Read this if you are considering the Brickseek $29.99 membership!
If you are considering the EXTREME $29.99 membership, this information may help you make a choice. I LOVE the Brickseek site for the free version of just looking up UPC’s or SKU’s to see what the item’s price may be in the store you are checking.
I HATE the Brickseek site for it being so slow … horribly slow, but free is free. As a blogger and reseller, I wanted to see if the new membership tiers were really worthwhile, so I signed up a few months ago for the $9.99 membership. It was just “meh” or okay. I did get a few leads that I didn’t know about, but it wasn’t all it was hyped to be.
After cancelling the $9.99 membership at the end of last month, I thought long and hard about signing up for the $29.99 extreme membership. A TOTAL MISTAKE (not the thinking about it, but actually getting it)! Brickseek only gives you so many deals per day and many (YES, MANY) of these deals are not even deals at all, or they are old deals! I’m not saying that Brickseek is doing this intentionally, but I do not think they have the actual access to Walmart deal markdowns as they say that they do. And, this is NOT what I signed up for.
No, this is not buyer remorse, this is Brickseek not living up to their promise of great deals before everyone else gets them.
And, yes, I am going to give screenshot examples, so that you can see for yourself. Here are some of the deals duds that I was served this month. Reminder – I’ve paid $29.99 this month for these:
The first one is a Hallmark ornament – the bottom of the screenshot shows the price of $999 (really?) and now this is a deal? No, the $7.98 price is REGULAR price! No deal!
The next one is a lunch box with an MSRP of $33.07 – nope, it was NEVER $33.07, but they are using that price to show the regular price of $10.87 as a markdown. Again, no deal!
I’m sounding like a broken record. The rice was never $27.16 as shown in the screenshot. So the markdown is not a markdown at all. Again, regular price! No deal!
The Gain was never $44.24 either. The price shown as the markdown is the regular price! No deal!
So, what am I (and others) paying that $29.99 for? Maybe an occasional real deal that is shown to us before others. But what does that actually mean? The deals do not necessarily indicate a “new” deal, just new to Brickseek. Does that make sense? They get a deal sometimes long after the deal is actually available to the public, Brickseek just doesn’t know about it.
I am not posting ALL of the duds that I have found over the last 15 days, because there are too many, but here is an example of the one of the “deals” that was served yesterday that is really old:
You can see by the screenshot (from yesterday) that it was just added 8 hours prior to my screenshot. Where are they getting their information? This was marked down to $2.55 on NOVEMBER 11th!!!
Yes, I bought this lotion WEEKS ago!
You can see the markdown date on the bottle! By the way, I really like this lotion, but I found it with absolutely no help from Brickseek (yeah, weeks ago!). I am going to make a guess here, because I have been trying to figure out how Brickseek gets their information.
I think when someone posts a deal and then others check Brickseek to see the price, THAT is when Brickseek gets wind of the markdown. There are so many markdowns that I find that I have not seen on Brickseek at all. So, when you are searching Brickseek, you are most likely notifying Brickseek of the markdown and then it gets published on their site. So, the more you use their site, the more markdowns that are shown to other people.
In other words, I don’t think that they actually get Walmart’s markdowns when they happen. They get them when someone searches for the items on the Brickseek site. I really thought that I was missing something by not having the extreme membership, but it hasn’t helped me at all.
My experience with Brickseek is this:
- Free version is great for looking up items, but remember that if it is a markdown, it will probably go into Brickseek’s queue to service the members feed.
- $9.99 membership is iffy as the site is incredibly slow, but I did find a couple items (enough to make up the $9.99 that I spent), and the ads are taken off because you are paying.
- $29.99 membership seems like a bunch of mismarked retail prices being shown erroneously making the regular price look like a deal, but they are just regular prices. Also, a lot of old items are showing up as new deals.
I hope that this is helpful on helping make the decision to pay for a Brickseek membership. I honestly … HONESTLY think if you pay for only one service, make it Walmart+ if you have the time to scan prices in store. I think I’m done with Brickseek memberships for now as I don’t really feel that they are all they are hyped to be and are very little help. In fact, I really feel that the $29.99 membership is “not as advertised” and that I threw that money away.
Conclusion, save your pennies err … lots of dollars for something else!
This review was using Brickseek for Walmart deals. But a quick summary of Dollar General on Brickseek. I have seen only a few markdowns for Dollar General stores. It is rare that I see any. Again, I’m guessing that no one is using Brickseek to search Dollar General stores – so they don’t have anything to aggregate. And, I know for a fact that Dollar General harvest just went to 90% on Tuesaday. But what do I see on their site?
/crickets/
Today is Thursday. Dollar General harvest merchandise went to 90% on Tuesday. I guess they didn’t get the memo.
Happy shopping!
