Free Stuff : Fat Wallet

There are a lot of free websites and companies on Twitter devoted to advertising free deals which you can easily find on Google. In the next few posts of my beginners’ guide to free stuff I’ll list a few of my favorite places to find free stuff and tips on using each.

One of my favorite places to find free deals is the FatWallet free forum. If you are not familiar with this site already, FatWallet is one of the web’s premiere deal website. What makes the site special is its large and highly involved community of followers, “FatWalleters,” who constantly post, rate, and comment on deals in the site’s many forums. There are people out there who practically live on FW so there is a constant flow of new information. If you are like me and too busy to search all over the web for deals then FW is a great place to go. Let others do the work, scan for highly rated posts, and grab those deals. Not only are there great deals but it’s easy to scan by rating as well as use the forum filtering tool to filter by free deal type (totally free, free with survey, etc.)

The only problem with FW is it's so popular that good deals with limited availability often go fast – and I mean lightning fast. If there’s a killer deal on an online product it could be sold out in minutes. If the product is sold in the store you have to go quick especially if you live in a techie urban area with a lot of potential fellow FatWalleters. Another thing to look out for are store workers who are FatWalleters themselves and may hide the product till they are done with their shift. I know, it sounds paranoid but it actually happens!

Case in point, once at Staples I was looking everywhere for a $80 laptop bag which was free after rebate. The salespeople said they were sold out but I was determined and wouldn’t give up my search. Sure enough I spotted one on the very top of the 15 foot display. I politely pointed it out to the manager who acted strangely, got mad at me, and argued it wasn’t the same bag. He practically refused to help me but I stood my ground and politely insisted he get the ladder to satisfy me. He grudgingly did it and sure enough it was the bag I was looking for. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t up there on accident!