Buying a New Thinkpad? Link through FATWALLET

[Ken Fox]

Fatwallet.com is an internet deals website. For those of you not familiar with it, after a 1 minute registration of your email address, the website will share the commissions with you, that they receive when users link through their website. If you didn't know it already, when you click on a link on various websites, and end up buying something from the "linked merchant," the website providing the link gets a commission.

The deals vary but Fatwallet was giving 7% back on Lenovo purchases last month, and right now it is at 2%. Newegg and Buy.com and many other online merchants also pay commissions that you can get part of by going through Fatwallet.

I have only recently started linking through fatwallet, but I have an amazingly cheap friend who's been using them for years and swears by them. The commissions are totaled and generally take about 90 days to be collected, as the merchants hold the money back until they are sure you aren't going to return the merchandise.

Fatwallet will mail you a check for accumulated commissions after they have been collected.

So, if you are going to spend a thousand or two on a new Thinkpad, you might as well get 2% of it back if all it takes is clicking a Fatwallet link.

I should caution, however, that Lenovo has a bunch of discounted price websites for just about everyone (Visa Card Holders, MC and Amex card holders, Customers of various banks, members of your aunt's bridge club, etc.) so you may do better on a given system or accessories purchase by going through one of these sites rather than through the fatwallet link.

Finally, if you haven't already done so, it would be very nice to click the "Make a Donation" button on the top of the thinkpads.com homepage, so that Bill can continue to keep THIS website up and running.

[JaneL]

Fatwallet.com is an internet deals website.

I'm a devoted follower of their finance forum. Moving this over to the News conference.

[pianowizard]

The deals vary but Fatwallet was giving 7% back on Lenovo purchases last month, and right now it is at 2%.

Thanks for the tip! Will you earn any commision from Fatwallet if I join them through you? If you do, I'll give you my email address so that you can invite me.

[Ken Fox]

The deals vary but Fatwallet was giving 7% back on Lenovo purchases last month, and right now it is at 2%.

Thanks for the tip! Will you earn any commision from Fatwallet if I join them through you? If you do, I'll give you my email address so that you can invite me.

Sure,

Send the site admin an email and request that I get half your commissions

Seriously speaking, even if that were possible (which I doubt) being as I didn't give any link out and you would be typing their address into your own web browser, no.

Some of the merchants pay commissions that are worth receiving, for example, Staples pays around 4%, and there are some that pay up to 10%.

The T43 closeout that I have coming (not the one I mentioned in my post asking if I'd made a stupid purchase, but another one from a saved cart I stumbled onto a couple weeks later) is going to pay me 7%, more than my sales tax, in March. Of course that was when Lenovo was paying 7% "Fat Cash" and it is now down to 2%, after the holidays.

But if you decide to buy one of their "outlet" sale items, which you can't get a better deal on through one of the special purchasing pages, you might as well take the 2% as that is better than nothing.

On the whole, though, any new Lenovo system or accessory is going to be a better deal, all around, from a special ordering page than with the Fat Cash through the general, fatwallet, link. But the next time they do an "employee price deal for everyone," like just expired, the tables turn and then the Fatcash deal is what you want.

And, if you can get 1% back from Newegg purchases and whatever Buy.com is paying these days, you might as well take it as it is something as opposed to nothing. The general rule would be that if you are dealing with an online merchant who pays "Fat Cash" through fatwallet.com, then don't go to the merchant's page off a link on say, techbargains, but rather go through FW and then search for the item. Pretty easy and it should add up over time. Plus, if you weren't a cheap bastard you wouldn't have read this far in my post

ken

[pianowizard]

Ken, you should check. I am a member of Mypoints.com (similar site to FatWallet) and when I refer my friends to join (by giving Mypoints their email addresses), I get extra points from Mypoints.