Online shopping – is that really your best price?
Posted on May 12, 2012 by Jingles | No Comments
Beware of web sites that offer the cheapest price. Always be sceptical of sales and discounts. You are constantly being lied to about price, those sales and discounts that you are being offered probably isn’t the best deal you could be getting.
A couple of weekends ago after having dinner and doing the dishes I sat down to unwind in front TV. The TV was on SBS and a Japanese movie had just started, I decided to keep watching despite the sub titles. Normally if I want to read I’d pick-up a book but this film had some nice animated 3D characters called Death Angels so I kept watching. I’m glad I persevered with it because it turned out to be a good film.
When the film was over I checked the TV guide for the name of the film, it was Death Note: The Last Name. I enjoyed it enough that I Googled the film, it turns out that it was the sequel to Death Note a live action film of an Anime series also called Death note.
Death Note: The Last Name was so good that I wanted to see the first film and the Anime series. Thanks to the wonders of the internet I found out that one of my favourite entertainment distributors Mad Man distributed the films and the Anime series.
I was very tempted to pull the trigger and purchase the films and Anime series right there and then but I held off because I couldn’t justify it. There were plenty of other things that I needed to do with that money, like pay ISP bills otherwise I wouldn’t be ordering anything online without any internet connection.
Death Note had dropped off my radar until now when I checked my email. There was an email from MoviePlus, apparently they have brought out one of my favourite online DVD shops, Atlantic. MoviePlus were offering a $5 discount on any order over $20, there is always a catch… So I decided to have a look for Death Note because the email boasted of ‘excellent deals’.
MoviePlus had the double DVD of Death Note 1 and 2, for $37.95, so $34.95 with the $5 discount, and then add postage on top of that. Now I don’t know in what universe that constitutes a good deal in but it sure as shit not an ‘excellent deal’ in my world. Mad Man had the exact same DVD set for $29.95, plus postage which would be $4 as stated in their excellent FAQ.
Unfortunately I can’t describe anything to do with MoviePlus as excellent when they failed to indicate how much they charge for shipping, it wasn’t even listed in their FAQ!
Really MoviePlus? You don’t frequently get asked how much shipping costs?
That’s ok, it’s no big deal it just means MoviePlus won’t be getting my business even if they do offer me ‘discounts’… dicounts haha! Yeah right. Ahem! I like to know how much everything will cost before I purchase goods so that there are no surprises. The fact that MoviePlus can’t provide me an answer to what I think would be a fairly common question makes me think that they are dodgy which means that I’m going to shop elsewhere and forget that they ever exist.
Sure I could have put the item in the shopping cart and proceeded to the checkout to find out how much shipping would cost. I could have even sent them an email and hope that I get a reply. But I didn’t have to because Mad Man was already $5 cheaper and shipping costs were covered in their FAQ (along with processing and shipping estimates, something else that MoviePlus failed to do) which meant that I knew the total cost of my order.
Another Example is I found a 55” Samsung LED TV at a local home theatre shop for $240 less than JB Hi-Fi were selling it for. Anyone that lives in Australia knows that JB likes to boast that they have the best and the cheapest prices. Usually JB does have some pretty good deals in general but not always.
The moral of the story is always be sceptical of advertising and ‘excellent deals’, the cheapest prices, the best price etc… Unless you have too much money always shop around and use price search web sites to really find the best price.
If you do have too much money shoot me an email, I’ll alleviate you of any excess cash that is a burden to you.
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I'm Jingles, I'm like the Keith Miller of geeks, i.e. an all rounder, I'm a web scientist, an A+ certified (it means I'm not a “noob”) computer technician, and this is my blog. I'm your curator of all things awesome, cool and geeky on and off the net. More...
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