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Ahhhh... the glory days of
e-commerce. $1000 Tag Heuer watches for $200… DVDs for $1… Stackable
coupons, even! Although the days of insanely great deals online are
definitely gone, there are still plenty of ways to save money by shopping
online. You just need to shop smarter. Below is my
“starter guide” to e-commerce; it’s by no means exhaustive and if you – the
great readers of this site – know of anything I’ve missed, please let me
know so I can share the knowledge with the other 3 people that visit this
site on a regular basis!
First of all, be realistic. If all you need is one $3 box of
floppy disks, get in the car, drive to Office Depot and buy them. Same
goes with most popular CDs and DVDs these days. Best Buy had Madonna’s American Life
CD for $9.99 on release day, and Wal-Mart sells most DVDs on their release
date for $15 or less. You just won’t be able to get those kinds of deals
online anymore, anywhere. And even if you could, you’d still have to pay
for shipping and wait 3-7 days to get your stuff. And how about
clothes? If you know how your sizes run with a particular brand of
clothing, go ahead and buy online. But if you don't, you might not
want to waste the time and money you'll spend sending it back to the seller.
There's no point in saving $5 on a pair of cargo pants if they don't fit you
and you have to burn a lunch hour and $6 to send them back!
Secondly, research, research,
research. I know it’s not fun, but if you wanna save your monies, you
gots to do the work. Thankfully, there are several sites out there that can
help you out:
Pricewatch – indexes prices for
computer hardware and software. Simply enter “80 GB hard drive” in the
search box and you’ll be presented with a long list of vendors that can hook
you up. Beware though – many vendors at Pricewatch will purposely low-ball
the price on you and get it all back with shipping & handling. For
instance, if you know an 80 GB hard drive should sell for around $100, don’t
be surprised to see the lowest price listed as $40 – with mandatory $55
FedEx shipping. I usually skip these leeches and go to the second page of
results, where the prices are a bit higher but shipping is more realistic.
Pricegrabber – “PG” started
off indexing computer hardware prices much like Pricewatch. But PG has
recently branched out to include the best deals on clothes, books, home
electronics, jewelry and much, much more. One neat feature of PG is the
“Bottom Line” price – just enter your zip code and PG will tell you the
total price for your item, including shipping.
Mysimon – Similar to Pricegrabber,
but offers more mediocre deals from more “major” e-tailers. The search
engine is not nearly as good as Pricegrabber’s and the selection of stores
isn’t all that, but it’s still worth a look sometimes. According to the
site, they are doing a major upgrade, so maybe this site will get better
soon.
Best Book Buys – searches
around 21 bookstores for the lowest prices on your books. You can search by
title, author name or (my favorite), ISBN.
You can always look for online
coupons. The flood of incredible online coupons has dried up to (at
best) a leaky faucet of savings. Vendors no longer give out “$30 off your
next purchase (no minimum required)” coupons. But that doesn’t mean that
you can’t save money. Just last week I was torn between ordering some stuff
from Old Navy online or just going to the store. Because it was pouring
down rain that day – and frankly, because I’m lazy – I chose to order
online. I filled up my cart then opened a new browser window and googled
for “Old Navy online coupons”. Within a couple of minutes I was able to
find a “free shipping with $25 or more” coupon code which saved me almost $7
and made the cost of the purchase the same as if I’d driven to the store.
There are hundreds of sites that list online coupon codes – some of the most
famous include: DealCatcher,
Fat Wallet,
Ben’s Bargains and
Flamingo World.
Always try to be flexible if
you can. All of the sites I linked to above also post the hottest deals on
the planet. Some of the deals won’t interest you at all – for example, I
really don’t care if Drugstore.com is having a 50% off sale on all feminine
products – but if you’re kicking the tires on new computers or looking for
new clothes, it’s worth a stop to see what’s on sale. A good friend of mine
was in the market for a laptop a while back – through one of these
sites I was able to hook him up with a 2GHz Dell laptop for only $675!
Next, try alternate sources. Don’t be afraid to buy something from
overseas if you can save money. For example, when the Band of Brothers
DVD box set was available for "pre-order”, I was shocked to find that
Amazon.ca (Amazon Canada) was selling the set for CAN50¢ less than
Amazon.com in the US. The exact
costs escape me, but the set was selling for something like $89.95 (US) or $89.45
(Canada). Converted to US dollars, the set only cost me something like $53
shipped, which is a whopping $36 savings. Likewise, if you read my
review of Nina Persson’s A Camp
CD (WARNING - link is to a PDF) I note at the end of the review that I ordered the disc from
Amazon.co.uk because ordering that
CD and a Madonna CD single cost only £17.90 shipped (around
$25.54 at the time), while the Nina Persson CD alone cost $26.97 shipped
from Amazon.com. How about the deluxe version of the
Black Hawk
Down DVD? It's $35.99 at
Amazon but the same set runs only $23.00 at
Koreandvds.com - and even includes a 4th disc - the complete audio
CD of the soundtrack!! Then there was the Windows XP “Go Pro” kit, which I found
at the Ars Technica
forums. Basically, $40 got you a legal copy of Windows XP,
some sales materials, a pack of Big League Chew and a Windows XP bobblehead
doll. Considering that XP alone costs $299, that’s a hell of a steal!
Lastly, there’s always yessmoke.com
– it’s hard to believe it, but here in the heart of tobacco country a carton
of Marlboros goes from $20.99 to $28.99, yet I can order the same exact
cigarettes from Switzerland and have them shipped all the way here for just
$14.95 a carton!
Always fear eBay. The
Internet’s premiere auction site is a great place to pick up an original Mr.
Spock 12” action figure or a floppy drive for an old Dell Latitude laptop,
but it’s a horrible place to shop for “average stuff”. If you take a quick
gander at my Guide to eBay, you’ll see
that the deck is stacked heavily against the bidder. I should know – I’ve
made some crazy money off people at eBay! For example, a few years back I
started to notice some great Laetitia Casta GUESS? posters showing up on
eBay for around $30 - $40 each. With five minutes of clicking I found them
at Guess.com for $10 apiece. I bought three for $37 shipped and sold two of
them on eBay for around $65. So I got a Laetitia Casta poster and earned
$30 off the deal! This is not to say that eBay doesn’t have deals – they
surely do – it just typically takes more time to find them than it’s worth.
If you see something you like, try googling for it first or hitting the
company’s website – you might be surprised at how often you can buy
something cheaper from an official company store than from eBay!
Finally, keep it safe. Major
online stores like Amazon take their security very seriously – but who knows
with smaller e-tailers?? Most of the stories you hear about online stores
being hacked involve human stupidity – like not installing patches on
webservers or using weak passwords – instead of any nefarious plot by
hackers. You just don’t know. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shop
with the small guys. Instead just use common sense. Only use 1 credit card
online so you can more easily keep track of online purchases. If you must
use a debit card online, make sure that your bank will treat it like a
credit card purchase. Keep in mind that while most banks these days have
the same “$50 liability limit” on lost or stolen debit cards that credit
cards do, your bank is under no legal obligation to refund your
money. If you’re “lucky” enough to have a card with a ridiculously low
limit use it. I have a Discover card that - for reasons that
would take up another column - only has a $250 limit – this would be ideal. |
