I hadn’t realized it was New Years’ Eve until my co-worker let me know the office would be closed today. I’m not too big on resolutions or anything like that, mostly because I know I will immediately forget about them and continue a normal and unrestrained lifestyle. This year I will make an effort to actually follow my resolution, which I have already planned out. The resolution is this: sell, return, and exchange products purchased from either backcountry.com or steepandcheap.com, and use the money to buy even cooler gear. I came up with this brilliant resolution when I was looking through my order history at backcountry.com and steepandcheap.com and noticed the total of 24 purchases in the last two years. In some senses it seems like a great accomplishment to have a multi-page order history, but in reality it is a disappointment–I only averaged one SAC purchase per month. I can do better.
So, I publicly make this resolution to increase my SAC average purchase rate by buying more with the money I get from sales and returns. Yes, I know it is retarded to return gear to buy more gear, but due to the impulsive nature of SAC, I have made some pretty retarded purchases–mostly because I can’t try things on over the internet. Some things like a ZOIC Sportwool biking shirt which still has the cardboard tag on it, or my Arc’teryx delegate shorts which is too short for even Canadians.
And if any of you were wondering about the return policy, I had a great chat with Gearhead which, as a friendly mountain goat, told me that I could return and exchange anything for a full refund including items “30 years old and dragged through the mud by a camel”. How nice of the goat. I have a feeling I will be taking more than a few extraneous items when I go to the MLK SLC get together.
Some items I am contemplating purchasing with this steady income are:
- Deuter Futura Vario 50 + 10 L backpack
- - or - Osprey Atmos 50 L backpack
- - or - Mountain Hardwear Trance 55 L backpack
- - or - Arc’teryx Needle 55 L backpack (only on sale, or SAC if possible)
- The North Face Lifty GTX 400
- Black Diamond Winter Bivy
- - or - Mountain Hardwear Conduit SL Bivy
And that is only part of my Winter 2007/2008 list…
I’ve done that with SAC quite a few times, meaning I have things laying around I never use. However to ship them back, usually costs nearly as much as what I would get in return. I think I’ve only shipped one thing back (a pair of sunglasses). I’ve just stopped going to the site, that way I don’t waste money
Well, I will be heading over to SLC in two weeks so I won’t have to pay for shipping fees.
As for not going to that site, that would be in direct conflict with my resolution so I don’t think I’ll be doing that.
Ha, you know they have like 2 other deal sites like that right? Maybe they don’t have them any longer, but one was for snowboarding stuff I think, and one was for more fashion related items (I assume to get the jeans/sunglasses off SAC).
But yes, buy buy buy.
The only backcountry related sites I know of are steepandcheap, dogfunk (snowboarding), and tramdock (skiing).
There are other non backcountry related deal-a-day sites like moosejaw lowdown, whiskeymilitia, etc… all aggregated at dealsucker.com