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FOOL'S EYE VIEW
In my view, when you see an item that you want, but its price isn't right, you have three simple choices: 1. Don't buy it (after all, no-one's forcing you to)! 2. Haggle (learn how in The Best Ways To Pay Less and How To Haggle - And Save A Fortune). 3. Try to find the 'right price' elsewhere. If you really must have it, but don't fancy option (2), then your only choice is to shop around. Rather than wearing out my shoe leather by wandering from shop to shop, I prefer to do my window-shopping online. Of course, every major retailer that you can think of has an online store, but many of these outlets charge the same prices online as they do in the high street. To me, this defeats the point of the Internet, which is a great low-cost, mass-market store for canny shoppers. So, be careful, because buying online can be just expensive as the high street if you don't use your wits. Here's my five-step guide to finding big price cuts by shopping online: 1. Use free price-comparison websites The Web really comes into its own when you're shopping for particular goods, such as books, CDs, computer equipment and games, DVDs, electrical appliances and electronic equipment. Along with many other online shoppers, I use price-comparison websites (also known as 'shopbots' or shopping robots) to help me to track down bargains. No single shopbot has a commercial partnership with every online retailer (e-tailer), so you should check several to get the wider picture. However, this is still better than checking price lists across, say, fifty different e-tailers! Here are some of my favourite shopbots: All-purpose shopbots Last weekend, I put these three websites to the test by price-checking the DVD of Spirited Away, an Oscar-winning animated film released in 2003. (I'm buying it for my son, but the truth is that I'm keen to see it, too!) This DVD's recommended retail price (RRP) is £19.99; here are the big shopbots' results: The winning bid came from Jersey-based BlahDVD, which I've used before with no problems, so it wins my business. Hence, a five-minute search saved me £12 off the RRP, which is a discount of three-fifths (60%). Result! Other less well-known shopbots include: 123PriceCheck, Abcaz, Best Online Price, Checkaprice, Compare Store Prices, ComparisonMagic, easyValue, Froogle - (frugal, geddit?) from search engine Google - and The Price-Guide UK. Specialised shopbots As well as the above shopbots, I use dedicated shopbots to find specific goods. Here are a few of the best: Books DVDs Unless yours is a multi-region DVD player, it may only play Region 2 (European) discs, so tread carefully when buying DVDs with other regional coding! Supermarket shopping Travel For cheaper flights, hire cars, holidays and hotels, check out Cheapflights, ebookers, Expedia, Lastminute, Opodo, Teletext Holidays, Travelocity and TravelSupermarket. Finally, for electrical appliances, Hughes Direct offers low prices, and is recommended by Which? Magazine, whose readers receive extra discounts. 3. Check out these e-tailers Here are four online retailers that I've found to be consistently competitive: One further saving is to check whether you can find any online vouchers that provide you with further savings. In particular, I've never had a problem finding, say, 50p-off discount codes for CD Wow! Learn more at our Living Below Your Means discussion board. 4. Use cashback credit cards and cashback websites There are several shopping sites that pay cashback or points when you use them to visit and buy from various e-tailers. However, you may need to accrue up to £25 of points before you can cash them in. The most popular cashback sites are BigHair, Greasypalm (pays cashback), Mutualpoints and Rpoints (offer reward points, which can be spent like cash). Each Rpoint is worth a penny, and a Mutualpoint is worth 2/3 of a penny, so three Mutualpoints are worth 2p. You can earn up to, say, 3% cashback via these sites, so do check which of the four provides the best returns for your favourite stores. Also, to boost your points or cashback, you can earn points by taking part in consumer surveys, signing up to particular sites, plus other free offers. Also, when I shop online, I always pay by credit card, never by debit card. That's because, thanks to Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act, you get extra legal protection when buying goods costing between £100 and £30,000. If your goods don't arrive, are damaged or faulty, your credit-card issuer "wears the supplier's shoes" and must give you a refund. Also, a few credit cards offer an online fraud guarantee, Internet delivery protection and purchase protection, which are worth having if they cost nothing. See this article for more details. What's more, I always use the same credit card when shopping online or anywhere else. I use a cashback credit card that pays me up to 2% of my spending as an annual bonus. In the last two months alone, I've earned £43, which is money for old rope! Learn more about these beauties in Credit Card Freebies! Also, if you buy a lot of goods from overseas websites, you can dodge the rip-off charges that many card issuers charge for foreign-currency transactions. Note that credit and debit cards from Nationwide BS have been longstanding Best Buys for overseas spending. Check out the delightful deck in our Credit Card centre! 5. Postage & packing, returns and refunds Price-comparison can sometimes be an imprecise art, especially when it comes to postage and packing. Some sites offer free delivery on larger orders - for example, Amazon offers free P&P on orders of £19 or more, and Swotbooks does the same for £20+. So, it may be worth buying a few items in one go to save on delivery charges. What's more, when it comes to buying online or via mail order, you enjoy extra legal protection, thanks to the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000. As I explained in Better Online Shopping, when shopping via the Internet, digital TV, mail order, catalogue, fax or over the phone, you have a statutory seven-day 'cooling off' period. During this time, you have an unconditional right to cancel and receive a full refund. Although some services are excluded, and it would be hard to enforce your rights with overseas retailers, it offers an extra level of comfort to online shoppers. Furthermore, check out the Department of Trade and Industry's guide to safe internet shopping here, plus there's more information about your rights on the Consumer Direct website. Finally, remember that you can always ask a high-street store to match the price that you've found online. Often, I print off the cheapest online quote and present it to reputable retailers, some of which will meet or better my best price. It's the best of both worlds! More: Why pay interest? Shop with a 0% credit card! | Save up for a treat in our Savings centre.