Blitz the Christmas shop without leaving your desk
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Best buys
Which? magazine researched 111 different retailers to find the best savings on some of the more popular Christmas gifts.
Save 11% online.
BT and Amazon offered some of the best deals. For an Apple iPod 30GB BT sold it for £149, while the cheapest high-street store was John Lewis at £179.
Save a whopping 29% online.
There are incredible bargains online for TVs, and Digital Point was consistently one of the cheapest websites. The best buy Sony KDL-40W2000U Bravia was £981 at Digital Point, with the cheapest high-street store John Lewis, for £1,499.
Save 14% online.
Although Tesco and Asda had some good prices, they didn’t have a great range; whereas Play.com consistently had the cheapest prices. For a boxed set of The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien, WHSmith charges £16.59 online, while the cheapest high-street stores were Waterstones and Borders at £30. |
- Christmas shopping - cheap and easy? Tick.
- Get the best sites here.
Can you imagine saving over £1,000 on a Christmas shopping list that includes an LCD TV, camera, camcorder, hi-fi and DVD recorder? Perhaps even better, not only can you save that much, you can also beat the queues, avoid the crowds and have all your gifts delivered straight to your door. Try shopping online for a stress-free, budget-friendly experience this year.
Depending on how generous a Santa you are, we reckon you could get through the bulk of your Christmas shop online in less than an hour. The race is on. What’s involved?
Instead of heading out in the car and trying to find parking, not to mention the time to go to the shops in the first place, wading through crowds with arms full of parcels, waiting in line for ages and finally just grabbing the first things you see and tossing them in the trolley in frustration…
…you can sit comfortably in front of your computer with a coffee and Christmas list by your side, compare prices and find out more about products, put them in a virtual shopping cart and get the lot delivered straight to your door. Voila! Christmas done cheap and easy!
How do you do it?
Step 1: Start with a list
There’s no point shopping online and buying random items. Write down all the people you need to buy pressies for and what you want to get them. If you don’t know exactly what, even just an idea of "something electrical" or "quirky desk gift" will help you know where you need to shop.
Step 2: Begin with the big-hitters
These retailers do some of the best gift bargains around, and Marks & Spencer can be cheaper online than on the high street.
Amazon is hard to beat for its selection of books, DVDs and music, as well as other home and electrical items.
Free delivery for customers who spend over £15, and you can earn points by paying with an Amazon Mastercard. The nation's favourite has just about everything you could want in an online department store - women's, men's and children's fashion, lingerie, technology and entertainment, home furnishings, food and wine, and Christmas decorations.
Use the promotional code FREEDELV and you can get free delivery for purchases of £30 and over.
Mix and match three items for the price of two in the Christmas gift shop. Play is everything electronic - music, movies, games, gadgets and also books. It offers free delivery on everything, with constant competitions.
It has selected discounts on selected items from three for £15, chart compilations from £8.95, chart CDs from £5, a huge selection of items for only £5 each, and weekly red-hot deals. For all your beauty and toiletry needs, look no further. Collect extra Boots points by shopping online.
Boots is also doing a buy two gifts, get one free promotion; and it offers free delivery on orders over £45. Step 3: Research your gifts
This isn’t difficult, just go to a couple of different sites that sell what you’re after and compare the prices, the delivery times and costs, and any extras that are included. Enjoying browsing around, or check on shopbots like Pricerunner, Kelkoo and Shopping.com which compare the items available at different sites. Internet shopping has come on leaps and bounds in recent years - your favourite high street shops are likely to have big, efficient websites. For peace of mind, check out Shop Safe, which lists stores that have clear delivery prices and returns policies and offer secure credit card transactions.
Step 4: Pay and print
When you've made your purchases, print off the receipts/invoices so you know how much has been spent and when they should be delivered by, and stick them on the fridge - or somewhere secret, if you don't want the rest of the family to see them. Step 5: Are you after more savings? To save even more money, you can shop with a cashback credit card like the American Express Platinum MoneyBack Credit Card, which has just announced that it's giving 5% cashback to new customers (it was 3%) for the first three months on up to £4,000 of spending. Check out some of the other credit cards with rewards here. Get your application in now to have a chance of using them by Christmas.
Or if you can find your presents on a cashback site, you can get them for a cheaper price as well as getting cash back for buying them, Top Cashback is good because it gives you all of the money which it gets from the retailers and doesn’t make an annual administration charge. Read more about cashback sites here.
How much can I save?
If you see our best buys table, you can save up to £500 on a swanky item. But the average savings are between 10-30%, which is still better than paying full price on the high street. The stress and hassle-free environment is a big selling point for even the hardiest of shopaholics - cold weather and busy town centres don't make for the happiest of afternoons. Use a cashback credit card, cashback shopping site, or both, and you can save even more.
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Want to know more? Check out these other seasonal articles. Discuss this article Would you rather brave the high street than shop online? Share your ideas for a stress-free Christmas without breaking the bank on the messageboards.
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