Vidappe iPhone & Android App Student Discount Finder Review

Vidappe allows you to sign up for different student discount programs and get alerted to deals for them based on your location

I know, the term “there’s an app for that” does get a little banal, but if you’re looking for nearby student discounts, guess what?  Yes, there’s now an app for that.   Vidappe is a new app available on both the iPhone and Android platform that will alert you to nearby retail and restaurant locations that have a student discount.  It’s pretty simple in the way it works, I tested it out on my Android Smartphone and have to say I was pretty impressed with the ease of use and utility.  Here’s how the app works:

1. Find and then download and install the app from the iPhone or Android Marketplace
2. After installing, open Vidappe, you’ll be asked to register using an email and inputting a password + password confirmation.  Any email will do, it doesn’t have to be “.edu”, there are discount program alerts for non-students as well.  After registering an email will be sent to you welcoming you, you do not need to wait for this to start using the app though.
3. Initially you’ll be prompted how you want the app to determine your location to alert you to nearby deals, you can allow the app to use GPS (highly accurate, but a battery drain), cell phone towers (not so accurate,but more battery friendly) or tell it to buzz off and you don’t want it to know where you are and you’ll research the deals yourself that are included in the Vidappe database.   The cell phone towers approach is probably the best balance, but I found being able to see the listed deals for a given college student discount program quite useful by itself.
4. You’ll need to sign up for student discount programs or other national programs for the app to be able to tell which deals are pertinent to you.  It’s easy to do that, at the bottom of the app click on the “Programs” tab and then at the top click “Add” and you can drill down to see discount programs by state or a few nationwide programs such as an American Express Selects program.  The bigger universities tend to have more coverage of course, I chose my alma mater of Ohio State and was impressed by the number of locations deals could be found (34).  If I had known Buckeye Donuts had a student discount of $4 for six donuts my college experience would have been enhanced.
5. If you want to find deals near you simply click on the “Near Me” tab and up pops a list of deals within your vicinity.  Since I am in New York City currently I subscribed to the Columbia University student discount program and found a generous list of restaurants nearby that offer 10% or so discounts to any of those lucky students, though with their tuition fees they can use any break they can get.  You can see in the image to the right you have the ability to scroll through deals, then click for more detail.  I like the View on Map feature which pinpointed on Google maps where each location is.  Nicely implemented.

Overall Vidappe is a nicely implemented and useful app for students, or really anyone since you can register for non-student discount programs as well.  That said, there are a lot of location based deal alert apps out there so this one that specifically covers student discounts will find its best fit among the college crowd.  It’s also not like the Groupon app which will chirp away about nearby deals but you have to buy a coupon and use it and deals are only available on certain days.  Vidappe only covers deals that are always available to a specific crowd.

It appears the developer is very pro-active with promoting the app and supporting it, I noticed a complaint in the Android Marketplace that Vidappe was hogging memory and the app developer quickly fixed it by moving storage off to the SD card.  It’s good to see fast response to problems with apps and a developer that cares.  There are of course room for improvements, as mentioned before the bigger schools and cities have the benefit of good deal coverage while those in smaller liberal arts schools might see much less coverage.  A surprising number of student deals only work on certain days and between certain hours of the day, such as Eggfast at Ohio State, but the app will alert you regardless of the day and hour.  Still, it’s tough to factor in all of the parameters with local student deals and simply having the knowledge that the discount exists is made much easier by Vidappe.   It’s free to download and install Vidappe so if you use it just a few times and it saves you a buck, it’s still a net gain.