If I was the the store/company, I would be pissed too when promo is given in good faith and others circumvent the rules .There are times where you are helping the vendors fix their systems which is perfectly ok, but publishing details like getting 20 Sim cards and using gmail.xxx alias may not be a good idea?
if you are doing it dont publish it ?
other than inflation and margins are tight, deals are getting far in between and thin.
Or is there is discrete way we can do this and share ?
The way I see it, is that retailers set their pricing & promotion's.
Nothing wrong with consumers availing sweet deals when offered.
Delving a littler deeper, the deals tend to fit into three categories:
Clearance / overstock deals: Stuff like the deep discounts on mach-e's last year & the half price Lexus RZ at the moment would be examples. The retailers have more stock on hand than current market conditions can support (and often don't want to keep aging stock around for various reasons), so are offering sweet deals to get that stock to move. In these cases, the sharing of great deals, and bringing them to the attention of potential purchasers is great for the retailer. In the case of the Mach-e, it seems all of the new 2023 stock is gone, with just the odd ex demo remaining. Puts ford NZ in a good spot when the post facelift Mach-e's start arriving into NZ.
Super sharp pricing (perhaps a loss leader) to gain market share. Items like the Kogan mobile half price deal, or mighty mobile half price deal would be an example. Essentially they are running sharp pricing to build market share. Likely this pricing isn't sustainable long term, but the brands strategy is to build market share first (likely with a goal to crank up prices later). As with clearance stock, sharing these kind of deal's brings more attention to the brand which is exactly what they want.
Price errors / Stupid price structures / Milking new customer deals.
-On price errors, as retailers are setting the prices, it is really up to them to have policies in place to avoid losses through price error's. NZ is kinda on their side too, In that they can refund transactions if they notice before goods change hands. If somebody is going to get the advantage of a price error, might as well be the cheapies community. That said, a price error getting hammered is likely to draw more attention to it, so I have waited untill my goods have shipped before posting a price error on here.
- Stupid Price structures. Things like Amazon AU offering free shipping (airfreight), on things like giant packs of toilet paper & Gym weights. Brands offering $xx off vouchers with no minimum spend (and sometime['s free shipping). Again this is on the retailer, who am I to tell them it is a stupid ideal to offer free airfreight on Gym weights…. And I don't know their numbers, perhaps there is still margin in the deal for them. Must say I felt a little guilty when 20+ packages from the same e-retailer turned up over the course of three day's (they had a $xx discount code stacked with free shipping, so it made perfect sense for me to do a separate transaction for every item)
- Milkable new customer deals. Stuff like $xx of first transaction, with the unique identifier being email address that can easily be changed. Personally don't like how the business world has changed from rewarding loyalty to rewarding people who move their business around. And I am not a big fan of price discrimination, so I have no issue availing new customer discounts as an existing customer.
Must say there is a loophole or two I have chosen not to post here, to minimize the odds of it being closed (sadly the best one got closed regardless)