From where I am standing, the economy is a very tight at the moment. With the on going negative buzz in the housing market, the impact is hitting every other sector. As you can imagine it is important for the large online retailers to stay in an area of profitabilityprofit during these turbulent economic times. For this they use sales to boost consumer traffic. A largely used sales tool is a coupon code provided by the online retailer to entice customers to there site. Retailers have come to know that if they can just get you in the door of the store they have a much higher chance that you will actually purchase something. This is wher the smart shopper can capitalize to obtain huge savings and deals on items from thousands of different stores. I have been using several tools and I will show you how in this article

Step one, do your research! All online retail stores sales and offers are not created equally! It is a crucial for you to understand all the costs that pertain to a particular store before buying your purchase. Heres an example: I know of several stores that offer absolutelyfree shipping and even no sales tax for their customers. This can add up to a huge savings. Shipping can cost between $4 and $20 dollars alone. Taxes are applied at your state sales tax rate. An average of 6% savings.

Number two, do more research! There are several price comparison sites that allow you to look up a product online and compare the costs with several online retailers. A popular comparison site is Price Grabber. They don�t always have the supreme lowest price on all items in their stock because of a possible temporary sale or rebate, but in the research stage this is a great tool to get ideas of figures to compare.

Number three, thats right do a little more research. Find the coupon code or rebate for your product. Use a coupon site to locate the greatest reduction in cost for your purchase. You can do this by obtaining coupon codes, using direct links to deals or a mail in rebate. Make sure you follow the coupon and rebateinstructions very carefully for the applicable sale. It is very common for someone to not follow the procedure or enter a code correctly and the store will not honor the deal.

Number four, Triple check you work! Ok you got your purchase receipt. Hooray! But did you get the best deal? on several occasions I have made a purchase from an online retailer and not but a day later the same item is on sale for below my purchase cost. Now we know it can be that much better because we did so much research to find the very best deal, but hey, it happens. So heres what you do to press them. Contact the online retailer and inform them of the newer deal that you found and kindly ask for a refund to cover the difference, or you can threaten them with a total refund if arnt budging. I have done this on more than one occasion and the customer service department is very understanding and willing to help. Remember it never hurt to ask!

Now I know this sounds a little tedious, but I follow this guideline just about every time I make an online purchase. I am able to complete all these steps in just 2 or 3 minutes and the savings is alwayswell worth the time involved. Now get out there and find the very best dealyou can. Remember, its not only important to learn how successful people became successful. Its important to see how successful people remain successful. I believe this can be applied down to the simple act of deal hunting!I think this can be applied down to the smallest thing. Even using coupons!