Mobile apps are now erasing even that labor. Open the free apps, and the only remaining bit of work may be opening your wallet. The bonus: mobile software makes it easier to find deals when you’re actually in a position to capitalize on them.
Groupon’s mobile app is as good as its e-mail service, which is to say spotty, but worth an occasional visit.
Groupon is the reigning king of daily deal services. Give the company your e-mail address and physical location, and it will send daily e-mails with news of offers from local businesses. The company covers roughly 175 markets in the United States, and the offers include a mix of restaurants, activities, health providers and spas.
The app is simple fare, with good graphics and an attractive layout. Flipping quickly through the offers with my thumb, it occurred to me that mobile phones were the ideal format for scanning possibly disposable information like this.
Unfortunately, because I live in a suburban town with scant Groupon coverage, too many of the offers are definitely disposable. For every deal that I could redeem with a 15-minute drive, there were at least two that required an hourlong trek. Factoring in the expense of gas, such offers usually weren’t much of a deal.
The strangest offer was $85 for a night at Mike Ditka’s Runaway Beach Club resort in Kissimmee, Fla. The Getaways section of the app, instead of the local section, would have been a far more logical spot for it.
But for people in bigger cities, Groupon can be a boon. Chicago residents were given roughly 50 offers last Tuesday, for instance, and most were a short train ride away.
The Groupon app (for Apple and Android) is mostly free of frills, although there are a few nice touches, like the one that lets you change your daily notification time so you can receive deals when you’re most likely to use them.
LivingSocial (Android and Apple), a competitor to Groupon, adds a social networking component to the deal-hunting exercise. When users buy a deal through LivingSocial, they can circulate the offer among friends. If three friends buy that product or service, the person who makes the original purchase is awarded a refund.
LivingSocial can suffer from the same geographical spottiness as Groupon. When I tested the app, many of the offers involved significant driving. Also, the app’s separate Instant deals, which typically expire within a day, appear in only around 30 markets (including two outside the United States, London and Toronto), and miss entire states like New Jersey, Florida and Michigan.
For those in LivingSocial territory, though, the mobile element adds a convenient twist to the process. Once you buy something, the app lets you post that news easily to your Twitter or Facebook feed, or e-mail it to others, and it stores a proof-of-purchase voucher page that you show to a cashier.
Of the daily deal apps I tried, Gilt’s featured the most interesting content. It’s known as “Gilt on the Go” on Apple.
The company, in its earliest incarnation, made a name for itself as a Web-only service offering steep discounts on designer women’s apparel. It now also makes local offers in 10 cities across the country and includes goods for men and children, as well as travel, food and home goods.
While the Web site sells full-price items, as well as discounted ones, the app still mostly focuses on sales.
The app, like the Web site, also mixes the day’s offers with others that are expiring soon, and each day it features a Daily Deal on one item starting at noon, Eastern time. Last Tuesday that item was a $39 sweater from Hyden Yoo, on sale from $140. (By 3 p.m. it was sold out.)
Gilt previews the next day’s offer so you can shop around for competing prices and plan tomorrow’s purchase.
While the Daily Deal section offered solid bargains, the app’s other sales were enough to warrant a daily check-in. On the day of the men’s sweater deal, for example, the app promoted 18 different sales by women’s designers, including 50 items from Nanette Lepore at half price.
The app also scores points in other ways. When viewing items, for instance, you can pinch and enlarge the photos to see the texture on a sweater. Images flip quickly from one to the next, and users can change the item’s color with equal ease.
A few other daily deal apps are worth checking, most notably the one from Amazon, which has an Amazon Deals app on Apple that features Web-only deals. The standard Amazon app on Android includes similar deals.
And because you could fill your mobile device with deal-related apps, it’s worth keeping an eye on deal aggregators, like Deals by Citysearch (Android and Apple) or Deal Drop.
Of the two, I found Deal Drop (Android and Apple) more reliable and useful. It includes offers from Groupon and LivingSocial, as well as rivals like Woot and Tanga.
A major drawback is that Deal Drop doesn’t let you sort the offers, so my thumb grew weary flicking through all of them in New York.
At that point, the only work involved with bargain hunting will be remembering to keep your cellphone nearby.
Quick Calls
Road Inc. ($10 for iPad) is a classic-car enthusiast’s dream app. See 50 autos in crisp photos, along with videos, documents and audio of each car’s engine…. Noom Weight Loss Coach (free on Android, but there is a $10 monthly subscription upgrade) from the makers of the excellent CardioTrainer (free on Android), is smartly designed, easy to use and packed with useful features.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=449ce53328ac25de7e048d1d8e0361c3
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