Monday, December 07, 2009

Deal Reminders

Charlotte, the ever-present tiara, and Uncle Mark
More Thanksgiving stuff to come, don't want to overdo it all at once
photo by Kalina

The lady in front of me in line at Kohl's the other day bought $250 worth of stuff and used no coupon. Unbelievable, since you really have to go out of your way to avoid Kohl's coupons - they really come at you from all directions. A genius marketing move, kind of like their "biggest sale of the year" ad each and every week.

Since I don't want anyone I know to overpay for anything this year, just remember a couple tips:

- When shopping online, use cash back sites! Since starting to do this I have gotten around $150 in checks mailed to me. A lot of this was buying airplane tickets and entertainment coupon books ($10 cash back each last year made them free around March). I've only used Ebates and Cashbaq so far, but there are a lot of them out there now and most have at least a sign-up bonus. Evreward.com is very helpful in finding out which one to use for what sites.

- This year I've gotten $45 worth of Amazon gift cards just for doing online searches on my Swagbucks toolbar. Also not a bad deal.

- Don't buy anything for yourself! Though it is tempting when doing a lot of shopping, if you need something wait until after Christmas - the deals are always better.

3 comments:

phil said...

I'm not sure it's a 'genius marketing move'. It's a business model. Kohl's has trained customers not to buy things at full price (which may or may not be a price they've ever offered an item for) and to always use coupons (yourself as an example). How many sales are they losing because someone says, "I'll go home and get a coupon and come back", or "I'll wait for it to go on sale because it inevitably will". Hard to quantify.

The other business model is the rare sales. Walmart's every day low price (EDLP) model encourages the impulse buy because they've trained their customers to think that whatever price they see when they're there at the store, that's the best price they can find. Harder to do if you're constantly giving coupons and percent off promotions.

Christianne said...

I have to say that the Black Friday stuff is pretty good and probably better then the after Christmas sales but if you missed the doorbusters... I have to admit I bought a lot of stuff for myself but not clothes...

Christianne said...

Thanks for this info. I signed up for big crumbs since I shop on ebay ALOT and it gives me 36% back. I am excited to see how it works. If you hear of any referral codes for the other two let me know. Thanks