TrendNet Wireless Firewall Router - $9.99
I just moved into a new house and somewhere along the way my router met it’s fatal end. My career depends on having Internet connectivity and as a single mom of a 3-year and a 4-year old, cords are simply a hazard. In a financial pinch with just having moved I started desperately searching for an affordable way to get my in-home wireless back!
Searching the world wide web for a solution led to disappointment for the first few hours of my search. The only affordable routers that I found were used and without a warranty on auction sites or had poor customer/consumer ratings. I did not really have a particular router in mind, just price. Then it dawned on me, “I need a router that I can rely on. It definitely has to have a warranty and good ratings” I said to myself.
Researching routers and ratings around the web, I concluded that a TRENDnet TEW-432BRP 54Mbps was the one I wanted with a 4-5 out of 5 star rating and good reviews. Knowing that rebates are all over the place, original price and shipping costs are the key:
- ISORM.com had it listed at $43.00 plus $10-$90 S&H with no rebate to total $53-$133.
- eCrater.com listed it at $24.99 plus $7.99 S&H also with no rebate to total $32.98.
- Dell.com’s listing was $49.99 plus $5-$16 S&H with a $20 mail-in rebate totaling $34.99-$69.99.
- CDW.com has it listed for $45.99 plus $10-$40 S&H with the $20 rebate as well totaling $35.99-$65.99.
Obviously, none of the above were quite what I was looking for price-wise.
After another hour, I came upon NewEgg.com and typed TRENDnet into their search bar. Well, needless to say there were hundreds of Instant Rebate Items as well as hundreds of Mail-in Rebates on the site including the TRENDnet! The router I purchased was originally $29.99 on NewEgg.com with the same rebate amount of $20 and the S&H was FREE 3-day business shipping for a grand total of $9.99!!!! TigerDirect.com also had the same deal of starting price and rebate as NewEgg does, but unfortunately they are charging $9-$35 S&H fee. In the price war, NewEgg wins hands down! Fast, informative service with on-time delivery. Status messages for where the order was throughout the process from processing payment to delivery-tracking. I am a very satisfied customer and the ratings were right, the TRENDnet TEW-432BRP Wireless Firewall Router is a very good buy.
Tech Tip: Next time you’re shopping the web, try typing ‘rebate’ into the site’s search bar, you’ll be amazed at the results.
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© Copyright 2009, John A. Simpson. All Rights Reserved.
Great information Sabra. Glad to see that the price of the technology is coming down and there are good deals out there.
There is a site online called http://www.salescircular.com. This site has every weekly sale from every newspaper in the country. The site is broken up by state and once you click on the state, in the middle of the screen at the top, is a link that reads “Free After Rebate”. Click that and these are the products on sale that week that, once you apply the rebate, are free.
The major problem with the site is that they do not offer RSS feeds. If they offered custom RSS feeds like craigslist does, it would be easier to get the deals. They would be pushed to you as opposed to you having to go get them weekly.
Hope that helps. Thanks for the info on the router.
No problem, but there’s more…
I just went to write out the rebate form for the router, and looked at the bottom for the serial number. There were four different numbers on the router, and when I looked online, I saw just as much confusion going on out there as I was experiencing. It’s not labeled as a SN.
So, I called the Support Center at TrendNet. The CS was friendly and she was able to confirm this. It is the “CA***********” number under the bar-code. It has the 2 letters and 11 numbers.
[...] Have you acquired anything recently on which you were able to wrangle a discount?