Compare prices without being led by the nose
Find what a thing really costs, delivery included, and see when a "sale" is not one.
The price on a listing is almost never what leaves your account. Delivery, and occasionally the cost of sending something back, is where a bargain quietly stops being one.
The other thing worth knowing is what a "was" price means. It is supposed to be a price the item was genuinely sold at for a decent stretch. Some are; some were the price for three days in April.
The practice comparison site below is called PriceNest and does not exist. Yours will look a little different, and every one of them has these same four steps: search, sort, read the total, press through.
Key points
- Add delivery to the price before you compare anything
- Change the sort order from Recommended to total price
- Spot the word Sponsored and know exactly what it means
- Check a "was" price against a price history or two other stores
What to remember
- Recommended is an order chosen by the site. Total price is an order chosen by arithmetic.
- Item price plus delivery. Do the addition every time, and let the site sort by total if it will.
- A price history turns a claim into a fact. Several comparison sites show one, and it costs nothing to look.
Try this
Take something you are thinking of buying and look up the same item at three stores. Write the three totals down, delivery included. It takes four minutes and it is the most reliably profitable four minutes on the internet.
Practice: Compare prices without being led by the nose. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.