How to Do It Yourself! April 20, 2008

Use Your Phone To Price Check Items to Amazon – You May Be Pleasantly Surprised

Gear Diary Use Your Phone To Price Check Items to Amazon You May Be Pleasantly Surprised photo

I was in Sams Club yesterday and on three electronic items I price checked to Amazon.com, every one was CHEAPER by $10 to $30 at Amazon.com. This morning I’m noticing that Costco has the Nikon D40 for 9.99 – and sure enough Amazon beats them by (but Riz Camera actually has them all beat by $150! – link – Oops: Just noticed that the 55-200 lens does not have VR image stabilization and my sister say’s don’t buy a telephoto without it – so it’s only a good deal if you don’t want VR). Someone please explain what purpose these warehouse clubs have other than offering gigantic sized portions of pizza sauce, toilet tissue and Diet Pepsi.

(Check out the next page to see what I’ve started to use these warehouse clubs for)…

There is one thing that I find the clubs like Sam’s good for.

Gear Diary Use Your Phone To Price Check Items to Amazon You May Be Pleasantly Surprised photo

They provide a free lunch for my kids.

On several occasions I’ve made trips to Sam’s solely to feed the kids some lunch. Of course I walk in with the intention of buying $25 worth of needed household supplies and walk out with $350.

I use the mobile version of the Amazon site on my iPhone which allows me to lookup prices from within any store. Next time you’re out shopping, try comparing the price to what Amazon offers. You could be very pleasantly surprised.

PS – Join Amazon Prime for per year and shipping on almost everything is free – with no per order limits!

Tip: Access the iPhone version of Amazon.com via the regular http://www.amazon.com and Amazon properly formats their site for the iPhone

Tags: Amazon, Digital Cameras and Video Recorders

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About Wayne Schulz

View all posts by Wayne Schulz

Wayne is a diehard Blackberry user and consultant specializing in Sage MAS90 Accounting Software. He lives in Glastonbury CT with his two children. When not helping them with their homework or pushing the latest school fundraiser off on his co-workers, he is active hiking, Scuba Diving and investigating all manner of technology.

Kevin N

I must admit a highlight of our family visits to the States is a trip or three to Costco!

We’re getting them here in Oz soon too, we hear. You’d really miss them if they were to disappear, Wayne. We have a duopoly here, and the price of things is ridiculous and there’s no real competition.

Kevin
Kevin N

Oh, yeah, and your sister’s right. VR is a must for telephoto or zoom lenses.

Kevin
http://www.s-consult.com Wayne Schulz

I love Costco!

It’s only recently that I am starting to see that online sites like Amazon are cheaper for a lot of things. I was really surprised yesterday when I was in Sams Club (a variation of Costco) and price checked the Flip Video, Nikon D40 and Canon Digital Rebel.

Exact same models and configurations (so far as I could tell).

Amazon beat every one of them by a good $10 to $30.

Here’s hoping you get some Costco Warehouses soon! If not – Amazon is probably as good a deal – at least on the electronics that I checked.
http://www.mobilitysite.com Steve Laser

Fun article! Great read. Thanks for the tip.
dewey1973

Frucall is a cool, free service for those of us who don’t have data plans for our smartphones and those who don’t have smartphones at all! It price checks amazon and others via a phone call, text message, or mobile web.

http://www.frucall.com/
kevinnugent

The problem with a lot of Amazon stuff, is they only ship to contintental USA.

We have a service here now (called ShopUSA) that allows you to buy things anywhere online from the States and pay them a 5% commission. They buy it (and can also redeem mail in rebates if available and will net that off the price you pay)and then will ship to us here in Oz. It’s much better than it sounds e.g. The new Nikon D300 normally retails for about $2,300AUD here for the body only. One of Amazon’s vendors recently advertised them for $1,100 USD with free shipping to the US. Well, I can get on ShopUSA, covert @ .93c roughly to AUD and have it shipped here via Fedex for about $1,300AUD total.

It’s an enormous saving of $1k. And it includes return shipping costs if I need a Warranty repair.

Finally. we’re catching up.
lynn riley

One plus about Amazon is they DO ship to APO boxes—my husband is in Iraq and orders stuff from them. He’s run into a WHOLE lot of places that won’t.

The only other good thing about those big warehouse stores (Cosco) are the food samples—-as your kids are attesting to in the picture!!!