How to Know if You're Getting a Good Deal when Shopping Online
Hint: It begins with a camel and ends with a camel
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If you're like me and start buying products for holiday gifts this week, you'll undoubtedly encounter pages like the one below on Amazon and other retailers.
They often feature BIG discounts on major products, but how do you determine if a discount truly represents a good deal? Retailers frequently use discounts and sales as strategies to generate demand, even when their products seldom sell at the MSRP (manufacturer's suggested retail price).
The solution I've consistently turned to is a site called CamelCamelCamel (which might not sound like a legitimate site, but it indeed is). CamelCamelCamel is a price tracking website for Amazon. While I don't exclusively shop at Amazon, I utilize this website to monitor the prices of items I also consider purchasing from other retailers. Since Amazon is obsessed with offering the lowest price, this site gives a good indication of whether a current sale is genuinely a good deal.
Here's how it works: Just look up a product on Amazon that you want to check the price history for, copy the item's URL, then paste the URL into CamelCamelCamel. You’ll then see the historical price history of that item.
Here are few examples:
You can clearly see that the current price of the Breville Barista Express is not particularly impressive compared to its historical price. It’s likely to be discounted to at least $599 before Christmas this year, based on its historical price trends.
Here’s another example:
A 25% discount seems like an excellent deal for the SanDisk 4TB Extreme Pro Portable SSD, though recent concerns about these SSDs randomly deleting data might deter you. But let’s examine its price history via CamelCamelCamel:
Based on its history, this is the lowest price at which this version of their SSD has ever sold.
If the current price of an item doesn't match your desired price, CamelCamelCamel offers a convenient feature called price watches, which I've found incredibly useful over the past eight years. These price alerts have saved me a significant amount of money, and I've never encountered any spam from CamelCamelCamel.
Last year, I was in the market for an expensive blender that rarely went on sale, as indicated by the data from CamelCamelCamel.
I set up a price watch for the blender, and, sure enough, it reached one of its lowest prices on Black Friday last year. By waiting and using that price alert, I saved about $200.
I hope this tip helps streamline your holiday shopping and leads you to some great deals. If you've got any shopping hacks, let me know by leaving a comment – I'm always interested to hear from you!
Stay tuned for more tips and deal alerts in my upcoming Black Friday Deals Newsletter, which you can sign up to receive here.
Until then, happy shopping and smart saving!