Money Saving Tips for Online Shopping

What prompted me to write this post is shown in the image below — my wife just got a $26.20 “Big Fat Check” from Ebates. My sister told me about this a few times before, but I didn’t pay any attention…until my wife tried it and got the check.

I am probably a bit late for the shopping season, but here are some money saving tips for online shopping:

Discounts and Rebates

• Ebates — Get $5 bonus for signing up an account. Sign-in to Ebates, shop at over 800 merchant partners, and every 3 months they will cut you a “Big Fat Check” if you saved more than $5.01 (see how Ebates works).
• Credit Card Shopping Networks – The two cards I have are Discover Card and Citi Card. Both of them offers shopping program.
  • ShopDiscover – Offers 5-20% cashback bonus at nearly 100 major brand name merchant partners. Just go through their links and the extra cashback is applied to your Cashback Bonus account.
  • Citi Bonus Cash Center (SM) — This is similar to Discover program. You can earn an average of 5% additional cashback when you shop online, by phone or at participating retail stores. There are over 400 leading retailers in Citi’s network.
• Upromise.com — I have an Upromise 529 Plan. They also offer a similar program called Upromise Rewards, where you can shop from over 550 retailers through them. The money saved is added to your 529 Plan.
• Employee Discounts Program — This will depends on your employer. But it could be worthwhile to ask your boss or the HR manager if one is available for you. I work for a major corporation and I am eligible for discount, not only on my employer’s products, but also on appliances, automobiles, banking & financial services, cell phones & pagers, computers & electronics, office supplies, and travel & relocation.

Searches and Deals

• DealScans — This web site keeps track of best deals from major online retailers. You can do basic search using product name, advanced search, or use one of their pre-defined searches: highest rated deals, best deals (%), best deals ($), or cheap filler items.
• PriceProtectr Deals — This feature is similar to the one offered by DealScans. This is a nice feature, but the real gem is their price protection tool (see below).
• Google Product Search BETA (formerly Froogle) — I used to use this feature a lot when it was Froogle. Although you can find really good deals using this tool, it takes a lot of time. The one thing I didn’t like about the tool is that there seems to be a lot of predatory retailers listed in the search results.

Price Protection

• PriceProtectr - I found out about this from my friend, Glblguy. If you bought something online, all you have to do is copy and paste the URL, and give them your email address. If they notice the price drop any time within the price protection period, they’ll send an email your way.

If you are still doing some last minute shopping, I hope these tips will help you save some money!

More about online shopping:

• Wall Street Journal Podcast: Finding Deals Online @ Consumerism Commentary
• How Not To Overspend On Your Christmas Shopping @ Lifehack.org
• Ebates Big Fat Checks @ Rocket Finance
• I Love Christmas Shopping on the Internet @ Blogging Away Debt
• Ten Tips for Holiday Shopping Online @ My Dollar Plan

This article was featured in:

• The 2008 Carnival of Everything Finance Begins ! (# 10 Edition) hosted by Everything Finance. For more information, please visit the Carnival of Everything Finance.