Best Deal Amazon Has For You
Video Transcript
Cody: “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” We just had a turkey incident. It fell off a shelf…
Bethany: The turkey…and landed on the camera.
Cody: …and hit Woodford [SP] right in the leg.
Ryan: Turkeys are flying everywhere.
Cody: Yeah, turkeys were flying, okay.
Bethany: The turkey attacked our cameraman?
Cody: Yes.
Ken: Yes.
Bethany: And the turkey’s no longer with us. I mean, this is a…
Courtney: It was a revenge move.
Ken: Yeah. The ghost.
Bethany: The turkey has returned from the grave.
Cody: “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” All right, it is time for Nerds on Call. Okay, so we’re gonna do a little shopping. It’s only 46 days until Christmas, 45 or something like that.
Bethany: Who’s counting?
Cody: And I’m gonna go shopping on Amazon. But wait. Don’t just type it in.
Ryan: No, don’t type it in. You could save some money. And maybe, maybe it’s not a Christmas thing. Maybe you’re trying to, you know, push down those Trump blues a little bit by doing a little shopping on your lunch break. So check this out. This is called Wikibuy. What you do is you add on this as a browser add-on on Chrome.
Cody: Okay.
Ryan: Or you can can get the iTunes, go to iTunes and you can get the app. The cool thing about this is while you’re shopping on Amazon, it searches retailers like Walmart, Target, eBay, all over the net and looks for better pricing on it and if it finds a better price, within 10 seconds, it’ll send you an alert in your browser and kinda say, “Hey, check it out. You can get this cheaper somewhere else.” Now let’s say it’s a shadier-type retailer, right? You’ve never heard of them before. Maybe there’s not a lot of ratings. You might be a little nervous. You might spend a few extra bucks at Amazon just…
Cody: Like they misspell Target?
Ryan: Yeah. And you’re like, “Well, that seems a little weird.” Well, the cool thing is you actually pay Wikibuy and Wikibuy will ship it to you so you don’t have to, like, give your credit card number to somebody who’s a little shady, not so sure. And if it doesn’t arrive on time or it’s not the right color, it’s not the right size or something went wrong with your order, Wikibuy’ll give you 100% money back.
Cody: That’s interesting.
Ryan: How cool is that?
Cody: Okay.
Ryan: So it’s like almost why wouldn’t you use it? So the other one, this is kind of a funny name, it’s called camelcamelcamel.com.
Cody: CamelCamelCamel.
Ryan: Yup, CamelCamelCamel camel…So this is cool. This just gives you price alerts. So how many times have you gone to Amazon, you spend $100 or something like that on a TV or whatever it is you’re buying and it turns out a few days later, you go, “Oh, son of a gun. It’s on sale,” or whatever or the next time you go look, maybe a few days later, it’s a different price? Well, this’ll send you price alerts. You set the price you’re willing to spend on it, set it like $10 less or whatever, and it’ll send you an email or a Tweet when it’s gone down in that price.
Cody: Oh, wow, kind of like Priceline used to be.
Ryan: Yeah, and they also give you a historical pricing chart…
Cody: Ooh.
Ryan: …on the item that you’re looking at, so you can see when the lowest price is gonna happen. So if you’re getting close to Christmas and you’re like, “Oh, should I buy it now, should I buy it next week,” whatever, you can set that all up and you can see what their lowest prices are. Just set your alert to make it more appropriate.
Cody: Brilliant.
Ryan: Does that make sense? Because like I go to priceline.com and I go, “Well, I’ll spend a dollar for that hotel.” But that’s not appropriate. I’m never gonna get that. But this way, you can use the historical alerts to figure out what price you should be bidding on.
Cody: Brilliant. Love that one.
Ryan: Isn’t that cool? Here’s the other cool thing. Did you know that you can share your Amazon Prime shipping with another person?
Cody: Did not know that.
Ryan: Yeah, you can share it with up to one other person. They don’t even have to live with you or be related to you. So you can just share it with anybody you want. Also you can set up streaming accounts for up to four children, so that’s pretty cool. You can watch different shows and things. Now it’s just related to just the kid’s stuff, so you can’t share it with everybody. So you won’t be able to watch cool movies and stuff, but you can watch SpongeBob. I mean, that’s something.
Cody: That’s something. Yeah.
Ryan: Right? Also Amazon has a warehouse section. These are where they put all of their stuff that’s been pre-opened or it’s been sold to someone else before and was returned. You can get some really great deals on stuff here.
Cody: Hey, Courtney, look: “Save on shoes.”
Ryan: Amazon also has an outlet store so that you can go there for things that have been discontinued or it’s no longer being carried. You can go there and you can save a few bucks on stuff. In fact, they have Madden. I know that Ken is a huge fan of Madden.
Ken: Huh? Yes.
Ryan: Only $16 bucks right now on the outlet store.
Cody: How about that?
Ryan: Not bad.
Cody: Nice.
Ken: I like it.
Cody: That’s good stuff, man.
Ryan: Yeah.
Courtney: Yeah.
Ryan: So don’t go anywhere without CamelCamelCamel and Wikibuy.
Cody: Wikibuy.
Ryan: Install those today and save some money.
Cody: I will. I’m gonna download that app right now.
Ken: Wait a minute. How much is Madden?
Ryan: Sixteen bucks.
Ken: Sixteen dollars for Madden ’17?
Ryan: Sixteen bucks.
Ken: Now he tells me after I spent $70 to get it brand new.
Bethany: Yeah, well, there’s…
Courtney: Seventy?
Cody: Yeah, but you’re on TV and you’re made of money.
Ken: “And you’ve got money to burn.”
Courtney: Money to burn.
Cody: You’re on two TV stations.
With holiday shopping knocking on your door, any tools to help you save some money are a welcome gift. We wanted to share some secret ways to snag a better deal on Amazon. We are going to discuss some third party tools and even some of Amazon’s own tools to make those dollars go further this holiday season. Get involved with the discussion, if you find a tool you’d like to share with our community, don’t be shy – share it with us on social media!
So that being said, let’s start with our tips:
Wikibuy
Wikibuy is a Google Chrome add-on and available iTunes app store. It checks other retailers for the exact product that you’re shopping for on Amazon. In less than ten seconds, it will notify you if it finds a better price. It confirms availability (including size & color), price, taxes shipping & tests coupon codes. It will then generate a “guaranteed offer” with delivery date and total price. If you choose to accept offer, you pay Wikibuy directly, and Wikibuy places & tracks order to ensure it arrives on time. The best thing about this is, that if it doesn’t arrive on time, Wikibuy will reimburse you up to 100% of the cost!
CamelCamelCamel
CamelCamelCamel will monitor the price on millions of Amazon products and allow you to receive alerts when prices drop. You can add items from your wish list and take advantage of seasonal discounts. The platform will let you see price over time & “historical low” price to know when you’re seeing a great deal. CamelCamelCamel lets you monitor prices of recent purchases and you can request a refund of the difference if the price of item drops within 7 days of purchase. This is possible because Amazon will honor returns for items shipped & sold by Amazon within this time period.
Share your Prime Shipping
Are you one of the many households with more than one Amazon Prime member? Perhaps you’re a husband and wife with your individual accounts, or you have adult kids who use Amazon Prime? Well at $100 a year, Prime membership is a premium service! Set up household members to share your prime shipping! You can share free 2-day shipping with one other “household member”, even if they don’t live with or aren’t related to you. You can also share streaming with up to 4 kids, note however, these are not full accounts, just simply a login that you assign your child.
Check Amazon Warehouse and Outlet
You may not know this, but Amazon has a “Warehouse” version of it’s website where they sell open box & refurbished items. These typically are just items that have been returned from users changing their minds, and you get to bag a bargain for a fully working product.
They also have an “Outlet” version of their store. This is where they place all of their out of season or discontinued products. So if having the latest product isn’t your top concern, head over there and grab a bargain or a product that will shortly become unavailable!
About The Author: Andrea Eldridge is CEO and co-founder of Nerds On Call, a computer repair company that specializes in on-site and online service for homes and businesses. Andrea is the writer of a weekly column, Nerd Chick Adventures in The Record Searchlight. She prepares TV segments for and appears regularly on CBS, CW and FOX on shows such as Good Day Sacramento, More Good Day Portland, and CBS 13 News, offering viewers technology and lifestyle tips. See Andrea in action at callnerds.com/andrea/.
