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Shopping -
Online
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Written by livecheap staff
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Page 1 of 2
We love to buy online and the thing we like most about it is that you usually end up getting excellent value. Sure it is convenient to shop from the comfort of your own home, but at the end of the day, the biggest factor for us is the savings. To start with, you get a leg up by not paying sales tax if the vendor has no physical presence in your state. While virtually every state legislature is up in arms about this online sales tax exemption, it doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon. Technically, you are supposed to pay your state directly, but we imagine that fewer than 1% of people ever get around to doing that. The sales tax savings which can be as much as 9.75%, is often the deciding factor in making a purchase.
The tax free advantage is a good place to start but when you combine it with other online shopping strategies - you should be able to purchase the highest quality merchandise at rock bottom prices. When we pooled the combined knowledge of our staff at LiveCheap.com, we managed to develop a method to give consumers the best chance of landing an excellent deal when they shop online.
- Quality First:Online or offline, you never want to buy low quality merchandise. If your Blu-ray player stops working in 6 months, it doesn’t really matter that you managed to by it at a 15% discount. So a good place to start is to check Amazon’s ratings for different products. It used to be that Consumer Reports ruled the world of product reviews but they were steamrolled when Amazon used crows-sourced reviews. Generally speaking, if a product isn't rated at 4 stars or better and has a significant number of reviews, we don’t touch it. It really is worth spending the time to read some of the user comments. In fact, half your effort and time is best spent researching consumer feedback. Don't just look at product reviews, pay attention to consumers are saying about honoring warranties and after sale services.
- Base Price Check: Check the Amazon.com
 price. That may require you to put the item in your shopping cart. If the shipping isn't free, make sure you pay attention to the shipping rates. Head to PriceGrabber.com and do a search for the same product. The reason you need to check Amazon first is that they are not listed on Pricegrabber. Although some people use Froogle, our tests show inaccuracies in the prices listed. For instance, today we checked on the popular Panasonic G-10 50 inch plasma and the Amazon.com price on Froogle was $1,105, a screaming buy and far lower than anywhere else. But when we clicked through to Amazon.com, we got $1,276! On Yahoo Shopping, Amazon’s price is $1,599! We don’t need that kind of disappointment or misinformation so we stick with Pricegrabber but start with Amazon.com
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