Welcome to BrickSeek Premium and Extreme!
Cool! But now what?
First off, let me start off by saying Welcome to BrickSeek, and also thank you for putting your trust in us to help you save money! We take a lot of pride in helping people, and that's why we’re here and why we do what we do.
Okay, but seriously, now what? If you are completely new to BrickSeek Premium or Extreme, then hopefully this quick tutorial helps you learn about your new membership features and how to use them. The tutorials also have videos included but you can also find them on our BrickSeek YouTube channel here: BrickSeek YouTube channel
If you’re a new Premium member, here are a few of the most popular features that you should be using:
- My Stores - There is a reason that I'm putting this here first on the list, customizing your My Stores list is going to have an impact your experience using other BrickSeek membership features because it's going to be utilizing information from your favorite local stores. Have a local store that you don't enjoy going to? Do you have some stores that you have better experiences at than others? Make sure you customize your My Stores list to account for this and then your Daily Update Email will start showing you deals in your favorite stores as well as local information on the Today's Markdowns, Popular Searches, and the Deals pages.
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Markdowns by Store - These pages are populated with items that have been marked down specifically in local stores near you. These local store markdown pages are updated often by our system with new deals. This membership feature is a great way to find deals locally before others even know that they exist.
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Today’s Markdowns - These pages are populated with the items that are actively being marked down in the greatest number of stores each day. Why is that important? If these items are getting marked down in multiple stores across the country, there’s a good chance that one of your local stores might be included in this markdown or that they might be included soon. Since they are being widely marked down nationwide, there’s a decent chance that these deals are being noticed by others -- so you may want to act quickly to ensure that you get the deals before they're gone.
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Local Inventory Alerts - One of the best features offered by BrickSeek, which is also one of the most underutilized features, is the Local Inventory Alerts. Have you ever looked up an item on BrickSeek’s Inventory Checker page only to find out that the item’s price still hasn’t dropped low enough to your liking or that it's out of stock? Use BrickSeek’s Local Inventory Alerts and let our system periodically check that item for you locally, and we’ll send you an email when we detect a change in price or inventory! As a Premium member, you have 5 allotted Alerts to use, so make sure you’re using them! Keep in mind that sometimes items that are still full price near you may take weeks to drop in price at your local stores, so don’t be discouraged if you set an alert for an item and don’t see results quickly.
- Online Deal Alerts - One of the newest features added to the BrickSeek memberships are the Online Deal Alerts. This feature allows you to create up to 10 deal alerts for specific product categories and when our system detects a new online deal that meets your criteria we'll notify you via email as well as provide you with a notification in the BrickSeek Notification Center. The great thing about Online Deal Alerts is that you can score savings from the comfort of your couch without having to deal with the frustrating process of searching for items in local retail stores.
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Popular Searches - These pages are populated with the items that are being searched the most on BrickSeek. Why is that important? Well, they’re likely popular items for a reason -- usually because these items are dropping in price across the country or because they’re hard-to-find items that have a really high demand. Because popular searched items are oftentimes tied to great deals that are trending across social media, you may need to act quickly as these items are being sought after by many others!
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The Deals Page - The Deals pages are a great way to find savings on items both in store and online. Items on this page are seen by Extreme members first and then Premium members before they’re displayed to the public, so you may notice a membership banner across the top of the product tile to indicate who can see it. The Deals pages are always being updated by our system, and it may change often during a day, so it’s always a good idea to revisit this page at least daily to see new content. Whenever you find an in-store item that you’re interested in, click on the product tile to visit our BrickSeek Deal page for that item; and be sure to check local inventory to see if that deal is available locally to you!
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The BrickSeek App - Did you know that as a Premium/Extreme member, you have access to become a beta tester for our Android and iOS BrickSeek app, complete with a barcode scanner?! You can learn more about becoming an app tester by reading the guide in the forum link below:
- The BrickSeek Talk Community - As a Premium member, you now have access to the Premium Area of our BrickSeek Talk community, which is a great place to share deals, tips and tricks, and general advice with other BrickSeek members. We are now sharing exclusive like-new deals in the community, mostly from Amazon Warehouse, which is another great way to find big savings on items. All of the deals that are shared to our BrickSeek Deal Group on Facebook are posted to the Talk community first so it's a good idea to keep an eye on the community for trending deals. We’re always looking to improve and share more and more exclusive deals in the Talk community, so keep an eye out for those BrickSeek exclusive deals as well!
- Pricing Records - The Pricing Records page shows historical snapshots of all of the known prices and availability for an item that our system has detected nationwide. This can be useful in many different ways, depending on how savvy a person may be with the information. One of the main benefits that any member should be able to take away from this page is the ability to determine what common markdown prices you might expect to see in your area for items. This page is not a real-time inventory checker.
If you’re a new Extreme member, you should be using the same features above (you’ll have content that is exclusive to you before it goes Premium), and you should also be using:
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Local Markdown Feed - These pages are populated with items that have been detected as being marked down specifically in your configured My Stores. The Local Markdown Feed pages are updated by our system when new deals have been detected locally. This is an exclusive Extreme membership feature, and it's a great way to find deals locally in one easy-to-use page without having to dig through multiple Local Markdowns by Store pages. For example, if there is a new deal found at only one of your local My Stores, you won’t have to dig through all of the local store markdowns individually to find it; it’ll be displayed here with the store that has the deal.
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The Shopping List - The BrickSeek Shopping List feature, which is exclusive to Extreme members, is a great way to make the most out of your trips to the stores. With the BrickSeek Shopping List feature, you can build up store-specific lists of items that you’ve recently searched for instead of manually writing down lists of items and forgetting them. Another thing that makes the BrickSeek Shopping List more efficient than just writing down a list of items is that you can refresh your shopping list on BrickSeek to update any changes in pricing or inventory at that store. The Shopping List feature allows you to add a total of 120 items to your list. For our more frequent shoppers, an additional 125 or 250 items can be added to the Shopping List by signing up for the Shopping List add-on pack.
- Local Inventory Alerts - Did I already mention this feature? Then there’s probably a very good reason why I’m mentioning it again! As an Extreme member, you get 20 Local Inventory Alerts; and you should definitely be utilizing them to the fullest! Keep in mind that we’re only going to be emailing you if changes are detected for these items, but your alerts as an Extreme member will be checked 2x daily to better help you stay informed when prices and inventory counts change. Also keep in mind that sometimes items that are still full price near you may take weeks to drop in price at your local stores, so don’t be discouraged if you set an alert for an item and don’t see results quickly.
- Online Deal Alerts - Again, didn't I already mention this feature above? As an Extreme member you get an UNLIMITED amount of Online Deal Alerts that you can create and you're the first to be notified when new deals are detected. You have a 1 hour advantage to scoring these deals before Premium members get notified of these deals so you definitely want to act quickly when you receive these emails and notifications!
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Markdowns by Store - Once again, there has to be a reason why I’m mentioning this feature again too, right!? We have made a lot of improvements to our system to help populate these pages with new deal content. As an Extreme member, you will see deals on these pages before they’re made available to Premium members, so make sure you check these pages out when you’re making a trip to a local store (in addition to building your Shopping List).
Member’s Checklist
Okay, read up on the tutorials, explored the site and features, and ready to start saving money? Here are some quick reminders that you can use as a checklist to stay on top of the deals:
- Read today’s BrickSeek Daily Update email.
- Check Today’s Markdowns for new items that have trending price drops.
- Create Online Deal Alerts. You can save a ton of money from the comfort of your own home, make sure you create Online Deal Alerts on categories that you're interested in saving money on.
- Set alerts on items that have trending markdowns but still haven’t dropped low enough locally. Have patience, and let BrickSeek check these items periodically. Visit this list every day or so to make sure alerts are enabled for the items you want the most.
- Check the Popular Searches items to browse which items are being searched the most. Do you see new items that you weren’t already tracking? Why are they popular? Could you be missing out on a deal? Search those items using the Inventory Checker(s) to see if there are any deals locally.
- Ready to visit the store for items? Make sure to have your Shopping List already built, and use the Refresh Availability button to update your list before leaving the house.
- At the store? Use the Markdowns by Store page for that specific location to look for any other deals that you may not be tracking on your Shopping List. Use the BrickSeek App to scan item barcodes to check the price of the item at that store and also to see results at other stores in your area, where they might be cheaper!
I followed this advice, but I can’t find the items!
When it comes to hunting down deals in retail stores, it’s always YMMV (“your mileage may vary”). What does this mean? It means that your time, amount of effort, and your results will likely vary from everyone else. Each store is different in many ways -- different employees, different management styles, different layouts, different items carried, different prices -- just about everything is different. Because of this, what one person experiences at their local store will likely be different than how your experience goes at your local store. However, one thing is certainly common with deal hunters -- we all strike out sometimes when trying to find items!
There could be many different reasons why you (or an associate) couldn’t find an item! Lost or misplaced items, stolen items, old display models, broken items that have been returned and are set to be sent back via claims, etc. The list could go on and on, but these are the most common reasons. Read this article from our Help Center for more information!