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Searching for Bargains

By on September 25, 2014 in Training Sessions

You can use the internet to find the best prices for products.

Price Comparison Websites

  • Don’t use just one price comparison site
  • Check to see if companies can pay to be on the site
  • Beware assumptions that could invalidate your insurance
  • Make sure the right boxes are ticked
  • Consider quality as well as cost
  • Check price comparison sites’ privacy policies (tick/untick the relevant boxes)

Kelkoo.co.uk – features a large number of categories including books, CDs, travel, computing and electronics categories (Kelkoo also run Shopgenie).
Pricerunner UK – covers many categories from books, through electrical appliances to travel insurance.
Amazon.co.uk – includes prices from other retailers in numerous different categories
Shopping.com UK offers a large number of categories, from clothing to phones.  Part of ebay, they also run Dealtime.co.uk
 Google’s Shopping – many retailers and a large variety of products, but it can be difficult to work through the number of listings
Play.com – list products from many different retailers, a smaller than Amazon alternative
Tesco.com/direct – list products from other retailers alongside Tesco products in a some categories
Idealo.co.uk – technically-oriented site, where you can drill down in a fairly complex way in each category
Shopzilla.co.uk – covers a wide range of categories, from clothing to video games and cosmetics.
Ciao.co.uk – comparisons and reviews across a wide range of categories.
Pricegrabber UK with a focus on computers and consumer electrical equipment.
Nextag UK offers a wide variety of categories.
Become.co.uk  – offer a categorised and searchable database of products, that can be ordered and filtered by price.
Zencudo.co.uk – offers a large number of categories.
Foundem.com – large number of categories.
Twenga.co.uk – reviews and comparisons.
Jellydeal.co.uk – provides comparisons over a large number of categ7ories
Smartshopping.co.uk – price comparisons
Find-dvd.co.uk – DVD, CD and videogame comparisons over a number of sites.
123PriceCheck – comparisons of books, DVDs, CDs and videos.
Pricechecker.co.uk – includes music, games, finance and computer categories.
Dmoz.org features a UK list of price comparison sites.

Discounts, Vouchers and Coupons

Discount codes, also known as voucher codes, promo codes, promotional codes, e-coupons, e-vouchers, and e-deals are simply codes, made up of a series of letters and/or numbers, which can be entered at the checkout of many online retailers and wholesalers to claim money off the price of goods or services. Often they offer you more products for a better deal; for example ‘buy two, get one free’. They are sometimes very short-lived, and are used by retailers to:
  • improve sales on a particular product range
  • increase turnover at specific times
  • keep you interested in shopping with them.
Some codes have certain terms and conditions. Usual ones are only one use per transaction or per household, and excluding certain products such as fuel, tobacco and medicines. These should always be clearly outlined with the offer.  Some coupons are for a specific product.
there are so many sites out there… but moneysavingexpert.com is a great site for bringing the latest deals together.

Shopping Sites

For want of a better word, this includes sites such as:

where you can buy just about anything!

Cashback sites

Once you have found what you want to buy head to a cashback website where you might be able to get come cash back on the product by linking to your original site from the cashback site or using it to calim some money back.  See moneysavingexpert for the rules to follow.

Group Buying

Group buying, sometimes called collective buying, works in a similar way to the use of discount codes by retailers. Group buying websites can offer products and services at significantly lower prices than other sources. They generally offer a deal of the day, which goes ahead once a set number of orders are agreed. You are then able to print off a voucher to claim your discount at the retailer. Groupon and Wowcher are prominent examples of group buying sites.
Have a look at:

and probably the best tool out there is:

Money Saving Expert

moneysavingexpert

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