I am always shopping for deals, both for things I want and things to buy and resell. I had had my eye on a 70″ Sharp TV ever since I saw the monster in a Sears store. But I am never one to pay retail and would rather not buy something than overpay. I was really happy with the deal I recently worked out, and while it doesn’t involve earning tons of miles per se, I think it will show some of the ways I save money every day on big purchases.
First off, this TV has a retail price of $2,799 which would normally be much more than I want to pay. Here is a review of the TV I ended up getting. The cheapest price I had seen online was around $1600 at the time. As many of you know, I love shopping at Sears (like I did when I got 264,000 Ultimate Rewards points and $1000 by shopping and then reselling tablets). They frequently have Shop Your Way promotions that add a lot of value to things bought there and decrease my effective cost.
One of the lesser known secrets is to shop for things on SearsOutlet.com. Most of the products on this site are brand new and are last year’s model they are closing out or they also get rid of their floor models there. I had been checking in every once in a while doing a search for “70 LED” and seeing what the prices were. There are often times some real steals on bigger TVs there. The problem is with the floor models you have to pick them up from whichever store has them. I saw a great price once of around $1000, but it was in Hawaii and while I would love to go, coming back with a TV would be problematic. 🙂
Since I have bought and sold so many tablets for resale on my Amazon.com store, I have platinum status with Shop Your Way Rewards. This makes me eligible to get 15% back in Shop Your Way Reward points on one day each quarter, but sometimes more than one day. So if I buy $1000 worth of goods then they give me $150 in points to use for a future purchase. In fact I still had $407 worth of these points (407,000) saved up from previous purchases of tablets for resale. They happened to be having one of these special 15% back days on April 9th so I went to the Sears Outlet page and lo and behold they had this 70″ TV in Ft. Myers which is about 2 hours from where I live. I also had some friends in Naples I could visit if I could work out a deal.
The price was $1193 which wasn’t the lowest price I had seen but it was the lowest I had seen in Florida. It showed on the site it was a floor model and didn’t have any missing parts or damages, but I called the store and got transferred to the TV department and asked for the condition before I bought it. They said they had two of them and they could give me the one in better shape if I bought it. $1193 was a good price but I couldn’t stop my deal there.
I searched around online for a “SearsOutlet Coupon Code” and I found a code for 10% off that was valid. Score! This would save me $119. But I wasn’t done yet. Since I was buying it on the Shop Your Way Cyber bonus days, I got 15% back for $157 worth of points.
I ALWAYS look for miles or cashback offers by using a shopping portal online. For you new guys, a shopping portal just means you log onto an account then go to their online shopping mall. I searched for SearsOutlet on both Cashbackholic.com and evreward.com and found out that I could get 5% cash back if I used the UPromise.com shopping portal. This was more valuable to me than the 3 miles per dollar I could get on American.
I could have used gift cards to sweeten the deal even more, but I wanted to put the main charge of $732.58 on my Business Gold Rewards American Express so I would add 1 free year onto the warranty at no cost. When I buy for resale, I don’t mind using gift cards because I don’t care about the warranty so much since I won’t be keeping it. But since this was personal, I wanted the extra protection (which gave me added safety since it was a floor model.) I also got 732 Membership Rewards for spending $732 on my Amex!
So the grand total ended up being:
- Retail price: $2,799
- Sales Price: $1193.93
- Sales Tax: $64.47
- 10% discount for coupon: -$119.39
- 15% in Shop Your Way Rewards Points: -$157.17
- 5% in UPromise Cashback: -$59.70
- Redeemed 406,430 Shop Your Way Rewards Points: -$406.43
- Net cost: $515.71 and I received 732 Membership Rewards points.
Now that’s what I call a deal! I am planning on selling my old TV for at least that much so I effectively ended up with a larger TV for very little if any out of pocket!
I hope this gives you guys some ideas on ways to purchase things and teaches you a thing or two. Feel free to comment with your deals that you are proud of!