Chris Fu

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Webscrape For Deals

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Background

I love saving money

Whether it's going on slickdeals or reading up on the weekly Costco flyers, you know I'll be doing the research to see what is the best deal. In November 2020, Apple released the Macbook Air M1, the first Air to have the Apple Silicon M1 chip. In August of 2021, as I was checking slickdeals, I found a post about these YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) deals for the Macbook Air M1 at a major electronics retailer. Some would say it's the BEST while some would say it's okay to BUY from there. If you get what I mean.

Goal

To return a list of zipcodes where the Macbook Air M1 was not deemed as "Unavailable Nearby"

Process

The two packages that I used was Selenium and UsZipCode. Selenium to automate the process of opening a chrome browser and typing in a zipcode in a search box. UsZipCode to provide me the zipcodes of the major cities in the continental US.

Results

After a couple of days of running the script every hour or so, to my surprise I was able to order a Macbook Air M1 for $566.99. The only downside was I had to drive 2 and a half hour from Atlanta, GA to Augusta, GA to pick it up. So at 7AM the next morning I woke up and made the drive. The Open Box - Fair condition Macbook Air M1 works just as expected and I took it home.

Summary

BBY was probably getting rid of open-box inventory of their Macbook Air M1. Noticed a pattern of inventory showing up and then disappearing quickly after. Instead of manually typing in zip codes to search M1 Air availability, I used the computer to do it for me. Ordered the MBA M1 and drove 5 hours round trip to get it.