Arwen
I’ve got to tell you about a great site I learned about. It is so handy. Love it.
In the process of building my new computer I hit a purchasing problem. As I often buy things from eBay I’ve become accustomed to knowing when I can get an item. Things are ‘Buy It Now’ or the remaining time in the auction shows. I can control my wait time. But, getting a GTX1060 was proving to be a problem.
For whatever reason the GTX1060 on eBay tends to be marked up. I’m not sure why cards that can be purchased cheaper elsewhere sell on eBay. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised there are people that form the idea eBay is cheaper and stop checking prices.
Realizing I was going to pay as much for a used GTX980 as a new, faster, better tech GTX1060, I started looking for a new GTX, Amazon, Newegg, B&H, Jet, SuperBiiz, Best Buy, Frys, Walmart, etc. All sold out. Every time I looked, 2 and 3 times a day, they were still sold out. This was getting tedious.
A couple of days ago I had acquired all the parts for my computer except the video card. Now I was impatiently waiting on availability of a GTX. Making it even more difficult I wanted and ASUS GTX1060. As I searched I saw a thread on one of the geek DIY sites and a site named Now in Stock (https://www.nowinstock.net/ – free) was recommended. You gotta check it out if you’re waiting on availability for any new purchase.
And The Beat Goes On
It took two days to scarf up my new ASUS GeForce GTX 1060 6GB ROG STRIX OC for US$329 using NowInStock. I had already been doing daily searches for my video card and when that became my last item I was searching several times a day. Unfortunately, it was Amazon that first had the card and I had to pay sales tax ($28). :/ But, it is being shipped today.
It took me two days to score because the first day I did not setup my alerts… DUH! If you sign up you can login and set alerts. When some company posts the items as in stock, starts selling them, NowInStock catches it and updates their site and they send an email. Jump and you are near the front of the line purchasing before stock is consumed. I even set a special alarm sound for email incoming from NowInStock. Woohooo!
The first day I saw the NowInStock web page update and noticed that several hours before a store had received stock and was selling and still showed as ‘in stock’. But, by the time I noticed and got there, they were sold out again. Apparently NowInStock is much slower at noticing an item has sold out… again.
Apparently the 1060 is VERY popular. With the email alert I made my purchase and then turned off the alerts. Nice!
There are stores that allow you to pre-order, buy items that are back-ordered. But, most had no date for when the item would be in stock. With the large companies like Best Buy and Frys customer service on the web sucks. No way was I going to give them money and blindly wait. So, NowInStock is my choice for when I need to purchase a way popular, selling-out item.