I get many emails (well a few anyway) about finding the best
prices on computer and other technological products. Locally,
your best bet is RIMO. Since RIMO has so many shops under
one roof you can ‘shop’ for the best price. If
you live or visit the US or have friends or family there,
the following will help you find the best price on items.
For some of these outlets you don’t even need to be
IN the US, just have internet access:
10) A good price search engines.
I used to use only one search engine: PriceScan (pricescan.com).
You entered the brand and model number and it searched to
find the best price. Since then however, betters sites have
sprung up: like Pricewatch (pricewatch.com). They categorized
all the items I wanted and found the cheapest price for them
online. It was extremely easy to use and the results came
back with some amazing deals. Nowadays, even newer sites like
Froogle (froogle.google.com) have taken some of glory of being
the top price search site. The concept is still the same -
find the lowest price from numerous sites all in one shot.
The companies listed in these search engines may depend on
how much they are willing to spend to be listed. Make sure
to check the Reseller Ratings (www.resellerratings.com) for
the vendor you plan to buy from. If their rating is low, it
means others have had problems with them, so you’d want
to stay away from that retailer.
9) Hot deal sites
Hot deal sites are a dime a dozen now. It just goes to show
you how big of an impact getting a hot deal is. These sites
comb through many retailers to find the sales that no one
else picked up on. Whether you are looking to get a case of
water or some extra hard drives, just keep an eye out on these
sites and you’ll probably find them. Some of the more
popular sites that I frequent are Spoofee (spoofee.com) and
Slickdeals (slickdeals.net). Do keep in mind, 99.9% of the
links on these sites are referral links. They do this mainly
to get some revenue back from all the links they find.
8) Local Sunday paper ads
A local Sunday paper in the states - you’ll find a handful
of fliers for local shops. Most commonly you’ll see
Best Buy, Circuit City, OfficeMax, Staples, and a few others.
Usually the prices are just slightly higher than what you’d
find online. The hot deal comes when you can combine some
price matching and rebates. Price matching involves taking
an advertised price from one retailer to another to have them
match and beat that price. Many will beat it and give you
an extra discount on top. Once you get that price match and
rebate, you just got yourself a hot deal. This is of course
assuming that one retailer is actually advertising a lower
price for the same item. Good luck!
7) Friends and Family sales
Most of the time these sales are geared towards apparel. You’ll
see Foot Locker having these every few months netting the
consumer 30% off on just about everything in their shops.
There are some tech deals to be had, for example if you were
in the market for a cell phone. Many of the providers have
Friends and Family deals that can possibly give up to a 65%
discount! However, you will need to know or ‘find’
someone who works at your desired provider, which makes this
deal a bit harder than most. Sprint/Nextel has a employee
referral program just like this which requires knowing a Sprint
employees ID. If you don’t know anyone, you may want
to head over to some of the large cell phone forums and try
to find someone who may be willing to help you out.
6) Loyalty programs
Some companies have begun offering loyalty discounts if you
stay with them. For example, Western Digital (websupport.wdc.com/store/upgrade/products.asp?order_source=3)
gives their customers a discount on newer drives if you have
one of their older models. The drive can be in warranty or
out of warranty, it does not matter. All you will need to
provide them is a valid serial number off your old internal
drive and they’ll provide you with a discount on a new
one. You do not even need to send in your old drive!
In the next issue – the top 5 places
