Well, as my grandmother used to say, fuck my old boots. Only this morning we told you about the insane deal that went down on Hot UK Deals at the weekend, when somebody noticed Amazon were selling a De’Longhi Prima Donna ESAM6600 Bean To Cup Coffee Machine – usually priced at over £800 – for £80.

Of course pricing mistakes happen all the time, we said, and course there’ll be some members who pretend to have received the goods to wind everyone else up, and course there will be a long list of folk who spend their time posting messages about how retailers never, ever, ever make good on pricing errors.

So that means that official Bitterwallet reader Robert has either paid over £800 to play a practical joke on us, or he’s now the proud owner of a De’Longhi Prima Donna ESAM6600 Bean To Cup Coffee Machine:

Over the weekend, a hawk-eyed member of Hot UK Deals noticed a deal that was too good to be true. Member amibee spotted that Amazon were selling a De’Longhi Prima Donna ESAM6600 Bean To Cup Coffee Machine; usually these retail at over £800 but Amazon was listing it for just £82.99.

Now as we all know, mispricings are the devil of online retail. They occur all the time and several hundred orders can be placed before the retailer rescinds the order and apologises for their ‘mistake’; in some cases this means a company sees their mailing lists swollen by several hundred and plenty of new credit accounts opened. Online retailers can do very well from their constant screw-ups.

Naturally, there were Hot UK Deal members who’d seen it all before and assumed the deal wouldn’t be honoured – they rarely are, especially when the error is in the order of £700 on an £800 price-tag. But since then there’s been a clutch of posts, all from different members who claim to have ordered the product, all claiming their accounts have been debited for £82.99 and that they have courier confirmation for deliveries today. It’s not surprising to see somebody employ bullshit-baffles-brains and shout about receiving their order when they didn’t, but it would be odd for several members to do so simultaneously.

Will it happen? Here’s hoping – if it does, it’d certainly beat the arse off our previous best pricing mistakes. If you’re one of the lucky, lucky bastards who receives their £800 coffee machine today, let’s have a photo from you or it never happened – bitterwallet@gmail.com. Cheers!

thanks to official Bitterwallet reader Robert Taylor

The sun - literally spunking money at us

In the week when doomsayers predicted that the cost of gas and electricity would shortly rise to a level where it would be cheaper to have liquid platinum piped into your house instead, the government have launched a solar power initiative that could save the lives of millions of penguins and make you some hard cash.

From 1^st April, the government will pay new users of solar power for the electricity they generate, even if they use all of it themselves. Obviously, you’ll need an initial outlay for the photovolatiac (PV) solar panels (between £10k-£12k) and a south-facing, obstruction-free roof.

But after that, you’ll be paid 41.3p per kilowatt hour generated, which the government reckon will earn you as much as £900 in payouts, not to mention a saving on your regular bills of about £140. Better still, the payments will be guaranteed for the next 25 years and will be linked to inflation.

Early adopters who have already installed PV panels will also be rewarded, but at a lower rate. As the clever man in The Guardian who we’ve sourced the story from says: “If the government offered to pay you £1,000 a year for the next 25 years, in return for an up-front investment of £12,500, you’d snap it up in a second.” And that, in a nutshell, subject to many, many boxes that you’ll need to tick first, is what you could be getting.

It seems the sun has got his hat on. Hip hip hip hooray! Or something.

Actually, we’re thinking this one might not be a current deal…

[Boing Boing]

Here’s a blazing deal that is tearing up the forums at HotUKDeals at the moment – a Buffalo Ministation 320GB external hard drive (pictured) for only £24.00.

With the 160GB version retailing at a more sensible £54.00, we at first thought this would be a misprice and that orders would be cancelled within a couple of hours. But at the time of writing, it seems legit and after ordering one ourselves, we’ve been given a delivery date of next Monday. Fair enough.

There’s also a code over at HUKD that will get you another 15% knocked off the price AND there’s the possibility of cashback as well. It seems too good be true but right now, it might well be a real deal. Wow.

Thanks to HUKD member Flinster for originally posting the deal.

Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra, still captivates millions with his swing ‘n’ big bandery and to this day, still epitomises cool to a certain type of person. Of course, there’s others who think he’s shit… and those people are advised to look away now as we’re going to point you in the direction of… well… to say this is a bargain is something of an understatement.

Now, Amazon have been known to make massive errors on pricing things up before and it’s not clear whether this latest thing is a mistake or not.

Basically, for a paltry £8.99, Amazon are selling ‘Concepts’ by Frank Sinatra. That’s a smooth, swingin’ 244 digitally remastered tracks. If you were to buy those tracks individually, it’d cost you £160 more or something.

The deal is live at the time of press so get in there quick before someone realises the terrible error they’ve made. Our Andy is already on it and can vouch for it working!

Don’t say we never do anything nice for you.

[Musically]

Bitterwallet smells a catfight a-comin’ – with cheap Jimmy Choo shoes as the star prize.

H&M are lining up the mother of all girl-on-girl showdowns when an affordable collection of the Choo shoes (and other Choo clobber) goes on sale in 16 of their stores at 9am on Saturday November 14^th.

The range will include more than 40 pieces of girl gear including clothing and handbaggage along with the shoes, with most of it available for a knock-down price under £100.

The demand is expected to be phenomenal with Choo fanatics set to queue up all night in a bid to buy some of the items. Keen to avoid an all-out woman war, H&M will be issuing wristbands to the first 160 people in the queue. They will then get ten minutes in the stores’ VIP Choo area in groups of 20 and will be limited to purchasing one item per size.

The participating stores will be London’s Covent Garden; Knightsbridge; Kensington High St; Regent St; Oxford St; Westfield; Brent Cross. Birmingham Bullring; Bluewater; Brighton; Cardiff; Glasgow; Manchester’s Market St & Trafford Centre; Newcastle; Dublin; Dundrum.

eBay will probably be flooded with the stuff by lunchtime on the 14^th.

Far be it for us to do anything so outrageous as to praise National Express, but it’s earned on this rare occasion. The East Coast Mainline operators have launched a huge sale today, meaning you can travel up and down the country for just £9 one way.

The offer is available until 4th November (but expect tickets to have sold out long before) and are for travel between 19th November and 24th January, excluding 18th December to 5th January inclusive. Still, that means plenty of opportunity to visit chums and family for a single note of money. What’s more, we’ve had a snout through the dates and there’s plenty of availability right now. Marvellous. More details of this überdeal here.

If you’re the type of person who buys dead tree to read their news, good news! If you’re not, then there’s no law stopping you buying a newspaper either. Good news for you, too! According to HotUKDeals member Happy Man, there’s a voucher inside today’s copy of The Times, Independent and Daily Star that lets you buy a £15 iTunes card from WH Smith for just a tenner.

If you don’t already have one of the papers then obviously you’ll have to buy one, so plump for the cheapest (The Star) and off you go. We haven’t seen the voucher ourselves but the deal is getting a lot of heat on HUKD, so it’s worth a gander for a cheap Christmas present.

Our sister site Dealspwn have let us know about a top deal on an old-school PS3 that was spotted on Hot UK Deals. The chances are the shelves have been picked clean by now (the deal was posted yesterday) but if you’re in the market for a PS3, then it’s worth investigating. Here’s Dealspwn’s earlier post:

Posting this up as a possibility – there’s a slim chance you can get a 80GB PS3 for only £160.96 at your local Costco! TeamA’sinB on HUKD spotted this deal at his local store, Milton Keynes.

Some of the HUKD members reported a few in stock at various local stores – I recommend you give your local a call to check it out.

A few other members have managed to snag this deal too. Some people also report that upon telephoning the store, they are saying they do have stock available, but when they arrived to make the purchase, there were none left. So as they say on the internets, “your mileage may vary.”

The deal only applies to Costco members of course, but as TeamA’sinB said, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know! If any friends or family members have a Costco card, hopefully you can wrangle them into coming down to the store with you.

Note, this is the older “phat” 80GB model.

Good luck in the PS3 hunt!

This is the best price we’ve seen it at so we thought we’d get it to you right away. While the yanks will enjoy the new PSP go for just $249.99, the UK/European price has been set closer to £250. Most outlets have reduced this to around £225, but Tesco have made the PSP Go available on pre-order for £199.99 – that’s a 20% discount on the RRP.

The PSP Go isn’t on sale until October 2nd so there’s a while to wait – unless you’re visiting the US any time soon there’s unlikely to be a better deal on price, so get them while they’re piping hot, kids.

EDIT: It’s Tuesday morning and the pre-order price of the game has now gone up to £37.96. Everything you are about to read is complete balls. But it was good while it lasted.

Here’s one that’s lighting up the HotUKDeals forum tonight – the brand new Gran Tursimo game for the PS3, GT5, on pre-order for only £17.59 via Amazon!

The RRP is £39.99 and although there’s no official release date for the game, the word on the net is that it’ll be available as early as the end of September.

Lots of HUKDers are poo-pooing the deal, saying that it’s an obvious misprice, but as Amazon’s pre-order price guarantee states…

“Amazon.co.uk’s price for not-yet-released items sometimes changes between the time the item is listed for sale and the time it is released and dispatched. Whenever you pre-order a book, CD, video, DVD, software or video game, the price you will pay will be the lowest price offered by Amazon.co.uk between the time you place your order and up to and including the release date.”

Got to be worth a punt for the most eagerly-awaited driving-cars-fast game of the year. Peep peep!

For more games deals, news and reviews, visit our blog cousin, Dealspwn!

(deal found by HUKD member doofenshc)

No, the universe hasn’t been turned upside down – there really is a way for you to make cash out of Ryanair right now.

We picked up this hot hustle from Travolution this afternoon, though we’ll eat a hat of your choosing if Sky Marshall O’Leary hasn’t sorted the loophole before you step foot on his aircraft again. If goes like this:

Ryanair is currently charging the same prices whether in Euro or British Pounds for its in-flight beverages. Nothing wrong with that – the two currencies have hovered close to another for a while now.

However, cabin crew will also give the change back in any currency – if you ask.

So, for example, buy a £3/€3 coffee and then pay for it with a €50 note. Then request that the change of €47 in British Sterling.

£47 currently converts to around €54 – so that’s a free coffee AND 4 Euro in your pocket.

There’s bound to be a member of the cabin crew that didn’t get the memo, so give us a try and let us know how it works out!

[360travelguide.com] via [Travolution]

When I worked in London and imbibed in various bars near Great Portland Street, I’d invariably wake up every so often to find a carrier bag full of books by my bedside, with no initial recollection of buying them. Such was the joy of a bookshop keeping similar opening hours to the pubs, and hence the reason that while there may be bigger and better, Borders on Oxford Street exceeds all expectations for the pissed bookworm.

Future drunks will not know such a pleasure; Borders is closing down five stores across the UK, including their flagship branch at London Oxford Street. Borders have admitted to selling the stores to raise further investment – the five stores in Oxford Street, Llantrisant, London Colney, Dublin and Swindon have already been bought by gaudily coloured fashionmeisters New Look.

The good news for you is that yesterday Borders began a closing down sale; unlike Woolworths stores and their up to 50% closing down sale, Borders have reduced everything in price by half, until all stock is sold. Unsurprisingly, this was the scene at the Oxford Street store yesterday afternoon, as the swarms of man-locusts passed through:

If you’re brave enough to take a tube in the direction of Borders early doors, let us know whether there’s still a bargain to be had or whether the shelves have been picked clean.

[TwitPic]

There’s good news for folks checking in to swankalicious hotels over the next four years; considerably less for the hotels themselves. A Bloomberg report states that US hotel rates are unlikely to reach their 2008 levels until 2012 at the very earliest. One analyst has described the actions of the industry as “near-panic rate cutting”. Hurrah!

The recession obviously means millions of hotels are losing billions in both tourist and conference trade. On top of losing revenue from both traditional streams, there are the cashflows pressures felt by every industry, such as increasing rents and suppliers scrapping their 90 days notice on payment and demanding monies on 30 day terms.

Hotel chains like the InterContinental Hotels Group, which has a portfolio mixing five star hotels with the mid-price Holiday Inns, last month reported that first quarter net income had dropped by nearly 60 per cent on lower room rates. Rates have dropped 19 per cent year-on-year across luxury hotels, while New York rates fell the most in the US, sliding by nearly a third.

Las Vegas provides a microcosm of how the industry is struggling right now; over 15,000 new hotel rooms will soon open on the Strip, requiring an extra $3.2 billion of annual tourist income just to break even. The hotel developers are already in billions of dollars of debt – two high profile hotel projects have gone bust this year – while the traditional hotels on the Strip are slashing rates to stupidly low levels; you can book a mid-week room in the Downtown classic The Golden Nugget for just £32, and a night on the Strip in the MGM Grand for just £42.

So while the media yawns on about staycations, if you can find a red hot flight deal from the likes of HotUKDeals then hotels around the world are yours for the taking right now.

[Bloomberg] [The Guardian]