When most of us think of online shopping, we think of “convenience”. We don’t know about you, but we definitely don’t consider spending more money to be convenient. Unfortunately, this happens quite often: you pay for the ease of being able to sit from your comfy couch and order whatever your heart desires/whatever your bank account allows for. The cost of shipping alone can add on quite the price tag. That’s why we’ve decided to take it upon ourselves and create a guide with the most up-to-date tips and tricks in saving money online shopping.
1. Pull One Over On Dynamic Pricing
What’s dynamic pricing? It’s the price tag many merchants display to you based on where you’re located, your browsing history, shopping patterns, and today’s demand for the product in question. It’s not a rule that the amount shown will be a higher price, but it could be.
You’ll find that airlines are notorious for doing this. You look up a quote for a plane ticket, and when you go back to check a second time, that flight has now doubled in price, or there are only pricier first-class tickets left.
How can you get around this?
- Clear your cookies and browser history completely.
- Browse anonymously, make sure all associated accounts are logged out of, and you’re in incognito mode.
- Use a VPN so your IP address will show you to be in a different city/country to give you the best rates. Generally speaking, you’re going to find that less developed countries will feature better prices.
Use a combination of the three for best results!
2. Share Your Amazon Purchase History
It really is that easy! A US-based survey company called “The Harris Poll” uses the app, ShopTracker. What ShopTracker does is track which products people are buying from Amazon. If you agree to give them access to this info about your shopping history, they’ll pay you up to $36 annually. Sure, it’s not winning the lottery, but money is money!
3. Use Coupon Codes
This is one of the most commonly used methods of saving money shopping online. However, what’s not common, is the knowledge of the best coupon code sites. While huge sites like Groupon may be your first thought, there are actually some smaller ones that will serve you much better. Our personal favourite is Famous Savings, a hidden gem if you want the latest and greatest discount codes from all kinds of retailers.
Remember that it’s just as important to know when and how to use these codes. If the site you’re buying from lets you use multiple promos and coupons in one transaction, know in which order to use them for maximum savings. For example, if you have a 15% off coupon and a $10 off one, you’ll first want to use the 15% code to knock off 15% off the greater total price, then take the 10 bucks off afterwards.
There are also a bunch of review sites that often provide exclusive discount codes as well. For example, if you are looking for a new mattress, Consumer Mattress Guide has discounts for most of the major brands you can make use of.
4. Sign Up For Mailing Lists
This is another obvious one that many of us skip out on because we don’t want the emails clogging up our inbox. However, it’s more than worth the time spent making a separate email address just for this purpose. For retailers you frequently shop with, you’ll receive coupons all throughout the year. You’ll also be informed above others of sales. Another option, if you don’t want to provide your email address, is to follow your favourite shops on social media, where you can also get alerts about sales.
If you find that you’re getting too annoyed with promos and newsletters, then check out Unroll.me. This email add-on allows you to unsubscribe from the fluff, leaving your inbox nice and clean. It will send you one email per day, summing up your preferred subscriptions so you can still receive deals.
5. Save Email Receipts
As you can see, your inbox could be hiding some hidden treasures! Starting today, make a separate folder within your email where you can neatly keep your receipts from purchases made online. Then, use Paribus, which hooks up to our email and tracks said receipts. The other end tracks retailer databases, and if it identifies that you’ve made a purchase on an item and that item’s price has gone down, it will refund you the difference. Keep in mind that this will vary, depending on the individual store’s policies on refunds.
If you’re purchasing on Amazon, know that if the price of an item you’ve purchased drops and you notify Amazon within seven calendar days from the delivery date, they’ll refund you the difference. Camelcamelcamel.com is a handy site made to solely monitor Amazon price changes to help you with that.
6. Abandon the Shopping Cart
If you can deal with not getting your items at this very moment, drop them into your shopping cart and leave them overnight. As stores need to close sales, they’ll try and persuade you to buy with them by sending you a voucher to your email for a discount on your products. If you’re willing to wait an extra day, it could very well pay off for you!
Wrapping Up
While these tricks are by no means difficult, they can take up a bit of your time to get started. However, we can assure you that even by taking advantage of one or two of these will save you some serious bucks over time. For maximum savings, try using as many as you can at once! Eventually, it will start getting fun challenging yourself to see just how much you can cut down in costs. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope these best online shopping tips have helped you out!
