Shops are there to make money, we all know that, but they don’t always have to win. Most people think that the prices are set and that’s it. The truth is that things are often a bit more flexible than you would think. Under the surface, there are lots of secrets that only the insiders know. Secrets that could save you a good deal of money if you know how to exploit the loopholes properly. Here are the shopping tricks that the retailers don’t want you to know about.
Hidden Discounts
According to old employees in the retail trade, most high street shops use a set of secret codes to mark items that are going to be discounted. They usually mark any items that are going to be in the sale around a week before the prices come down. If you look out for these markings, you can hold off until the price drops and save yourself big money. One of the most common systems of marking the tags uses numbers and letters. It will usually be a letter followed by a number, e.g. E14. Ignore the letter as it usually denotes where the items are going to be put when the sale starts. The number is what you are really looking for as it is normally the price that the item will be reduced to, so the code E14 means that the item will be put down to £14 in the next week or so. You won’t be able to tell exactly when the sale is going to start, and the staff probably won’t tell you, so it might mean popping back every few days but it’ll be worth it for the savings.
Haggling For Clearance Items
Clearance sales are one of the best ways to get cheap prices, especially when it comes to tech goods. The shops want rid of them as soon as possible so they’ll give you a great price on them. But they don’t always advertise the items as being clearance items. If there are just a few of them, they might just put them in with everything else. However, there is a way you can sniff them out. Any prices that end in 7, 8 or 1 are almost guaranteed to be items that have been discontinued; prices ending in 1 are the oldest items. Normal prices usually end in a 9 or a 0 so it’s easy to tell them apart. Retailers will often be willing to haggle on price when it comes to clearance items. It’s always worth asking if they’ll give you a reduction, most of the time they’ll say yes because they need the space for newer lines.
Be aware of clearance items when you are shopping. If you ask a member of staff for advice, they might sometimes direct you towards this out of date stock so they can try to get rid of it. But you can catch them out by checking the price tag and either ask for a reduction or ask to see some more up to date items.
Haggle Online
You know those annoying help chat boxes that pop up in the corner when you go onto a retailer’s site? I bet you close them straightaway, just like the rest of us. Try talking to them next time, you’d be surprised what they could offer you in the way of savings. If you’ve got vouchers from places like DontPayFull.com that have gone out of date, you might get sent some new ones if you ask for it. It’s also worth asking whether you can have discounts generally, there are some companies that will be rigid on their prices but others will send you discount codes without question. You don’t know if you don’t ask.
Just Ask
Believe it or not, a lot of high street retailers will offer discounts without advertising them. According to employees, some shops have a policy whereby they will give you a discount if you simply ask them for one. It rarely happens because nobody knows that this is the case, but next time, Just ask. You never know what you might get.
Abandon Online Shopping Carts
One of the best techniques when you’re haggling is to simply walk away. The likelihood is that they will call you back and give you the price that you asked for in the first place, it’s better than not making a sale after all. The modern version of this is abandoning your shopping cart online, the retailers will come crawling back to you, begging you to buy the stuff. What you need to do is fill up the basket with items and then simply save it and logout. If you leave it for a couple of days, you are likely to get an email from the company offering you a discount on the items. Then simply log back in and buy them at a cheaper price.
Check The Best Days For Deals
If you’re struggling to find discount codes online, you might be looking on the wrong days. The majority of websites seem to launch their new deals at the beginning of the week. Statistically, Wednesday is the most popular day, followed by Tuesday and then Monday, so always check sites on these days. These rules aren’t uniform and there will be new deals released all the time so if you are serious about making savings then you need to be checking all of the discount code sites every single day.
Paypal And Credit Cards
This is a big mistake that thousands of people are making without even realising. When you buy something on a credit card, you have insurance on the items from them as well as the retailer, giving you an extra level of protection if something is faulty or breaks. However, the wording of that law is fairly specific and it only applies where there is a ‘direct relationship’ between the bank and the retailer. If you pay with Paypal that is linked to your credit card, those protections don’t apply because instead of a direct relationship, you’ve gone through Paypal.
