The Art of Buying... Getting your money's worth!
Jan 28 '03 (Updated Apr 29 '05)
The Bottom Line Trying to the get the best prices without sacrificing item quality or service quality is a hard learned art... but with some help it can be done.
In a way, this relates to Computer Hardware and Electronics and to the topic of buying online. Some epinions readers have emailed me about how I own so many of the products I review. Sure, it's expensive but if you know how to shop, you can save quite a bit of money than buying from your local Best Buy, Circuit City, Amazon, etc...
Update March 12, 2005: I talk about saving 1.57% at Amazon.com through Amazon's search site A9.com. I'm trying to update the other parts of this epinion as we go along. I'll try to put some of my biggest deals at the end of the article.
Update April 8, 2004: Please note that many of the topics relate to online buying and I have only tested these techniques in the USA. I cannot remark if they will help if you're outside of the US. Also, one person complained that I didn't go into making a decision of buying recently released items versus buying an older even slightly outdated version of an item... this isn't the point of this article. Making that decision is more dependent of what the buyer is looking for as well as being item specific! I address those kind of issues when I review a product and give you choices to consider. Besides, a topic like that can really be a whole book when trying to consider so many possibilities.
Update August 2, 2003 learning how to save money on DVD purchases... buy the latest DVDs for a little less dough! I placed this section closer to the end... just look at the bold lettered topics to find it!
Let's face it, most of the hottest items and many times the newest items are released near their Manufacturer's Retail Selling Price (MRSP). Just about any store with a decent reputation will sell most items at this price or slightly below it. To the average consumer, most will find that the best common deal is around 10% off and hopefully the store offers no sales tax and free S&H if you're shopping on the internet. Otherwise, the latest and greatest will sell at the full MRSP when your local Best Buy, Circuit City, Electronic Fry's, etc. gets the item in stock. If the item isn't selling well in the first 1 to 2 months, you'll see a price drop or a freebie thrown to "sweeten" the supposed deal. Take some examples from the last few years, take the Canon PowerShot S230 which has a $399 MRSP, I paid $290 brand new from Dell after a couple of strategies. The HP DeskJet 5550 InkJet printer cost $129 MRSP these days. I paid a cool $65 after coupons and mail-in rebate from Office Depot! The Canon PowerShot S45 was $499 MRSP and I paid $439 from One Call after a price match. I was able to locate the S45 for $417 from Dell just recently as well. My old DeskJet 930... I was given $15 after all the rebates came back. This was in a time when the DeskJet 930 was only a month old in the market! Other more recent deals include a HP PSC 2210 for $220 with a $60 OfficeMax card, a Canon personal portable copier for $52!, and a USB 2.0 CDRW 32x drive for $60 with a 100 sheets of 9 mil photo inkjet paper for free! The S50 I purchased for $420!... unfortunately, the deal that I listed under my S50 review fell through so severely that I returned that camera and repurchased elsewhere. I also have a Nikon CoolPix 5400 coming that I paid... get this... $570 and it's MRSP is $799! I have similar stories for most of the stuff I have bought.
Now you must be thinking, how much time do you spend finding ridiculous deals like this. Strangely enough, less than 10-15 minutes (at most) a day! Well, after you learn a few strategies here and there it will take you a couple of minutes a day. I'll describe a few quick strategies and give a long involved drawn out strategy.
Know that you might want something but not actively looking?
Well, one of the easiest ways to find a good deal is to quickly scour sites that list some of the best deals around for the day. Simple sites like www.slickdeals.net and www.flamingoworld.com often list a couple of available deals on the net. There are better sites of course... one of my favorites is www.techbargains.com and www.gotapex.com. Just about everyone knows about www.fatwallet.com! www.techbargains.com and www.fatwallet.com lists deals as soon as they hear about them but since quite a few bargain hunters know about these sites already, hot deals tends to die quickly... for example, when the GeForce 4 128MB 4600 graphics card came out, www.techbargains.com found a store selling the item for $179 instead of the $399 MRSP. In less than an hour, the deal was pulled from the site. Another favorite site of mine is www.computerlandcentral.com. This site also sends emails every two to three days with the hottest deals although the emails are rather large (75Kb to 300Kb of email space per email!). Fatwallet also sends daily emails for their hot deals.
There are a few problems with finding deals in this manner however. Not all the deals are legitimate even though most of these sites do their best to verify the authenticity of the deals. Deals with especially low prices tend to expire very quickly... even in the course of minutes. Many of the hot deals in this catagory tend to be on not so popular or even older items (a model behind) or even mediocre products. Rarely does top notch equipment appear at unbelievable prices... but it does occur although at a lower frequency than in years past!
Know what you want and actively looking
If you know what you want, you can always look it up on epinions.com and pricegrabber.com to see the best price available. Sites like Amazon.com do not publish their price on these lists so you may want to check Amazon.com to see if a better price exists. Another advantage is that the retailers are rated so know have an idea of store reliability from other consumers. These are powerful tools for shopping and will quickly give you the best prices from various online stores and the reliability of the store!
Using rebate sites
Two sites that come to mind are www.spree.com and www.ebates.com (Check out my review here). www.mypoints.com is a similar concept. www.fatwallet.com also has an excellent rebate site as well but it takes longer for rebates to get back to you (although the tracking of these rebates is superior to other sites).
What is the concept? Well, if you visit their site first, then visit one of the stores advertised throught their site, you can save a certain percentage from your purchase. This percentage can range from 1% all the way up to 25% depending on the store.
What is the catch? Well, the money isn't taken immediately off your purchase. It is stored by the site and sent to you by check at specific times of the year (so you accumulate "rebates" as you shop through the rebate site. Usually, the money does get into your hands until 3 to 6 months after your purchase. Each site has its own rules.
I use www.ebates.com and wrote a review here. With ebates, if a new member joins ebates and lists a current ebates member email address as the referrer's address, that member receives a $5 referral bonus (if the new member completes a purchase through ebates). If you're wondering, my email for ebates is yusaku@juno.com but you can place any ebates member (if any of your friends use it) or list no referral at all (That's right no fool getting that $5 bonus!).
If you're wondering if ebates.com works or is a sham, well... I've gotten back over $500 since joining in 2000. I recently got a check over $100 this week (ebates checks sent out 8/15/03).
I also use www.fatwallet.com (which is actually quite robust and reliable) and tried www.stockback.com. I should note that Fatwallet.com tends to offer higher rebates than other sites although the wait on those rebates can be significantly longer (up to 90 days after the store reports the purchase) than other sites. I use ebates.com more often since the amounts are often reported in less than 30 days... however, since ebates has specified periods when they send you the money, the wait may be a moot point.
Other sites that offer cash rebates or point rebates include www.spree.com (is this still functional?) and www.mypoints.com.
Using coupons... online and offline
Especially with online shopping, many stores offer coupons for dollars off, free shipping, or a percentage off. This is especially true with office stores like Staples.com, OfficeMax.com, and OfficeDepot.com. Other stores such as buy.com and several others also have hard to find coupon codes. Sites like www.slickdeals.net, www.fatwallet.com, www.computerlandcentral.com, www.fightdivx.com, and www.techbargains.com often list the codes that they know. These codes often make a good deal better and a mediocre deal a fabulous one!
For Amazon.com shoppers!
Go to A9.com. Login using your amazon username and password. A9.com is Amazon.com search site that combines the results from several search engines including Google.com! After 3 days of moderate use, you will be eligible for a 1.57% discount at Amazon.com. It isn't much but the effort is minimal to get the discount.
If you do alot of shopping at Amazon.com then consider the Amazon.com credit card... this gives you 3 points on every dollar spent on Amazon.com and 1 point for all other purchases. 2500 points gets you a $25 gift certificate. It essentially means a 3% discount for Amazon.com purchases and 1% everywhere else. Considering that Amazon has competitive prices and no taxes and S&H to most of the US, this makes for some decent to excellent deals at Amazon.com.
Using the right credit card!(revised)
Know if your credit card gives you any benefits either to some stores or in earning points. The American Express Business card gives 2% off any Staples purchase... online or offline! Personally, I now use the AmEx CostCo Business Card which is free if you maintain a CostCo membership (that is charged directly to your card) otherwise you will pay the standard Business card fee if you forfeit the CostCo membership. It may not seem like much... but the few dollars off by this method adds up. Amazon.com has a credit card that awards points that eventually lends to gift certificates at Amazon.com. Citbank/AT&T offer points (1 point per dollar spent and 5 points for purchases at supermarkets, gas stations, and pharmacies) that can be redeemed for gift certificates (i.e. $5000 spend on the credit card = 5000 points = $50 Best Buy gift certificate). Discover and AmEx Cash Rebate Cards give you anywhere from 1 to 5% of your money back (depending on what you buy and from where). Heavy CostCo shoppers should consider the following... getting the AmEx CostCo True Savings Card (free for CostCo members) with the Executive membership ($100 vs the $50 for regular membership). This gets you 2% off purchases with the Executive membership and another 1% with the AmEx True Savings Card (3% back in CostCo money if you use the True Savings card at dining establishments and 2% for most travel!). If you spend $3300 a year at CostCo, you have paid for the entire membership. Again, the CostCo tips are meant for people who shop at CostCo frequently... my family spends over $4000 at CostCo so it is worth it to me. Note that the money returns in CostCo dollars only.
Rebates and more rebates
What about store and manufacturer rebates? There are often mail-in rebates from stores like Staples, Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, OfficeMax, Amazon.com, and more! More obvious are rebates direct from the manufacturer. For Hewlett Packard/Compaq products, go to hpshopping.com. Here click on the product you're interested in. When the product appears on the screen, on the right hand side, there is a link for rebates and promotions. That will list all the currently available promotions from HP! That a quick easy way to find additional savings for a product that you've just bought or were thinking of buying! There are similar features for many manufacturers! This is how I found the $50 rebate for the HP PSC 2210 multifunction inkjet (involves the purchase of a $200 digital camera however).
Using the right credit card part 2! (revised)
Guess what... there is another reason to be picky about the credit card. PRICE MATCHING! Only a few credit cards have this feature and it can be difficult to apply but when you can, it is well worth it! Here, I use the American Express CostCo Business Card. Other credit cards (specific Capital One credit cards to my knowledge and Citibank Platinum Select Reward cards) offer similar price matching protection on purchases but AmEx had the easiest and best policy based on my past experience. Note that AmEx only offers this level of protection to certain cards... usually the Gold card and higher... where you have to pay $90 dollars a year on the card.
In the case of the AmEx Price Matching policy for the Gold Card and higher (known as AmEx's Best Value Guarantee!). As long as you place the whole purchase on your AmEx card, you have 60 days to price a better price via a printed ad. For CostCo Business and Platinum card holders, you also gain internet price matching. Call the American Express Best Value Guarantee Hotline to tell them the price difference and to receive the claim number. Send AmEx the ad and a copy of your receipt for the overpriced item. As long as American Express can verify a difference of $10 dollars, they will refund up to $250 per item. You cannot get back more than $1000 total for the year through price matching however. Personally I have gotten back over $2000 over the past three years. The Canon PowerShot S230, I received $25 back to push my paid price under $295! The Sony CLIE T615 when it first came out sold for $399... through the AmEx Best Value Guarantee, I purchased the unit for $210 at that time (after coupons and sale promotions as well!). Price matching also allows you to purchase items from stores with good reputations then price match against store with low prices but poor to no reputation.
However, some of my more recent experiences with AmEx's Best Value Guarantee have taken a more sour turn. AmEx has become more stringent with pricematching... disallowing some sites from being used for pricematching and they will call and check the price of the item. Your purchase should not indicate that the item you purchase came with any freebies... like a purchase from RitzCamera.com gets you a digital advantage package for free on any digital camera. This makes the item unequal to the same model item on another site. (In the case of RitzCamera.com, pricematching is very hit or miss with the AmEx Best Value Guarantee). My pricematch for the S50 for $409 at www.digitalliquidators.com was denied because the RitzCamera.com package was not equivalent to the www.digitalliquidator.com package (because of the addition of the Digital Advantage package at RitzCamera.com) but one of my best friends tried the same price match and AmEx gave him $459 price match... your milage will vary! Even more bad news, AmEx BVG covers only printed ads now... no more internet pricematches! The only AmEx cards with internet BVG are the ultra expensive Platinum and Platinum Rewards cards (not the Platinum AmEx Credit Cards!) and their Black series of cards (Ultra-expensive membership fee and I think it is by AmEx invitation only!). Another downer... the BVG has severely restricted the ability to pricematch to ads of many camera retailers as well (like the shady BroadWay Photo and A&M Photo World). The membership fees for these cards make the BVG useless... unless you have that much cash to burn. I believe the minimum Platinum card fee is $300 per year. I believe the black AmEx card is $1000 per year... but I cannot confirm that. Note that internet BVG ends on 5/1/04 for Platinum card members. All information was taken from speaking to a AmEx customer service representative back in February 2004.
My last use of the AmEx Best Value Guarantee netted $100 back on the Canon PowerShot S70 (I paid under $349 for the camera in the end!)
What if I don't like to internet shop... how about the regular store? Updated August 2, 2003
Stores like Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, Wal-Mart, Sears, etc... sell items at close to their MRSP with no bargaining unless you have a coupon. You can do a little wheeling and dealing with stores like J&R music world and H&M photo... both being highly reputable camera stores with salemen who earn a living off what they sell, so some will lower the prices further to gain your sale (but not by a huge discount!).
Note that several stores now offer reward programs that you have to pay for to join. One example is Best Buy. You pay $9.99 for a one year membership into their Reward Points program. Every dollar you spend at Best Buy or BestBuy.com translates into 100 points. So that PS2 game you bought at $19.99 earns you 1,999 points. Well, every 15,000 points (i.e. spending $150 without getting bonus points) earns you a $5 gift certificate. At first, this doesn't sound very good... you have to spend $250 dollars at Best Buy and BestBuy.com before sales tax(sales tax is not added as points!) to recoup the cost of the reward program... heck, they even charge sales tax for the reward program! Why would I want to join... well, think about how much you spend at Best Buy. If you buy a DVD every 2 weeks, you will be ahead $5. If you add a couple of other electronics that go on sale in the weekly flyers, you might be ahead another $5, $10, $15... you get the picture. If you don't buy very much at Best Buy, the Reward Points club is useless to you.
If you go to the store physically, only the person holding the card can gain the points (you only get one card... other family members who want the Rewards Points card must pony up another $9.99 + tax!). However, if you share the number with your family members when they shop online, if they type in the Rewards Points number when purchasing online, you still earn the points (Note that Best Buy has removed the ability to earn Reward Zone points from Web purchases at the time I write this update... hopefully they will bring the online store back into the Reward Zone program)! For the most part, Best Buy and Circuit City offer some of the best DVD, CD, and Video Game deals around. Once in a while, they will have a killer deal on computer hardware as well! Often, the prices in their flyer (which is usually posted by Midnight EST on their website) are posted for purchase on the website at the same time (although some items may be delayed 1 to 2 days...). DVD, CD, and Video Game prices for the weekly flyer go into effect on the website on Midnight of the Sunday that week!
More Pricematching
One member (I have to find that email for his name again) mentioned that Sears also does pricematching. You can buy from the Sears store or the Sears.com web site and pick up at the store. Show the discounted price (supposedly even web prices are fair game if you purchased from Sears.com but not from the Sears physical store) and they will honor the lower price. Again this seems to work better with purchases from the Sears.com web store and select pickup from local store.
How about something cheaper... what about things like DVDs and the such? Can I get it cheaper than buying it at the store?
Sure you can! It is often more difficult to get a better price if you're not willing to do some legwork though. If you make preorders, buying from a site like buy.com may make the most sense if it offers free shipping and handling (remember buy.com doesn't charge you sales tax!). However, to get the best deals on DVDs, you are either buying them a year or two after they are released or the week that they are released! That's right, stores like Best Buy and Circuit City will advertise ridiculously low prices for DVDs released that very week. If you're an avid DVD purchaser, it pays to plan a bit ahead.
First you need to know the release date of the DVD you want... so Daredevil was released July 29, 2003. Well, the Daredevil DVD price bottomed out starting on Midnight Sunday July 27, 2003, at BestBuy.com and CircuitCity.com. Both stores selling the item at $17.99 which was the lowest price I could find outside of target.com. Target.com adds S&H fees and sales tax to boot but both CircuitCity.com and BestBuy.com charge sales tax but offer free S&H! Note that the price for the DareDevil DVD at CostCo was $19.29. Guess what... you can get additional discounts via www.ebates.com (remember all that info I gave you above on ebates.com? Use it!). It is only another 1%... but if you buy 1 new DVD every two weeks at $18 a pop, you are spending $18 x 26 weeks = $468 before sales tax! You get back $4.68. On top of that, if you shop at BestBuy.com and joined their Reward Points club (which is $9.99... if you were a bestbuy.com customer for the past year, you got a free one year membership starting in July 2003!)... this is equal to 46,800 points over a year... every 12,500 points equals a $5 gift certificate! This is $15 of gift certificates and you're 3,200 points (i.e. spend $32 more dollars) to get another $5 gift certificate!). Add the two savings together, you're close to getting a DVD for free at BestBuy.com or the local Best Buy store! Note that the Rewards Zone program no longer applies to the BestBuy.com online store at the time of this update... hopefully they will bring it back soon.
Another place to pre-order DVDs is overstock.com... however, if you are going to use overstock.com, make your order closer to the release date. Why? The price actually goes down when they obtain more preorders! However, if you buy early, you cannot get the lower price... you have committed to the charge at the time of the order (since they immediately charge your card to confirm the order!). You can save a little more by going through ebates.com to make a purchase at overstock.com.
Check out www.deepdiscountdvd.com for excellent DVD prices. This has fast become one of my favorite stops!
If you're wondering about the downside... well, ordering from the website may save you a few bucks but you wait 5-10 days for delivery. So be warned.
Putting together what I've talked about... giving my real life examples of current purchases
Something more recent (1/04), I bought a Samsung ML-1710 personal laser printer from CircuitCity.com for pickup at my local store. I went to pickup the printer and showed them an ad from Office Depot nearby for 99.97 (although this is after rebate). The customer service representative called Office Depot to confirm the price which was stated as $99.97 for the final price. Circuit City performed a 110% pricematch bringing the price down to $89.93 plus tax! I sent in the two mail-in rebates (one from Samsung and one from CircuitCity.com) with each for $70 a pop. I also got 2% back on ebates.com for the purchase on top of that. Final price on the ML-1710? I earned a little more than $45 after all the rebates came in!
The Hewlett-Packard PSC 2175. I purchased this from Stapes.com with a $40 off $200 coupon. I added some paper clips to break the $200 barrier. I had gone through ebates.com again for a 2% refund. My AmEx business card gave me another 2%. You pay sales tax however (6% in this case). Total cost was $162.89.
The Canon PowerShot S50. Purchased from Dell Small Business for a low $440. The camera retails for $599. Dell SB had a 15% off sale and I had a coupon for another 15% off (these are extremely hard to come by). Free S&H. However, you have to pay sales tax (6% in this case). Ebates gave me back another 2% on the purchase (almost $9).
The PowerShot S230. Purchased from Dell Home Software and Peripherals for a low $333 with a Canon designed case for the camera (10% off Dell's original price with a $35 off $400 stackable coupon. This deal is actually being repeated right now). Ebates.com gave me another 2% (almost $7 back). There was no sales tax and free shipping for the order. Purchase made on AmEx Gold Business that automatically extended the manufacturer's warranty and allowed for price matching. I price matched the camera to a store selling it for $299 in a photography magazine to get back a bit more than $30! Total for the S230 with a protective leather case... $290!
The HP (Hewlett Packard) PSC 2210 4 in 1 multifunction machine (printer, scanner, fax, copier). Purchased from OfficeMax via the web for $249 (after coupon) sales tax. Free shipping and a $50 off $250 coupon used (original price of the PSC 2210 was $299 to start with). Free $60 OfficeMax gift card with PSC 2210 purchase. Ebates.com gave me a 2% rebate totaling about $5.30. Since I bought the Canon S45 rather recently (a digital camera over $149 is the requirement for this rebate), I could get a $50 mail-in rebate from HP ($75 if I had bought an HP camera instead). Using a $10 off $50 in-store coupon at OfficeMax (not online!), I used the gift card to buy an extra black and color cartridges for the PSC 2210! So I paid a total of $210 for the HP PSC 2210 and got an extra set of black and tri-color ink cartridges with the purchase!
A 2004 deal: Staples.com deal for a Canon portable personal copier PC425, a 32x CDRW burner with USB 2.0 connection, and a 100 sheets of Staples premium photo inkjet paper for a total of $112! Staples had a sale for a brand new Canon PC425 with starter toner cartridge for $99.98 with a $50 coupon off this item only. I added the deal for the $9.95 Staples premium photo inkjet paper 100 sheets at 9 mil thickness. I added the deal for the Pacific Digital 32x USB 2.0 External CDRW for $89.98. That allowed me to use the $20 off coupon on top of the $50 off the copier. Ebates.com gave me back 2% of the purchase ($2.70 about) and the AmEx Gold Business Card gave me an additional 2%. Shipping was free and sales tax charged. However, there was still a $20 mail-in rebate for the CDRW. That how I got these three items for just under $112!
Jan 2005 deal: I bought a Canon PowerShot S70 for $349 total 3 months after it was released! I made the initial purchase at onecall.com for about $450 with free 3 day S&H. I made the purchase with my American Express Costco Business Card and pricematched for $349 through a print ad in ShutterBug magazine (which I subscribe to).
Signing off
A little thought on how to spend your money will allow you to buy quality items for a little less... even much less than buying at your local store! Learn to combine using various resources for the best price effect!
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Epinions.com ID:
yusakugo
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Member: Rich Go
Location: Somewhere in the NorthEast
Reviews written: 399
Trusted by: 497 members
About Me:
Losing Sleep and Lacking Time... sigh...
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