I want to take you through the Purchase Process I go through when buying pretty much anything these days. Until about 2 years ago I thought I was a savvy buyer due to simply looking online for things rather than from a store and being able to compare a few websites using a Google search. However as time has progressed I have become much more sophisticated in my process and in turn saved a lot more money than before.
I am no longer satisfied with just the ‘best price’ on the web. I want that price discounted, with free shipping and with extra rewards. The process does require a certain amount of comparing and cross referencing as the site that appears the most value for money might not be immediate apparent after you process the coupons and rewards. I’ll take you through this post using a recent example that I used for purchasing Contact Lenses.
Step 1 Identify the Product and Establish the Benchmark Price
Identify the product you wish to purchase and find out the Fair Market Value of it. If it is a major brand item like an iPad then it is quite simple to find the MRRP; however with lesser known items it isn’t always easy, but a good gauge is to quickly search in Google and average out the first 4-5 hits you find. Once you see a stable price point that is the goal to beat. I’ll use a recent example of mine when I needed to buy more Contact Lenses, purchasing from the Optician is a terrible idea as their markup is very high. So I will pick a large discounter like Walmart and try to beat them in throughout this exercise.
The brand I wear are Aqua Comfort Plus, in a 90 Pack (they are dailies) here is the price for the 8 Packs I want to buy from Walmart.
So we are down from the price the optician wants to charge me (trust me its a lot higher than this) to $439.04 from Walmart.
Step 2 Beat the Benchmark Price
I have to beat $439.04 and take two routes to do this.
Route 1
Straight Google Product Search comparison – are there any other vendors out there that will charge less than the price Walmart quoted, use shopping sites and search to find the lowest priced items – however you have to keep an eye on the price and make sure they aren’t duping you with some clever marketing.
First off, $37.50 sounds great compared to Walmart’s $54.88 per box, but then the small print shows it is actually $44.03 with tax and shipping, still good, and the Walmart price was pre Tax too. However the thing that gets my attention is the $85 Rebate. What is that, who is it from and how do I qualify for it? The reason these questions are important to ask is many companies will price in the rebate, whereas some do not, into the average price. If the rebate comes from the Website it is a Website Reward and a key part of a purchase, however if it is a manufacturers coupon then I can use it on any website. If the first company does price it in and the third, Contactlens.com for $49.25 does not then they become the cheapest option… time to dig a little further.
I put 8 boxes in the Cart for Contactlens.com and get the following price:
Magically the price is now $43.74 per box including shipping… and there is no talk of the $85 Rebate here; so effectively the price could drop again to $264.92 ($349.92-$85) if they ship the coupon with the order, some research has shown me that all these companies offer the rebate so the chances are that it will come with the shipping, but even if it does not it is still a lower price!
Back to double check with the first one ReplaceMyContacts.com just in case they also didn’t factor in their Rebate, and wowzer – they didn’t so they are back in the lead, plus they state clearly that they will offer the $85 rebate after the fact. Checkout price is $300 plus tax (free shipping for this order) so they are offering $215 plus tax for the same order:
I’m feeling pretty good right now, getting the price down from Walmarts Original $439 to $215 which is over 50% saved already, now it is time to start digging into the Pyramid of Savings below to tweak it further:
Next step, I want to see what Cash Back and Points back I can receive by clicking through portals rather than just buying from the website, as explained below.
Portal Rewards
These are ‘click through’ portals that give you a referral fee for clicking through them rather than just buying from the website. The fee can be in terms of Cash Back or also Airline and Hotel points and Miles. I believe all of the major players that have a Frequent Flyer program have a shopping portal, and the amount of referral amount they give you changes on a monthly basis as promotions come and go; so it is always worth cross checking who is offering the best at the time you plan to buy.
That said, for Cash Back I prefer Big Crumbs as they are very good at tracking your click through and paying out is very simple (they automatically transfer any earned Cash Back to your Paypal on a monthly basis) Here is my link for Big Crumbs if you haven’t joined yet, please use it as it is free for you and I get a small kickback from them for introducing you: Big Crumbs Free Signup Link
And for Points and Miles I like Ultimate Rewards from Chase. I believe that you need a Chase Credit Card or Banking Relationship in order to signup for this program, and I value these points highly as they transfer 1:1 into other programs like United and Hyatt. This means they are flexible and have good redemption rates. These are the most valuable points for me, I value them higher than their seeming cash equivalent and would take 2 Ultimate Rewards per Dollar over 3% Cash Back.
Now, as you can see there are a plethora of shopping portals, and they change their offerings on a daily basis, so how to navigate through this mess and make sure you are getting top dollar? In step the Portal Comparison sites. The one I use the most is www.evreward.com this site is a real life saver when it comes to finding the best Cash Back and Points Back for your purchase. The Portal Reward is the final step in the process , it comes after you have found which website you want to purchase from. It is nice that it also offers Coupons in addition to the Cash Back which can help save even more.
When I punch in both the top two replacemycontacts.com and contactlens.com I hit a dud, nothing for either company. This is a real shame and not something that I am going to accept in my search, as I think I can find good Portal Bonuses and Coupons to further lower my cost. At this point, I will go onto the final step in this process which is to cross check for coupons to get a final basis before moving on.
Coupons
Online coupons are always a little hit and miss, and sometimes using them can cancel out other things such as free shipping etc, so exercise caution and always review your cart before checking out to make sure that you have everything applied properly. Furthermore, if you are using a Portal for points it is very important that you don’t click through a Coupon site to ‘enter the code’ as that will make you lose your Portal Bonus. If in doubt add the coupon, close the window, open the portal window again, click through to open the shopping site and complete your purchase, they use Cookies to track this so make sure that these are enable too!
I use the site retailmenot.com for finding Coupons, they work very much like evreward works to find bonuses and you can copy or click through to apply coupons (watch out for clicking through and losing your reward!). In this case I enter replacemycontacts.com and contactlens.com and ANOTHER dud! What this tells us is that these two companies are offering a good price, but are not partnering with these online firms to boost sales; there is a good clue here that for those companies that DO offer incentives through Coupons and Portal Rewards they offer them across the board, it is an all or nothing kinda gig, which leads me to the end of Route 1 and onto Route 2.
Route 2
I have to beat a price of $215 after $85 Rebate, to do it I am going in reverse order. Previously in Route 1 I tried to find the specific product: AquaComfort Plus 90 Pack at the best price at any retailer. Now I am going to flip that and find the Specific Retailer that offers the best rebates and incentives to shop from overall, that also happens to carry the product I want, the AquaComfort Plus 90 Pack.
To do this I use the Browse feature on evreward to look up Contact Lens vendors
I am already very excited about seeing VisionDirect, they seem to offer a rebate of 20% and a Coupon too for a further 25%! That could stack really well and put them into the lead. I click through to see what that 20% really is, as it doesn’t necessarily mean Cash.
However, when I click through there is no 20% on offer and I feel like a bait and switch has happened. That said, they are still offering 15% for the ShopDiscover and 8% for BigCrumbs. To use ShopDiscover you need to have a Discover card, which I don’t have so it would be BigCrumbs for me. Note, I did go back and check out the No.2 company Coastal Contacts but they offered 7% for Bigcrumbs so not as good.
On top of the 8% Cash Back I also get to use the Coupon Code NEWVISION25 for 25% off the entire order plus free shipping. Armed with this information I log into BigCrumbs, look up VisionDirect, confirmed the bonus is 8% and click through to shop:
The only thing that could go wrong at this point (and has in the past!) is that this company doesn’t stock the product you are looking for; however the AquaComfort line is very popular and they do stock it, they are offering the following pricing. As I actually used this coupon already, and it is for first time customers it won’t let me apply it to share with you here, but we can figure out the math easily enough:
The pre discount price is $399.92, after we apply 25% discount that becomes $299.94, and we have the Rebate for $85 bringing the price down to $214.94, a hair under the price we reached using Route 1 however this time we also have Bigcrumbs for a further 8% Cashback, valued at $24 bringing the final price to $190.04.
Route 2 is the clear winner in this case, but sometimes Route 1 will bring up a better base price so it is always good to do both. Now we have taken into account Portal Rewards and Coupons we have the following 2 components to consider: Website Rewards and Credit Card Rewards.
Website Rewards
Website rewards aren’t offered by every site, but some do offer them, unfortunately my Contacts won’t qualify for a points system, but they did offer me a website reward of Free Shipping and 25% off my entire order which was fantastic! An example of a store with a points system would be a product you purchase from BestBuy or Staples as they have they own rewards program. These can offer anything from Status that offers unlimited free shipping, to cash back rewards from the website that will stack on top of the other rewards you have gained. An interesting way to combine Website rewards is finding Portal Rewards for Websites that you know are going to reward you: EG if you plan to book a hotel with Starwoods you can log in through BigCrumbs and get 2.1% cashback from the Portal, plus whatever Starwoods points you get for booking with them.
Credit Card Rewards
I fully expect you to be using a Rewards Credit Card for any purchases online (remember to pay these suckers off right away!) however the edge you can gain at this point in online shopping comes into the Category Bonuses. Unfortunately not all are coded correctly, so when a card says it gets 6x points at Drugstores (like the Hilton Honors Surpass from American Express) it might not apply to that contact lens purchase as it might not register properly; however I find that the most benefits here come from using a Travel Bonus card like the Chase Sapphire Preferred stacked on top of using the Portal Bonus and Website Bonus and Coupons. Picking the right card is key, but your mileage may vary as to what you get paid out on.
Recap
Make sure your purchase is the lowest final price by considering the following aspects:
- Actual Shopping Cart Price
- Cash Back or Points Back from a Portal
- Manufacturers Coupons
- Website Coupons or Bonuses
- Category Bonus Credit Card Spend
Happy Shopping! Here is my link for BigCrumbs again, if you plan to use this system to save like I do then you will certainly be using Bigcrumbs – you can sign up now and have the account ready for when you decide to shop, remember it is free and pays you excellent Cash Back.
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