POSTED BY

AT 6:09 AM
Tuesday December 18, 2007

China • consumption • deal extreme • deals • retailers

DealExtreme.com: Cheap Crap with Free Shipping

DealExtreme.com seems to be an online retailer where you can buy all that cheap Chinese crap you were never sure you needed. (You probably don't.) Worse, they have free shipping.

Products range from the potentially useful, like the $45 personal cell phone jammer to kitschy, like a $7 motion-activated lung-shaped screaming ash tray. They've got those splatting pig balls for $2.50. A Zippo-shaped lighter with 4GB flash drive inside. A $7.50 PCI PC diagnostic card. A $2.50 browpencil-style travel chopsticks set.

There's even a "Random Stuff" button on the side allowing you to spin the Wheel O' Crap. I am a'flutter, yet I will resist. This is just about the pinnacle of "wanton consumerism" mountain, but from way up here the prices look so small.

Catalog Page [DealExtreme.com] (Thanks, Snack Admiral!)

23 Comments

Simon Greenwood

#1 – 6:21 AM December 18, 2007

Loving the old Yamaha synth logo there. The Chinese will knock off anything.

scaught

#2 – 6:29 AM December 18, 2007

Cheap wii controller chargers, looks like they're getting decent enough reviews:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.3333

Caveat: someone mentions that it took a month to ship...

Not a Doktor

#3 – 6:57 AM December 18, 2007

damnit why must I be unemployed

meerkat

#4 – 7:26 AM December 18, 2007

I have actually ordered from DealExtreme a few times. They are a good company - the products are absurdly cheap and generally do what they say they do.

A $3 hand-powered flashlight from China is still going to break into 100 pieces if you drop it from more than 2 feet - I know that the hard way.

Most recently I bought this portable memory card backup - http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.6995 - pop a harddisk in there and you are all set, no need to haul a laptop around with your DSLR. Great deal...

One funny thing is that they shipped every item I ordered last time separately. The sucky part about that is that because it is international and how they ship, if you miss the mail carrier, you have to pick it up at the post office.

meerkat

#5 – 7:33 AM December 18, 2007

Haha, if these were USB-powered I'd be all over these! Probably smells weird after a while...
Electronic Fat Reducing Sauna Pants - http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1948

Aaron

#6 – 7:58 AM December 18, 2007

Maybe I misunderstood something here but FREE international shipping?

Maybe I'm overly skeptical though my experiences of having to pay 40+$ for shipping to Austria, but that sounds to good to be true. (Especially wen they have stuff for less then five bucks...)

Does that really work and do the products really, you know, arrive?

bunnyman2112

#7 – 8:14 AM December 18, 2007

I like how they completely ripped off their logo from the Yamaha DX7!

Jeff

#8 – 9:14 AM December 18, 2007

@6 - free international shipping doesn't surprise me too much if you take into account the situation.

With the quantity they ship (and the small size of individual items) they can get a reasonably low shipping cost by pre-sorting and waiting to ship until they have full containers (which probably means an average of a day or 2 of delay in shipping).

It's just another example of economies of scale at work (ship 1 item and it costs a lot, ship 10000 and it doesn't cost that much for each).

Halloween Jack

#9 – 12:25 PM December 18, 2007

Holy shit, they have magic beans. They really are like that shop that appears out of nowhere and has everything.

Anonymous Anonymous

#10 – 12:37 PM December 18, 2007

Ive gotten several things from DX. The DS Fire card took 3 weeks to ship, while the laptop video hookups came in a prompt 6 days.

usefulcat

#11 – 12:48 PM December 18, 2007

I've bought a few things from here before. To the UK it does take a long time for stuff to turn up - from a fortnight up to a month - but it is cheap. They do ship stuff separately if it's quicker - I've seen stuff worth less than a quid sent from Hong Kong by itself.

You'll find it's even cheaper than ebay for crappy phone cases, covers, lcd protectors and suchlike. Check here first before you eBay!

mote15147

#12 – 12:50 PM December 18, 2007

Don't make the same mistake I did. Dealextreme is wonderful as long as you are buying that cheap crap. If you have a problem , it's another story. I had a defective P168, contacted them and after a very long lag time, they asked me to return it for replacement. To keep it short, they now have my phone and my money and are disputing the return of my money through my credit card company nearly twenty days later.
They used deceptive conversation to get me to return the phone. several times they didn't even reply at all.
NOT A VERY ETHICAL COMPANY. BEWARE !

Teresa Nielsen Hayden

#13 – 2:10 PM December 18, 2007

Apparently their cellphone blocker pouch also blocks RFID. I hear there are uses for that.

The Digital Buddhist Jukeboxes were unexpected.

Gary

#14 – 2:14 PM December 18, 2007

Who can argue with a store that has a Flashlights/Guns/Lasers category?

scodav

#15 – 3:06 PM December 18, 2007

I had a good experience with Dealextreme. I bought two laser pointers for about $4 (for both - I know!). Neither worked -- when I pointed out that returning them to Hong Kong would cost as much as purchasing, they just sent me two more (both worked fine) at no charge.

scodav

Aaron

#16 – 3:16 PM December 18, 2007

Ok, after seeing those extremly awesome USB heated gloves, I just have to try it. Because otherwise, my girlfriend would kill me.

And maybe I'll even get a pair for myself. (What can I say, our place is really cold sometimes...)

Anonymous Anonymous

#17 – 1:41 AM December 19, 2007

I've bought tons of stuff from DX, without any real issues... it's like a dollar store that has *everything* but takes a week to four to get to you.
The only problem I've ever had was trying to order a tritium keychain which have been notoriously backordered the second they come in stock.. I had to wait 2 weeks for them to tell me they were out of stock, and another couple days for a refund.

Xiguli

#18 – 3:46 PM December 19, 2007

Every need is anticipated. The Wii Remote Whistle Keychain "Can be used to ask for help in urgent situations and prevent perverts."

Finally.

runa

#19 – 10:31 AM December 21, 2007

Their RSS feed is not displaying product images but you can use this one, fixed with yahoo pipes!

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=SP4LL6uu3BGzfcCcJhOy0Q

Evil Paul

#20 – 4:54 AM December 22, 2007

Oh God nooooo! What have you done?

I'M DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!