Tips for holiday savings

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed, but this holiday season it seems every day is Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Online retailers are constantly touting special holiday savings. But take care — some of the deals they’re pushing are bad deals. To get the best prices out there, here are summaries of the favorite shopping strategies of the editors at Bay Area Checkbook and Checkbook.org

These are broad tips for getting deals. Checkbook routinely finds the biggest mistake most consumers make is failing to comparison shop.

Don’t assume that a sale price is a good price: Even if the price tag says “60% off!” it’s probably not a steal — or even the lowest available price. Checkbook’s undercover shoppers find that at many retailers the sales never, or almost never, end. In a ninemonthlong investigation, Checkbook found that many stores use deceptive practices, especially by offering continuous, misleading sales campaigns. The only way to know whether you’re paying a fair price is to compare prices at several stores.

Use shopping bots and bar code scanners: There are dozens of smartphone apps that can help you compare prices, including ShopSavvy, Purchx, BuyVia, and PriceGrabber. Amazon has integrated its pricechecking tool right into its app. Use one of these apps to search for products you’re considering or to scan the bar code of a product at a local store to get prices offered by other retailers.

Ask for a price match at a local store: Checkbook often finds the best deals online. But if a salesperson at a local store provided valuable buying advice, you might want to reward him or her with the sale. Or you may not want to wait for delivery by an online seller. And if it’s an expensive item, delivery services may require that you be home to sign for it. At many stores, you can buy local and avoid paying more. Checkbook finds that retailers often will match lower prices offered by their competitors, even if the other seller is an online store. Just use your smartphone or take along a printout of your deal to ask for a match.

While this tactic seems like a hassle, Checkbook’s undercover shoppers found it was quite easy to secure lower prices on most items simply by asking for a lowerprice match. One Checkbook shopper recently scored a $500 Kenneth Cole briefcase for $86 from a major department store by scanning the item with Amazon’s app and showing the current Amazon selling price to a manager.

Know the code: When making purchases online, you’ll often see spaces where you can enter a promotional or coupon code. Using a discount code is the equivalent of handing a printed coupon to a checkout clerk. Do an internet search for discount codes for the site (for example, search for “Lands’ End discount code”). Although you’ll encounter expired codes, your reward often is worth the searching and trial and error. Two of our favorite coupon sites are RetailMeNot and CouponCabin, but there are many others worth checking. We recently found discount codes that saved 25% off an online contact lens order from Walgreens, cut 40% from a Banana Republic online order, lowered Orbitz’s already discounted rate for a hotel stay by 15% and zipped up a 30% discount on a pair of boots from the Shoes website.

Shop cashback portals: Many online retailers pay referral commissions to businesses that send them customers. Online shopping portals such as BeFrugal, CouponCabin, MrRebates, and Rakuten give their customers a cut of these commissions and pocket the rest. The trick is to shop via the portal’s website. For example, to claim rebates from shopping at Banana Republic, you have to visit the portal and begin your spree by accessing Banana Republic’s site through it. A great tool is CashbackMonitor. com; it aggregates info from several services to show you which has the best current yield.

Get social: Follow retailers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and sign up for their promotional emails, which many retailers use to announce exclusive discount codes and other deals. And many stores offer onetime discounts of 10% to 25% when you join their email lists. Have more than one email address? Sign up with another address the next time you’re ready to buy.

Play your cards: You can usually get a big onetime discount for your first purchase made with a retailerissued credit card, and with some you continue to get smaller regular discounts or rebates every time you use their cards.

For example, Target’s REDcard offers a 5% discount on all purchases, free shipping on most items, early access to special events and promotions, and an extra 30 days for making returns. Credit cards offered by Gap companies (Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta) offer a 15% to 35% discount off your first purchase when you open a card account, then 5% rebates when you use its card at its stores. Customers who have the Visa versions of the company’s cards also get a 1% rebate on all purchases made elsewhere.

But before signing up for a dozen retailer credit cards, know that each application will trigger an inquiry on your credit report and might negatively affect your credit score. Even more important: Most store credit cards charge very high interest rates (routinely 25% APR or higher); avoid these high interest rates by paying the bill in full each month. And compare any rebate programs with those offered by other cards. Whether or not you use a store card, using a credit card for purchases gives you maximum postsale consumer protection.