How I Get the Best at the Cheapest
By: Victor Babaniyi
Tags: Financial Planning, Shopping, Saving, Deals And Discounts, Money Management

How I Get the Best at the Cheapest

Photo by Charles Etoroma on Unsplash

The wish of the buyer is to get the highest value possible for the money spent. On the other side of the divide, we have the seller whose wish is to maximize profit as much as possible. These conflicting wishes set up an atmosphere of competition for the buyer and seller.

Winning in this type of competition requires intelligence gathering. It is, therefore, necessary, as a buyer, to go into any transaction, equipped with thorough knowledge of the facts and tricks that revolves around the transaction.

Failure to do this guarantees that the seller will fleece you without let or hindrance. The techniques I’ll be discussing in this article will give you an edge in any transaction, ensuring you get the best at the cheapest. Here we go:

1. Seek Counsel from Others

You may not know this. But the easiest way to get the best at the cheapest is to consult people. People gladly share with others where they can get the best deal in town. By following their leads on where and how you can get a great offer at a cheap rate, you save more on your expenses.

Word-of-mouth also called “earned advertising” is the most trusted source of information. It plays a pivotal role when consumers are making a first-time purchase or when products are costly. These compel people to carry out more consultation and contemplate more than they normally should before making a purchase decision.

Advances in information technology have transformed word-of-mouth communication to the point where it is no longer an act of private and personal communication. Now, it has attained a public and impersonal dimension.

Customers share their experiences in form of reviews online to influence perceptions about brands, and such perceptions either favorable or not, are spread through social media. Some even go the extra mile to create blogs for the purpose of commending or humiliating brands.

Word-of-mouth has proven to be more effective in influencing a consumer to patronize a brand in a way that ad campaigns cannot. Perceptions are spread within concerned groups, swaying opinions about brands. The growth of social media has been the driving force behind the far-reaching and potent effects of word-of-mouth.

The best way to leverage word-of-mouth is to consult people in your circle. People in your circle feel it’s their obligation to point you in the right direction. Hence they are offering their opinions based on experiences or opinions of others they can trust.

It is therefore unlikely they’d lead you into a deal you’d regret. Ask a question like ‘What money-saving tips have you found to be very effective?’ or ‘How much can I save on a MacBook Pro 13-inch 2020 if I buy from Amazon on Black Friday’ on social media and you’d get diverse responses that are invaluable.

I once assisted a friend to get a higher loan for his mortgage when I asked my social media circle, ‘How do you increase how much you can borrow for a mortgage?’ Another time someone pointed me in the right direction when I asked, ‘Guys, my electricity provider is hurting me with its incessant incremental bills. Can anyone provide tips on how to wriggle my way out?’

Seeking counsel from others is a brilliant strategy when it comes to getting the best part of any deal. You’d always be glad you take this step before engaging in any transaction.

2. Change Your Providers Often

The mail notification I received 5 months ago from my electricity provider came with a bold headline: YOUR ENERGY PLAN WILL BE RENEWED. However, the fine print shows they have already done that, without my consent, at a discount of 10% lower than I had before.

This is a regular occurrence with electricity and insurance providers. These industries thrive on the front book vs. back book business model. The front book model is characterized by attractive discount plans and is offered to new clients, while the back book model is offered to old clients who pay more to make the front book plan possible.

You’re entitled to the front book model as a new client. This is how it works:

1. Your first plan is designed to be very cheap, to gain your loyalty. They are even ready to lose money on your first plan if need be. They know how to recoup it later.

2. Just when you are excited you’ve got yourself a great deal, they covertly take you off the plan, and eliminate the discount that lured you into their ‘den’, and due to the human nature of status quo bias, you find it difficult to replace them.

3. Eventually, they get comfortable swindling you each time you renew your plan because they keep increasing your rate.

“I’m probably paying the prevailing rate”, is one of the reasons that make you stick with them. However, what you need to know is that the front book model creates a loophole for you to cut some decent deals for yourself, provided you’re ready to move around.

Changing your provider each time the front book plan ends ensures you are constantly getting the cheapest rate from providers. This way you are always paying what is reasonable on your electric tariff, insurance premium, mortgage loan, and other essential services.

When your electricity provider changes your electricity plan the following month you’ll notice that your rate has increased and you’re longer on the best plan. You may find yourself the finest home loan plan but then before you say Jack Robinson your bank raises your rate by 90 basis points, or you get a great insurance deal that comes with a great discount but your next renewal comes with a premium addition of $100.

With these kinds of treatments from providers, your responsibility is to identify providers with better offers and switch over. If you employ this technique with providers you will save an appreciable amount of money each year.

However, if you prefer to stay put with a particular provider you’ll end up with plans with zero discounts, making you lose money, in addition to the bitter feeling when you later discovered there are other providers with better options. Remember that feeling when you buy a new Plasma TV, and later find a better model at a lower price.

So, you can see there is no reason to end up in unholy matrimony with any provider. Consider an electricity bill, for example. Assuming you’re on a one-year discount of 30%. After 12 months, your discount becomes zero.

The company notifies you of this change through a letter, and you miss it or you refuse to act on it for reasons best known to you. The following year, when the zero discounts take effect, your plan could cost you over $1000 more than the year you had 30%. This will definitely hurt your financial lifestyle.

When you notice a price hike, negotiate for a better offer if your provider declines, know it’s time to change provider. Remaining with a provider for a year or more could be hurting you more than you think.

A smart internet search will tell you where to get the best electricity deals in your area and rank them in price order. Survey the market and switch over to the best deal around.

The “mystery” around home loans is gradually fading, due to the emergence of online analytics tools and educative websites that are making these processes easy to grasp, so that, it becomes easy for you to make an informed decision on your mortgage.

If you think changing your provider is difficult, think again. Recently I changed to a new health insurance provider and plan. This simple move saved me more than $1000 on my premium. And the big part, I filled the form online using my phone while at home.

Everything took about 10 minutes. When I noticed a hike in my rate, I knew it’s time to check out. My current provider offered an irresistible plan that makes it possible to save more than $1000 a year on my subject premium. I was also given a $200 gift card reserved for new policyholders.

It was a move that turned out to be beneficial in every sense. I walked into new insurance coverage and saved a huge sum that brightens my day every moment I think about it.

Everyone is aware of the unfair treatment industries providing services like power, mortgage banking, and insurance mete out to clients. So, it’s important you are always one step ahead of them; else they’ll continue to cheat you.

3. Online Reviews

Another way of getting a good deal is by checking online reviews to weigh shoppers’ opinions on certain products and brands. Online review websites such as:

· Amazon

· Quora

· Salesforce AppExchange

· Choice

· Ozbargain

have a combination of experts and amateurs offering their perspectives on all sorts of products. This is an important roadmap for over 88% of online shoppers who rely on reviews to make a purchase decision.

Online reviews become more authentic and trustworthy when the reviews are vetted by experts in order to put up honest opinions about products and services as is obtainable in Choice. But the catch is that you have to pay for membership.

Conversely, there are other websites run by complete amateurs on a non-profit basis. A typical example is Ozbargain, a large and unconventional online community of dedicated deal finders who derive pleasure in helping one another by giving out any mouthwatering deals they have found.

Caveat Emptor

I cannot stress enough the need for you to carry out thorough research before you make a purchase. Why? Some review sites are also being manipulated.

Most businesses have realized the impact of online reviews on their bottom line. Hence, some of them covertly hire people who masquerade as genuine users to share positive reviews to mislead unsuspecting shoppers.

Therefore, the only way to get reviews that are authentic is to compare reviews from different websites before parting with your money.

4. Use Coupons

Using coupons guarantees you get a discount on your purchases. Although it’s not much on unit purchases, when you consider the aggregate of probably a week, a month, or a year, you’d realize the numbers add up pretty fast.

So, it makes a lot of economic sense to find and use coupons to save money on your purchases. Anytime I have the option of using a coupon I use it because I know the savings add up to a tangible sum eventually. That is why I search for daily newspapers, magazines, and the Internet for coupons to get discounts on my regular purchases.

Once I find a coupon, I cut it if it’s from a newspaper or magazine, and if it’s from the internet I print it, keep it safely where I can easily retrieve it whenever I want to make a purchase. For coupon hacks, the following websites have proved to be very useful:

· SlickDeals

· Savings.com

· Rakuten

· Groupon

· Coupons.com

· ShopAtHome

· RetailMeNot

Alternatively, you can get weekend subscriptions to several local papers, which is the easiest means of getting the best deals in your area.

5. Comparison Shopping

Comparison shopping is a common practice used by shoppers to compare multiple goods from multiple retailers before making a purchase. Comparison shopping is a channel for collecting product information from participating retailers and then displaying that collective information on a single results page in response to a shopper’s search query.

This allows shoppers to compare prices, quality of the product, and the overall customer experience from multiple retailers and choose the brand that offers the best overall value. Comparison shopping is mostly popular for purchases of higher-value goods and services.

In addition to comparison shopping, the Consumer Reports website is very useful for getting factual ratings and reviews, with trusted advice and in-depth analysis of products. Check the negative ratings to know what people dislike about the item, and then the positive ratings to know what people admire about it.

Do a side by side comparison of the positive and the negative ratings to gain a general understanding of how much the product will meet your needs. The more expensive the item is, the more important it is to cover all the bases. This will help you make an informed decision about the product, save you money, and help you avoid buyer’s remorse.

This practice is not restricted to physical products. You can carry out comparison-shopping for vacations, credit card services, and insurance rates. Just a little digging will go a long way in preventing future regrets.

These are the most relevant websites for my comparison shopping purposes:

· Bizrate

· CamelCamelCamel

· Pricegrabber

· Shopping.com

· Pricerunner

These are the techniques I have employed to walk away satisfied from past transactions. I continue to search for new techniques and refine these ones to get a better outcome.

People marvel when I reveal how cheap I acquire some high-quality products and services. However, the moment I explain my techniques as I have done in this article, they become believers. Who wouldn’t? Everyone wants to walk away as a winner from every transaction. Everyone wants a great deal. Everyone hates being fleeced by sellers.