A great deal when they have your item
Written: Aug 24 '01
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The Bottom Line
An excellent service with great prices and great low-price guarantee. Selection could be better, but if they have your item you will be getting the best price around.
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| Full Review |
I've been a member of Netmarket for over a year now, and I have to say it's been a great money saver. I have bought many items including a Refurbished Onkyo Receiver (review: http://www.epinions.com/elec-review-211E-A3D69E1-39BFE725-prod1 ), a Sony DVD player ( review: http://www.epinions.com/elec-review-80E-4FA4C8A-39CA2391-prod5 ), a Kodak DC3400 digital camera, a Palm IIIxe, a BEL radar detector, and Palm V cradle. All of these products came to me at the lowest final price I could get ANYWHERE. But, it did require a little work - except for the refurbished Onkyo receiver, I found all of the products at a lower price elsewhere. I was successful at getting a Low-Price Guarantee for all but one of these items.
Low Price Guarantee - the best benefit
Let me explain the procedure. For each item, I would do a lot of price-shopping and find the lowest price I could. Then I checked with Netmarket and usually found a higher price. At first glance, I would normally go ahead and buy it from the cheaper place - I mean, who wants to chase after refunds and paperwork? But, with a 200% price guarantee and a 2-year warranty extension on everything you buy, I thought I would give it a try. Normally you would expect these refunds to be a lot of work, but it was surprisingly easy. I filled out a form and emailed it to the service department. In a short while (usually about 2 weeks) I would receive a letter in the mail telling me that the request has been honored (or not, in that one case) and that the appropriate amount was credited to my credit card. Not bad - a little research, one email, one web-link... and I got my refund!
For example, my latest purchase was the Palm V cradle. I found that Buy.com had it for $37.95 + 5.72 shipping. Netmarket had it for $53.94 shipped. Well, I bought the item from Netmarket and immediately filed for my LPG (200% low price guarantee). Sure enough, in about 2 weeks I got a letter stating that my account was credited for double the difference - in this case, about $20! So, in the end, I got the cradle for $33.94 shipped! Not bad, huh? The biggest refund I received was on the Digital camera - about $120 refund for the LPG!
But, as I mentioned above, there was one exception to my LPG fortune - the Palm IIIxe. The story there is that I bought the Palm from Netmarket and a week later I saw that Amazon was selling it for cheaper because of an e-coupon for $50 and a $50 rebate from Palm. Well, I thought that Netmarket would still provide me with the LPG - or at least a refund of the difference since it was an e-coupon. But, they were not having it - no LPG on that purchase. Now, it's not that they were wrong in any way - their policy clearly states that coupons and other similar discounts do not qualify. So, I guess I paid more on that item that I could have elsewhere - but I managed to get a copy of the rebate from Palm and got that anyway (since it was not specific to Amazon).
As you can see, my experience has been great with Netmarket. They stand by their LPG, and the prices end up coming out much better than anywhere else. Of course, it takes a wee-little-bit of work, but in my eyes, it's well worth it! And, although they say that the vendor must be an "authorized seller" of the product, I have not run into any vendor that they did not accept. My guess is that this is just to prevent LPGs being cast for one-off sales or "shady deals". I can understand that.
Other Netmarket Benefits
Now, I have raved about the LPG aspect of their system, but there are two other major benefits. Every purchase gives you a 5% cash back award. I have used these whenever I can, and saved even more money. For example, I used all of my available "Netmarket Cash" on the Palm V Cradle and saved another $7.35 on it... bringing my total to under $27!
Netmarket also increases your warranty by 2 years - that's on top of the existing manufacturer's warranty. I haven't had to deal with this aspect yet, but if I do, I expect it will be as easy as the LPG service has been. Note that this also applies to refurbished merchandise! Of course you have to remain a member for those extra years, but at $59.95 to cover all those items and the great prices, it sounds like a good deal. The first 4 months of membership costs $1.00, so you can easily see what it's like and if you don't want to keep the membership, you can still save a lot of money.
Netmarket doesn't seem to provide many shipping options, though it seems they "plan to". You always have the regular-delivery choice of about 5-10 days. All of my orders have taken significantly less time than that - so that's reassuring. The delivery prices aren't bad either, so you can't complain about that.
A few concerns....
The only negative things I can say about Netmarket are that they seem to be increasing their membership fee. I signed on a year ago with a membership fee of $19.95. Now, it's $59.95. Their terms and conditions allows them to change the fees "without notice"... that's kinda disconcerting. Still, I have saved well over $60 in all, so I am not too concerned. Besides, back when I joined they had a 135% price guarantee - which is now at 200%.
Also, from my experience with the Palm IIIxe described above, since coupons are not accepted you could end up paying a little more. I can't complain, though... I've been rather lucky so far.
Searching for items can sometimes be annoying. They could improve their search system, as it tends to find too many items. For example, when I searched for "Palm V cradle" it gave me over 40 items! Often, it's easier to find items by browsing through the category.
Order Tracking is very good, though many of my older items never provided a tracking number even though they were shipped by UPS. The more recent orders seem to have this information, so maybe it was just something that I had to wait for.
Lastly, their selection is sometimes lacking. You may find an item in a store or review somewhere and find out that Netmarket doesn't have it. They may have similar items or variants of the item... but not the exact item. This can be annoying sometimes, but it's not all that bad. They have a decent selection, and they definitely have more items than when I joined. At least they are going in the right direction.
Summary
I can easily recommend Netmarket for any of your online purchases. They offer a great set of benefits, they make the benefits easy to use. For a little time and "email-work" you save money in the long run. Just watch out for the e-coupons offered at other sites.
Recommended:
Yes
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About the Author
Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 4 members
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