BARGAIN hunter David Jago hit gold when he found a new Xbox online for £47.
The self-styled Price Glitch King also bagged £50 of make-up for £2.40, which his wife loved — although she is not so keen on the random car parts cluttering up their spare room.
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David, an IT analyst at the University of Portsmouth, scours the net for price errors and, more times than not, gets sellers to honour the deals.
He has saved thousands on stuff he and wife Sophie, 41, need or want.
Or maybe do not.
His most productive source of glitches are websites hotukdeals.com and latestdeals.co.uk where users flag up opportunities.
And he finds others himself. He says: “I have a browse around. The best time is when retailers go into sales — they are more likely to make a mistake when they alter the prices.
“People say, ‘Your spare room must look like Aladdin’s cave,’ but for me it’s fun, it’s a hobby.
“Some people spend hours scrolling Twitter, I like getting great deals.
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“My first glitch, a £500 chair from M&S for 50p, wasn’t honoured but it got me interested.
“And the deal that hooked me was on the Xbox One S four years ago. The retail price was £229, but if you bundled it up with the Call Of Duty WW1 game, it dropped to £50. If you then added in three months of Xbox Live and digital game Rocket League it dropped to £47. I ended up ordering two.”
But David is not greedy with his bounty and likes to share.
He kept one games console but gave the games to his brother’s friend and the second console to another friend whose own one had broken down.
And any food items he does not use, or give to friends, are donated to food banks.
He is always landing pet food and has donated lots of it to charities.
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It is the thrill of the chase that excites David, rather than the often random goods themselves.
Does he really need 1,000 marker pens?
Probably not.
Were they a good deal at £3 for the lot?
Definitely — sold.
He says: “I’m in it for the deals and not necessarily the 87 micro-USB cables, for the cost of shipping, or the crates of cat food for £3 — we don’t even have a cat. But I look for things my friends might like or that I can give away to people who need them.”
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For Christmas 2019, his work Secret Santa had a £10 limit, but for that amount David put together a sack of ten items, from a 1.4kg tub of jelly beans worth £12 to a tour of the Oval cricket ground worth £15, with a total value of £100, ten times what he had paid.
David is also generous with his know-how and has started sharing his trade secrets on TikTok page DealHunterDave, where he already has 642 followers.
But back to that spare room, which he admits is now more of a stock room.
David confesses Sophie does have something of a love-hate relationship with his bargain hunts.
He says: “She likes it, kind of, but goes crazy if I order something too big — like when Amazon was having a warehouse clearance on car parts.
“I loaded up on radiators, brake pads, air-con units . . . I managed to sell a couple on eBay but the rest are still in the stock room, in big, red boxes.
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“She was less upset, though, about the No7 foundation cream I got her from Boots for 48p (per tube, usually £10).”
But the bonanza David is most proud of is the one he scored on trendy Asics sport sweatshirts just last year.
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They were on sale, there was a price glitch and he found a voucher that worked.
David ended up bagging 20 for £36, down from almost £1,500.
They might just layer up nicely in the current cold weather with the rather fetching £40 Regatta coats he landed on eBay last year at just £2.45 a pop.
Be alert and play the field
- Don’t be afraid to go big. If the company realises its mistake, the worst it can do is cancel the order and refund you.
- Use the fastest shipping. It might cost more but it gives the company less time to catch its mistake and cancel your order.
- Be alert. Keep tabs on websites Hot UK Deals and Latestdeals, where users flag up glitches for others.
- Play the field. Use cashback sites like TopCashback or Quidco to click through to deals and multiply your savings. Add browser extensions like Honey and Pouch that search for additional discount codes.
- Keep your eyes peeled. It pays to know how much items usually go for so you know you’re getting the best deal. Look in Facebook groups like Extreme Couponing and apps such as hotukdeals to stay ahead of the game.
- And, of course, follow Dave on TikTok @dealhunterdave for his latest finds.
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