Bots and bargains

You can save time and money using the Web to explore many stores at once for specific items. ShopBots are Web-based shopping robots that will search a number of retailers to find the cheapest place to buy what you are looking for. They include delivery costs, so you can get a proper costing of the price. The most famous shopbots are Kelkoo and Pricerunner, although there are many more. Although they do not search every retailer on the planet, they do check a lot, including lesser known sites. As the cheapest is rarely the best., some shopbot  encourage shoppers to give feedback on their experience.

For instance, to find out about prices for an iPod – can they be bought cheaper than from Applie directly - Pricerunner found a number of such retailers. Dixons online, was charging £146.85, with free delivery – over  £22 less than Apple, for a few minutes Web surfing. Some sites, such as Amazon, offer free delivery for spending over a certain amount, so this can effectively “make” a price the lowest on offer.

Then there are “cashback” sites:  spend money with retailers through their sites and you receive a percentage of what you spent back, as cash. The cashback comes as part of the fee the stores pay to use the site. A large number of big name retailers including John Lewis, Boots, Marks & Spencer and Tesco, have signed up.

Usually you need to accrue a fair amount of cashback before you see any money yourself - some sites charge subscription fees and others will not let you take any money until you have earned perhaps £20. If, however, it is convenient for you to do the majority of your shopping through a cashback site, you can build up a healthy sum in a relatively short amount of time.

Cashback site Quidco, for example, which has Dixons as a participating retailer. if I were to buy the iPod through its site, you would earn 2.5% back as cashback. So, by paying £146.85, you would get another £3.67 back - effectively bringing the price down to £143.18.  Now Quidco does keep the first £5 cashback earned as a subscription fee, so you have to earn another £1.33 before actually making any money. However, after this point the money earned would be credited to your account, monthly, with no minimum required.

Cashback site GreasyPalm offers 1% cashback on any spending at Dixons, so you would get £1.47 cashback, but does not have an annual subscription fee. Additionally, it gives £2.50 to all new customers, so you would effectively get £3.97 back (so the iPod would cost £142.88), but you would need to save up £20 in cashback before anything would be credited to your account. Other cashback sites are Rpoints and Funds4Me.

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