Chris Tomkins’ Blog

Nowadays I hardly ever buy something without seeing if I can get it cheaper elsewhere or find a discount voucher online. A few days ago, I got even more evidence of why its pays to shop around. Shelley and I were looking at buying a fridge/freezer (one of these big American style ones) and locally could only find the one we liked in Currys (there doesn’t seem to be a great selection of shops that sell fridge/freezers now adays) for £599.99 plus £49.95 delivery - a grand total of £649.94. Thinking this seemed a bit steep, we decided to come back and shop for the same thing online.

First we tried the shopping comparison web sites - Kelkoo, Dealtime and Shopping.com which gave us a better price of £569.99 from Dixons with free delivery (already a saving of about £80). Then we scoured the web for free vouchers which gave us another £20 off the Dixons price, so now a saving of £100. Next I went to the cashback site I tend to use, Freefivers (let me know if you want to join and I’ll refer you), which gave me 1.25% cashback with Dixons, about another £7. So far, I’d saved £107 off the price in the shop but then I thought - lets buy it using my American Express Platinum card which gave me a further 5% cashback, ~£35.

So, all in all - shopping around saved me over £140! Not bad for 10 minutes work online, particularly when you compare it to the time getting to and wandering round the shop.

Bargain!

When I travel on business I tend to take internet access in the hotel for granted nowadays - it doesn’t have to be wireless but it seems to be becoming the norm. But how much should it cost? I guess it depends on the class of hotel, but the £15 for 24 hours I’ve just been charged by the Holiday Inn Ipswich Orwell seems excessive - especially as my home broadband costs less than that for an entire month! The alternative was £6 for an hour or £75 for a week - not exactly a great choice. Most of the hotels I’ve stayed in recently have had free wireless (even some of the B&Bs I’ve stayed in have free wireless) so £15 for 24hrs is definitely a bit steep.

What do you think?