Deal Hunter Dave shares his secrets to bagging bargains

A social media star has saved thousands by taking advantage of online price glitches. KIMBERLEY BARBER finds out what the deal is

His friends call him Del Boy and his online persona Deal Hunter Dave is fast gathering a huge following. His spare room is bursting with an array of weird and wonderful goods, but David Jago, from Southsea, shows no sign of slowing down his bargain hunting.

For systems operator David, who works at the University of Portsmouth, has saved thousands of pounds by taking advantage of price glitches online.

And the married 32-year old has taken to sharing his best deals with his TikTok account called DealHunterDave, in the hope of helping others to catch the deal hunting bug.

David, from Weston

Avenue, said: ‘I honestly can’t remember my first glitch, but I do remember getting an XBox One with Call of Duty for £47 from Tesco, it was such a good deal that I ordered two. Three minutes later they had sold out but both mine were honoured, that’s where it began.

‘I started following a couple of websites, and it’s grown from there. It’s a community.’

His best hauls include

1,000 marker pens for £3, No 7 foundations from Boots for less than 50p each, scores of builders silicone for free, hundreds of dishwasher tablets for £7, crates of cat food for £3, five packs of Tassimo coffee pods for £1.29 and a huge stack of toothpaste and electric toothbrushes for just a few pounds.

He said: ‘I have never had a company ask for the products back or change the price. People get scared that when the company realises they will put the price up and charge that instead but there are laws to protect you against that.

‘The worst thing that can happen is that they email and say it is a price error and they cancel the order and refund whatever money you have paid. I am only buying the items at the price it has been listed for.

‘They can cancel it right up the point of dispatch. I get more cancelled than honoured but it is worth it when things come through.

‘Sometimes it’s not always price glitches, it can be a company clearing its stock or a way of surging their customer numbers by getting lots of people to sign up to accounts.’

David has set up alerts for websites such as hotukdeals and Latest Deals which let him know of any errors or offers across the whole internet, with the main pricing offender being Amazon, and that it pays to be fast.

As well as using information from these online communities, David also uses cashback apps such as TopCashback and Quidco, and he says he has gathered more than £3,500 so far from these two sites in just three years.

He also takes advantage of browser extensions such as Honey and Camelcamelcamel that automatically scour the web for discount codes, as well as making sure that he clocks up reward points with schemes like Nectar and Tesco Clubcard.

‘It all helps, however little,’ he said.

If David can’t use the items, then he gives them away to either friends or charity.

Since his obsession began, he has donated hundreds of pounds of dog and cat food to charity, as well as hundreds of products to food banks.

He said: ‘I like to give a lot of it away. I buy things if I see a good deal that I think my friends would like or that can be used in some way.

‘When we had an office secret Santa I came in with a huge bag of goodies of things that cost just a few pence. Everyone loved it, well they said they did.

‘This Christmas lots of my friends got cans of Captain Morgan which I got on deal, £3.87 for 12 tins, they loved it. There's no point in stockpiling or wasting things so a lot of it I donate.’

However, not everybody is happy with David’s new hobby.

He said: ‘Sometimes my wife goes a bit crazy when I am buying all this stuff.

‘The one thing she was not happy about the most was the car parts. Amazon was clearing out its stock and I heard that someone bought a clutch for a Porsche worth £1,200 for £8.

‘So I bought car radiators, air conditioning units, brake pads and put them in the spare room. I have only sold one so far and they are a little bit bulky.’

To follow David go to tiktok. com/@dealhunterdave