As the holiday-shopping silly season approaches, we share ways savvy consumers can save significantly. Here are summaries of the favorite shopping strategies of the editors at Twin Cities' Consumers' Checkbook and Checkbook.org, a nonprofit organization with a mission to help consumers get the best service and lowest prices.
Keep in mind that these are broad tips for getting deals. Checkbook finds the biggest mistake most consumers make is failing to comparison shop. To find the lowest-price stores and other advice for buying specific types of products and services, see Checkbook's articles and ratings. You can access Checkbook's ratings of local services for quality and price free of charge until Dec. 5 by using this link: www.checkbook.org/StarTribune/Save
Don't assume that a sale price is a good price. Checkbook's undercover shoppers find that at many retailers the sales never, or seldom, end. In a nine-month investigation, Checkbook found that many stores use deceptive practices, especially by offering continuous, misleading sales campaigns. The only way to know whether you are paying a fair price is to compare prices at several stores.
Use shopping bots and bar code scanners. There are dozens of smartphone apps that can help you compare prices, including ShopSavvy, Purchx, BuyVia and PriceGrabber. Amazon has integrated its price-checking tool right into its app. Use one of these apps to search for products or to scan the bar code of a product at a local store to get prices offered by other retailers.
Ask for a price match. Checkbook often finds the best deals online. But if a salesperson at a local store provided valuable buying advice, you might want to reward him or her with the sale. Or you may not want to wait for delivery by an online seller. And if it's an expensive item, you may have to be home to sign for it.
But at many stores, you can buy local and avoid paying more. Checkbook finds that retailers often will match lower prices offered by their competitors, even if the other seller is an online store. Just use your smartphone or take along a printout of your deal to ask for a match. While this tactic seems like a hassle, Checkbook's undercover shoppers found it was quite easy to secure lower prices on most items simply by asking for a lower-price match. One Checkbook shopper recently scored a $500 Kenneth Cole briefcase for $86 from a major department store by scanning the item with Amazon's app and showing the current Amazon selling price to a manager.
Know the code. When making purchases online, you will often see spaces where you can enter a promotional or coupon code. These spaces may as well be labeled "Hey! Here's free money!" Using a discount code is the equivalent of handing a printed coupon to a checkout clerk. Do an internet search for discount codes for the site (for example, search for "Lands' End discount code"). Although you will encounter expired codes, your reward often is worth the searching and trial-and-error.
Two of our favorite coupon sites are RetailMeNot.com and CouponCabin.com, but there are many others worth checking. We recently found discount codes that saved 25 percent off a contact lens order from Walgreens.com; cut 40 percent from a BananaRepublic.com order; lowered Orbitz's already discounted rate for a hotel stay by 15 percent; and zipped up a 30 percent discount on a pair of boots from shoes.com.
