Guide to safe, effective online shopping

There are many steps to finding and purchasing items at the best price online.  And there are a growing number of great tools to help.  Here are my tips for safe, effective, online shopping.

Last Update:  05.20.08

• Added freeshipping.org
• Added Secure Online Account Numbers

1. Product research

• Amazon - the best place to look up products and read consumer reviews.
  
• Consumer Reports - great product comparisons, but not free, you have to be a subscriber.
• Consumer Search - like a free consumer reports, with less detail, but can tell you the top products in lots of product categories.
• Google Product Reviews - aggregates consumer reviews from across the web
• Inods - a user and expert review aggregator and search engine.  Why go to places like epinions.com when Inods searches against them and many others?

You can also find specialty sites that review specific types of products - often a great source of detailed reviews.

• Autos - Edmunds.com
• Cell phones, long distance plans - phonescoop, saveonphone, signalmap
• Computers and Electronics reviews - cnet, computershopper, pcmagazine, pcworld, tom's hardware (awesome)
• Digital cameras - digitalcamerareview.com, dpreview.com

2. Finding current bargains

Before you use any of the deal sites, including those below, you really should NOT go to these sites directly (though you can).  Instead, add their RSS feeds to your feed reader (if you don't have one, I recommend Google Reader).  Then, you can search against them all at once.  NOTE: there are lots of great bargain sites, these are just my time tested favorites.

• Absurdly Cool Freebie Finder - ok, the stuff here gets old, but they list lots of freebies daily. 
• bensbargains.net - my first go-to deal site.  What i love is the user participation in discussing each deal - many times, if you read the discussion, you can find out if the deal you are considering is really worth it or not.
• dealcatcher.com - DC is great because it covers a lot more than electronics.  Also, it has specific RSS feeds for deals at such places as Old Navy, Overstock.com, and Target.
• dealnews.com - not only does this site list more than just electronics (like home items), each item has a nice description discussing the current pricing patterns for the item (e.g. 'lowest we've seen in 8 months for this item')
• techbargains.com - kind of redundant with bensbargains, but if you want duplication just to make sure you didn't miss anything, add techbargains.
• woot.com - one item for sale a day, some great bargains.  Fun!   See yugster also, an inferior but still good clone of woot.

3. Product agents

• ebay - on ebay, you can set up a standing search for an item, and it can notify you by email when that item shows up.
• pricegrabber.com - they will notify you, based on a price that select, if a particular item meets your price from any vendors

4. Finding the cheapest price for specific items

You don't have to do much work comparison shopping if you have these tools nearby:

• PriceAdvance - this Firefox extension works only on certain vendor sites (like Amazon, walmart, target, etc.), but when you are on a specific product page, it will show you prices from the other vendors.  Nice.
• pricegrabber - one of the best price comparison engines.  Also has nice price notification feature (see #3 above)
• pricewatch - mainly for PC components and electronics, great way to keep up on prices for various items like graphics cards and cpus.  Just don't trust their vendor ratings (see #8 below)
• google products - you know google, they've spidered the web for nearly everything.

5. Finding coupons

There are tons of great coupon sites, but my favorite by far is RetailMeNot - not only can you search their site, but they have an awesome Firefox plugin which basically removes the work for you.

• freeshipping.org - finds free shipping coupons for various online merchants - often has coupon codes missed by retailmenot.
• retailmenot - this Firefox extension runs in the background.  When you visit a site that it knows there are coupons for, it will pop up an unobtrusive taskbar up top telling you "40 coupons for amazon.com" - you can click through to see them.  Nice.

6. Finding used stuff

• amazon - Amazon.com not only sells new items, but has tons of vendors that sell used versions of the items you are looking for.  Great place to find bargains.
• craigslist - if you have a local craigslist, use it!  It's free, and you'll be surprised how much stuff there is for cheap in your area - the best free classifieds ever.  NOTE:  once you search, you can add an RSS for that search to your feed reader, and just check for current results from there next time.  Awesome.
• pennysaverusa - you might have one in your county/metro area - classifieds with a clumsy but workable search engine.

7. Best times to buy

• Airline tickets - Airline tickets tend to be least expensive on Wednesday mornings because that’s when airlines try to fill unsold seats on flights for the following week to 10 days.
• Consumer reports sales calendar - all kinds of different items are on sale during different months of the year.

8. Checking vendor reliability

• Reseller Ratings - Reseller ratings is THE best place to check for obscure online vendors that you have not heard of, especially bad ones.  You might also check at Bizrate or the Better Business Bureau, but only as a second tier search.

9. Safe methods of payment

• Pay by credit card, google checkout, or paypal.   DO NOT pay with a debit card ever.
• Secure Online Account Numbers - many credit cards, like Discover, allow you to generate a one-time use number for an online purchase.  Once used, it can not be used again.  Nice.

10. Tracking price drops

• BuyLater - Firefox extension, allows you to tag amazon items, and will notify of price drops via email.  Pricepinx (below) does this a little better, and more than just amazon, but it is not a firefox plugin.
• Pricepinx - this web-based service works very well - when you are on a product page, highlight the price and click the Pinx bookmark that you've set up.  BAM!  Now it will track and notify you of price drops. 
• priceprotectr.com - After you make a purchase, you usually have a 30 day price guarantee.  But who goes back to check?  Now, priceprotectr will email you if the price changes.  Especially useful with amazon, who change their prices often.
• yapta - this Firefox plugin is useful, not only for finding cheap tickets, but for notifying you of price drops after you've purchased.  Sometimes, the airlines will credit you (I'm not sure of the rules), so you should watch for this.

11. Tracking rebates

• rebate-tracker.com - forget if you got that rebate or not?  Tired of tracking in a spreadsheet (or am I the only one that does that?).  Rebate Tracker is a great free service.

If you know of any other great shopping tools, pls. let me know.  Thanks.

Comments

[Siddeley]

Thank you for this list! I didnt see Dealtaker.com though and wanted to share with you what a great community site I think it is, along with having the best deals and coupons. If you have any questions on the site let me know - I will be glad to assist!!

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[Misty]

Very helpful list - thanks a ton. I'd recommend Bradsdeals.com as well. That is my daily go-to. They do a very helpful job. Brad is on the Today Show too.

[one more site]

Check this site for more deals and cash back rewards

[shoppingnotes]

Pls add http://www.shoppingnotes.com to the price alert/price drop watch websites. What differentiates ShoppingNotes from other price alert services is that we can watch price on almost any product (not limited to a number of vendors). And our website works on both IE and Firefox.

We also provide a central location to save and organize all your shopping links. Whenever you see an interesting product on the web, you can save the product image, price as well as description all into your personal shoppingnotes in just two clicks. Within your shoppingnotes, you can create list, copy/move/delete links, add notes, set favorite levels, refresh price and set price alerts.