cheaper myself.

Pj!

Beginning of the end for Flubit me thinks.

Kenny Logins

I got the best price on an item I 'demanded' last week, so I ordered it. Refund and 'out of stock' apology followed shortly after. Meh.

StaticNoise

I made a few requests over the past week, and the most I saved was under €1.50, and that is excluding the added cost of Parcel Motel. Bye bye, Flubit.

Red Silurian

Strange that they decide to go for amazon, anything from amazon.co.uk I demanded a better offer for didn't come in amazon packaging...

maximoose

What a shame.

daRobot

A baffling decision. They've just committed commercial suicide.

Libera

My experience of the new Amazon system: put in a demand for shoes last night, came back with an offer in just under 4 hours (in the middle of the night, so assume automated now), with 6.3% discount. Not worth it after Parcel Motel cost, so out of curiosity I put in the exact same demand again and a few hours later surprisingly get 11.7% discount! Totally bizarre. First offer 89 hours expiry, second one 25 hours.

rubadub

Libera wrote: »

I put in the exact same demand again and a few hours later surprisingly get 11.7% discount!

Did you change any of the info you inputted? They are getting marketing info from people, I guessed they might offer better deals to certain groups of people than others.

e.g. a restaurant might want to give a 50% discount to a guy who lives next door to entice him in, rather than a tourist passing through who will probably never go again.

Or else it could be going lower knowing you didn't pay it first time, just like bargaining someone down in a market.

Libera

rubadub wrote: »

Did you change any of the info you inputted? They are getting marketing info from people, I guessed they might offer better deals to certain groups of people than others.

e.g. a restaurant might want to give a 50% discount to a guy who lives next door to entice him in, rather than a tourist passing through who will probably never go again.

Or else it could be going lower knowing you didn't pay it first time, just like bargaining someone down in a market.

I changed reason to purchase as 'Other' rather than 'for everyday necessity', so perhaps that was it. Size and colour of item the same. Again, the offer arrived in the early hours (3.5 hours since demanded), so I doubt it was manually created at that hour. I didn't reject the first offer. I have just noticed you can't duplicate a demand within 30 minutes of the prior one (i.e. with the exact same url).

uck51js9zml2yt

Got a hard drive today from a company called inkubus which just floated around the box.

I've emailed Bertie, dont expect a response ...but as the Dragons say "I'm Out"

Now its back to getting decent prices online and a decent customer service(from amazon)..the two may be mutually exclusive:)

Crap! I saw the Nexus 4 offer and thought I'd save a bit more with Flubit.....but they've ruined the only thing they were useful for!! Great "evolution" guys!

alastair_doom

Had a parcel go missing for a month because Flubit didnt put a parcel motel ID in the address. All for about a €7 saving

ParcelMotel said they've been on to them time and time again

Deleted User wrote: »

Crap! I saw the Nexus 4 offer and thought I'd save a bit more with Flubit.....but they've ruined the only thing they were useful for!! Great "evolution" guys!

Well the nexus 4 is still for sale on Amazon at a higher cost from a third party seller. I submitted a demand so it will be interesting to see if they bother beating the Google direct price.

Not holding my breath, but doesn't cost anything to send a demand.

uck51js9zml2yt

I emailed bertie a week ago with some comments on their move. never got a reply..not surprised.

Kenny Logins

Flubit seems to be automated now. I have received offers within 20 minutes of the demand, late at night.

alastair_doom

Flubit offer: £220.63 for an the nexus 4 available for £170 direct from Google.

Mollyd90

Bought 4 items through flubit. Not going ti use them any more firstly because of only amazon orders and also because I returned something and they bought through a company that takes 14 to 21 days for the return to appear on their system and wont get my refund until then.

Flubit? Fcuk it!