Midterm Proposal

Midterm Proposal

We had to pick an online society that interested us as the potential focus of a midterm project. I chose the slickdeals.net website. Here is the link to my description/proposal:

http://itp.nyu.edu/netciv/wiki/index.php/Slickdeals

Or just read it below:

SlickDeals

SlickDeals.net is a website that publishes outrageous deals on all sorts of merchandise for sale online and in stores. The unique part about it is that "we-the-people" are the ones who submit these hot deals to the site. So if Johnny is walking down aisle 4 of K-mart and notices that marshmallow fluff is on sale for .25 cents a jar, he'll kindly pass on this big find to us by posting a "slick deal", and thus we too can share in his marshmallowy delight. So SlickDeals doesn't actually sell any products, it's just composed of users like you and me, helping each other out by scavenging the online and offline world for underpriced goods. Now that's just a little itch of what actually goes on here.

Ok, so some of these SlickDeals are pretty useful, I myself have saved hundreds on a laptop computer, received Simpsons season 6 on DVD for $8 shipped and got a 300-thread count queen-size comforter, sheets and pillows for $14.95 (90% off of MRSP), all by virtue of this site. But the most fun is jumping on the slickest deals of all, the ones titled "Price Mistakes". With billions of products being sold online and in stores, merchants make mistakes. Hey, nobody's perfect. And by use of the internet it's our turn to capitalize. I've seen people posting images of sales receipts to prove/show off how they purchased and received a 42inch LCD TV for $199.99, because the merchant forgot to add another "9" to the price tag. What's the merchant going to do, ask for the item back? One of the interesting facets of this online society is that it consists of strangers joining forces to "beat the system". Further illustrating this point are the slick deals that involve the manipulation of Rebates. You can find tons of posts, every day, where members of the SlickDeals.net society demonstrate how to exploit and combine Instant Rebates with Mail-in Rebates with Discount Coupons and even Price Matching to receive the product absolutely for FREE and come out $25-$50 ahead when those rebate checks arrive in the mail. Yes, you heard right. You get the item for free and make money at the same time. This practice redefines the purpose of shopping. Instead of spending money on something you want, you make money from buying something you don't want. Only in America.

The examples above give rise to ethical challenges, is it right to do this? Is it ok to rip-off merchants? Hey they've been doing it to us, now it's payback time, right? Is it bad for the economy? There are many heated debates tackling this issue within the nested tables of the SlickDeals forums where capitalism, consumerism and morals are re-evaluated. SlickDeals even has a nifty tool called "Fillers" for use with the Amazon.com website. Amazon.com offers Free Shipping on orders over $25, so if you're stuck at checkout with $24.20 you can use SlickDeals' "Filler" tool to find .80 cent items from the Amazon.com store that you can add to your cart to put you at the $25 mark to qualify you for Free Shipping.

Off the top of my head I really can't fathom any challenges that could seriously endanger this online society. Once in a while you do see a phony post by an online retailer posing as a savvy Slick Dealer, who in reality is just trying to dive traffic to their own site by submitting a luke-warm deal. But since there is constant user monitoring, testing and feedback, the phony posts get sniffed out and red-flagged fairly quickly and a closed group of Moderators ensure quality control. Maybe one of the potential hazards is becoming involved with a society like this to begin with. One of my good friends constantly monitors this site, almost obsessively, and I believe is addicted to buying crap he doesn't really need and will probably never use. I think he just can't bear to pass up a good deal, even if it's a .15 cent sale on 12 dozen No.3 pencils. Who uses No.3 pencils anyway?