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Buenos Aires Daily Deals Sites

By on September 29, 2010 in Living

With the amazing success of any new business, there’s bound to be plenty of copycats and that has certainly been the case for Groupon, the original daily deals site.  We previously wrote about the Groupon launch in Buenos Aires and since then numerous competitors have popped up.

Basically all these sites work the same way: you sign up for their mailing list and each weekday they send you a promotion that is only good for that day. This promotion is usually something in excess of 50% off the normal price.  A certain number of people need to sign up for that promotion for it to be active. You pay in advance and when the deal is finished, you get a coupon emailed to you for the deal.

Now, there’s a lot of room in this space for daily deals sites, and the more there are, the better the deals can be for the consumer. If you’re in Buenos Aires, I’d recommend checking out some of these sites and signing up for their deals. It is a great way to save money and find some new places as well.

Here’s the current list of sites that are active in Buenos Aires right now:

Groupon (19,021 Likes on Facebook)
The original and biggest of the daily deals sites. Groupon launched on June 24, 2010, and since then has expanded to include four Buenos Aires deals sites: Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires Premium, Buenos Aires Zona Norte and Buenos Aires Zona Sur. You’ll still see some of the best deals from them.

No te la pierdas.com (3,312 Likes on Facebook)
No te la pierdas.com is the second largest of the sites. They offer pretty much the same standard deal of the day format.

Cuponica (2,268 Likes on Facebook)
Cuponica is the next largest of the sites and offers a bit of a spin on the Groupon deals format in that they also offer additional coupons for the advertiser of the day in addition to the main deal.

Oferta Simple (1,785 Likes on Facebook)
Started by a group of American expats, Oferta Simple copies the Groupon model in several South American cities.

LetsBonus (1,257 Likes on Facebook)
Tired yet? Here’s yet another one.

Full Exit (785 Likes on Facebook)
Nothing much more to say as they’re all pretty much the same. Full Exit seems to still be working on their technology issues though as I often get emails from them with broken images.

UPDATE (10/20/10): And yet another:

Waku (2,108 likes on Facebook) – move along, nothing different to see here.

UPDATE (11/2/10): And another…

ClickOnero (2,742 likes on Facebook) – yep, you get the idea by now.

UPDATE (11/5/10):

Por Un Dia (1,399 likes on Facebook)

UPDATE (11/17/10):

BigDeal (4,306 likes on Facebook) – these are hard to keep up with.

UPDATE (12/7/10):

Henry just informed us that we have fallen behind with our list of sites, so here’s another…

Groupalia (2,561 likes on Facebook)

UPDATE (12/19/10):

Club Cupón (790 likes on Facebook)

UPDATE (12/23/10):

Agrupate (1,287 likes on Facebook)

UPDATE (12/26/10):

Timbai (379 likes on Facebook)

UPDATE (1/1/11):

Grupazo (3,657 likes on Facebook)

Mercado Grupal (242 likes on Facebook)

UPDATE (1/16/11):

Oferdar (158 likes on Facebook)

UPDATE (1/20/11):

PIGiT (69 likes on Facebook): where did they get this name from?

UPDATE (3/17/11):

Pez Urbano (339 likes on Facebook): yep, they keep coming…

UPDATE (3/19/11):

Social Libre (101 likes on Facebook): it’s getting hard to keep up

 


If you know of any others, let me know in the comments. Now, go sign up and start saving.

Comments { 4 }

iPhone 4 Released in Argentina

By on September 25, 2010 in Tech

The iPhone 4 on Movistar was just released in Buenos Aires today!

Currently, it is only available from certain Carrefour locations and Falabella at Unicenter. In fact, both stores took out full page ads in today’s paper to publicize it’s release. It’s so new, even Movistar’s web site does not yet make any mention of its availability.

The cost at both stores is AR $2399 for the 16GB version and AR $3299 for the 32GB version, which also requires a new 12 month Movistar contract. The lowest iPhone plan from Movistar is AR $189 per month and includes 300 free minutes to Movistar and fixed lines, 300 minutes to other mobile numbers, 4 free Movistar numbers with up to 3000 minutes of calling, 200 SMS and unlimited Internet.

The Carrefour ad listed that they only had ten units total, while the Falabella ad listed that they had twenty 32GB iPhone 4s and seventy 16GB iPhone 4s.  Fearing I would already be too late to get one, we rushed over to the Carrefour on Libertador and General Paz around 2pm and were, surprisingly, the first people to buy one (this location had two 16GB and one 32GB model in stock). Laura thought I was a bit crazy and reminded me that this was not New York, but still I had expected some lines. (The release of the iPad in Argentina a couple of weeks ago generated a lot of attention and lines.)

Unfortunately, the iPhone 4 is only sold with a 12 month contract, so getting one is out for most expats as a DNI and permanent residency are required for these contracts.  As I only have temporary residency, I had to have Laura sign up for a plan in her name. It’s nice to finally be done with the costly pre-pago Movistar service and be on a regular monthly plan.

The other good news is that since older electronics tend to hold their value well here, we can now sell our jailbroken and unlocked iPhone 3GS. We should be able to get almost the same price as we paid for the new iPhone 4.

UPDATE (26.9.10) – It appears that Claro and Personal also have the iPhone 4 now and are advertising it on the home page of their web sites. Movistar has this page for the iPhone 4 which is not linked from their site yet.

UPDATE (27.9.10) - FaceTime is not currently working with Movistar in Argentina either. This is really disappointing as this was one of the main reasons for getting the iPhone 4. If you go to Settings -> Phone and turn FaceTime on, you’ll get the message “Waiting for activation…”  This appears to be a problem with Movistar needing to issue a carrier update which apparently has not been done yet.

I sent a tweet to @movistararg and am waiting for a response. Send one too if you have this problem.

Comments { 6 }

Hot Festival Buenos Aires

By on September 21, 2010 in Living

All right, all right… I have been posting a lot of concerts, but the Hot Festival Buenos Aires is the one I am most looking forward to. The lineup is great and includes:

  • Scissor Sisters
  • Massive Attack
  • Mika
  • Thievery Corporation
  • Pavement
  • Stereophonics
  • Hot Chip
  • Phoenix
  • Benjamin Biolay

It takes place November 19 and 20, 2010 at Costanero Sur.

I’m buying my tickets this week. If anyone else is interested in going, let me know!

Tickets are available at TuEntrada.com.

Comments { 19 }

The Worst Thing About Buenos Aires

By on September 21, 2010 in Living

I had previously written about the best thing in Buenos Aires, so now I found it only fitting to write about the worst thing in Buenos Aires.

Crime? Nope.
Lack of good sushi, peanut butter, pickles and spice? Close, but no.
Inflation? Ridiculous, but not it.
Dog poop on the streets? Annoying, but wrong again.

It’s electronics.

Being a technophile, living in Buenos Aires without access to the latest electronics has been difficult to say the least. Add in the fact that they’re ridiculously overpriced due to the government’s protectionist tax policies, and you can see why BA is a gadget-lovers worst nightmare. Plus, there is no real Internet shopping (yes, I am aware of MercadoLibre) and finding a better price at a different store is near impossible as prices tend to be fixed.

This latest rant comes from the fact that we needed to buy a 32″ LCD TV. In the States, we would have used Google shopping and Tech Bargains to look for the best prices and coupon codes, order online and have it shipped to the house. Things are not so easy here. We went to several stores to find out that for the most part, every 32″ LCD is priced the same, regardless of brand. The only real discounts tend to come in the weekend paper and offer 15% – 20% off on specific models if you hold a certain bank credit card. These discounts change every week, so we needed to wait until we found the model we needed with the bank card that we had – Standard Bank.

This past weekend, we found a promotion on a model that would do – the Samsung LN32B450.  This is the lowest level model that Samsung makes, and would never satisfy me in the States, but here it sells for AR $3,699. That’s an incredible U$S 937! The comparable Samsung TV in the States sells for U$S 397. Luckily, Falabella was offering a 20% discount for Standard Bank cardholders which brought the price down to AR $2,959 (U$S 750). This promotion also included 20 interest-free payments, which is pretty much the only way any normal person here could afford to buy electronics. We jumped on it and now have a new 32″ TV at double the price and with less of the features. Woo-hoo!

Another example of this problem with gadgets is the launch of the Apple iPad in Argentina last week. It launched on September 17, 2010, exactly 167 days after the US launch. This is an eternity for an early-adopter! In addition,the lowest model iPad is priced at AR $3399 (U$S 861). This same model from Apple in the States? Only U$S 499.

The good news for most temporary expats is that this tends not to be much of a problem if you bring everything with you. I always recommend that people bring all the electronics they want and hope that nothing breaks while they’re here. I brought three Vonage routers with me just to make sure.

One benefit to the high electronics prices is that it has spurred a bit of a cottage industry amongst expats who “bring in” a few extra electronic items from the States when they come.  These can usually be sold at a profit which helps to offset the cost of the plane ticket. The other benefit is that older electronics tend to hold their value longer. For example, I sold my old iPhone 3G on MercadoLibre a couple of weeks ago for AR $1,790 (U$S 453). This is quite a premium over the comparable resale price in the States, and was also the lowest price on the site.

Luckily, I’ve had a few friends and readers of the blog who’ve graciously offered to bring me electronics from the States, and I’m currently awaiting a new wireless router and computer speakers which should arrive shortly. If anyone else is coming from the States, I’m sure I could think of a few things if you have some space…

Comments { 9 }