Cash Back deals

Mobile plays a vital role in today’s life. It has become one of the essentials of life. Selecting a good deal will save us a good amount. It is always advisable to make your research before purchasing a product or signing any deals.

As the country is facing the credit crunch, it is the time to save by selecting good deals. I was using Pay as you go and thought of moving to a pay monthly contract as I would save some money. Since I was new to the pay monthly contract, I did a bit of research. At the end of my research I found that pay monthly contracts are too risky as a good/cheap deal will contain cash back. And I also came to know more about the cash back and how most of the people have lost all their cash back rights due to incorrect claims.

I searched for good deals in most of the mobile network websites like – Orange, O2, T-Mobile, 3, Vodafone, Virgin Mobile and many more. I also searched for good deals in Carphonewarehouse (CPW), Phones4u. At last I found a website called E2Save.com who are the online trading division of CPW. As CPW is reputed mobile company, I trusted E2Save.com and went searching for a best deal.

The website has a deal creator which involves 3 easy steps where we can create our own deal. We can select the handset from various different choices; we can select the mobile network with the free minutes and texts and select a gift where we have an option of cash back by redemption, Auto-cash back, PS3, iPod nano and laptops.

I opted for cash back by redemption which gave me a lower effective cost. I was happy with the deal and moved on to check out. When I gave all my details and tried to complete the order, it gave me an error. Hence I rang the sales team of E2Save.

I gave the name of the order to the sales team. As I had my mobile phone, I asked them if they could do me the same deal without a handset - SIM only deal. Unfortunately the sales team couldn’t do a SIM only deal as these are the mix and match combinations. But the sales person did give me an option of purchasing a clearance handset by which I can get a lower effective cost than the deal I found. And also the sales person gave me a suggestion of selling the handset in Ebay by which my cost would still be lower.

I was really impressed with the offer and purchased it. As I read through the forums about the cash back chaos, I made it clear with the sales person and got the contact numbers in case I had any queries.

Hence before making orders do make your research and do speak with the sales / customer services team to get the best deal.

Furniture - Bed & Mattress

While staying in furnished rental accommodation, there is no need of buying bed & mattress, sofa or any other furniture. Most of us will think so. What to do when you have more number of visitors where you cannot avail seat for everyone in the sofa. Either you have to buy some folding chairs (space saving) or you have to ask the visitors to sit on the mat on the floor in Indian way. J . So I bought an economical £8 folding chair in Argos. Well this is the simple scenario.

This year I had invited my parents to come and stay with me in London for couple of months. I’ve to provide them bedding during their stay. Then it was one month time for their arrival. I was staying in single bedroom apartment and I was not willing to move to two bedroom apartment just for the shorter period of their stay. Luckily my Living room was bigger enough to put bed and mattress for them.

I started looking for bed and mattress; I was looking for space saving bed and mattress in Argos catalogue. My Idea was that the bed and mattress should not occupy more space when not in use. I found something called stacked beds, two single beds which can be stacked one on another while not in use (Space saving!). Yeah I found the product the way I want.

I was ordering that stacked bed and mattress through phone. They said it would take 48 days to get the bed set delivered. Oh no! My parents are coming in just one month. What to do? We went to local High street shops in Eastham. We saw few bed and mattress set, neither they are space saving nor cheap. You won’t get any warranty or no return policy. Not fair, what to do next? I ordered for the same stacked bed and mattress set in Argos, while ordering I saw an option to buy 3 years Insurance for this product with one year normal warranty.

Mmmm Interesting, I know about “Home Insurance”, “Life Insurance”, “Travel Insurance”, “Bike Insurance” and so on. What is this? Insurance for bed and mattress? Yes Argos has Insurance cover for almost all the product they sell. The Insurance cost will be based on the value of your product. Cost of my Bed and mattress set was £150 and insurance cover cost was £25. I felt Ok to buy insurance cover as well.

Bed and mattress was delivered 10 days after my parents reached UK, Somehow we managed those 10 days. We did self assembly. As it was stacked bed, our parents were bit unhappy about the height of bed and mattress, so sadL. We started looking for Bed raisers; that is a different story. They stayed almost two months with us. Just few days before their departure my dad’s Bed Frame and two slates were broken while he was lying on the bed. Oh no. We managed those two days somehow.

After my parent left UK, I called Argos and told them it was accidentally broken with in the warranty period; I added that I purchased Insurance cover as well. They said no need for the Insurance as the product was broken with in warranty period they can replace with same product or some other product. If the cost of new item is more, the customer has to pay the difference otherwise balance amount will be refunded back. Good deal! This time I just ordered sturdy self assembly steel bed frame only which cost me only £90. The balance amount was refunded back. Somehow I managed to get the refund amount for insurance as well saying that I returned the product. After few days of argument they agreed to return back the money and they did it.

Imagine If the Bed and mattress was broken after 1 year and there is no Insurance cover, I don’t have any other option other than disposing it with loss of money. My personal advice is: it is always good to buy Insurance cover for expensive products like Plasma TV, Bed and mattress, sofa etc.

Clothing - Suits

Need to buy some clothing for you, Say for instance suits, they are expensive. It would be better to choose some specialist seller rather than going for some chain of high street shops like Debenhams, Peacocks, Primark, Doherty perkins etc. If you are not in hurry, buying suits from specialists that too from online shopping will save your money.

You might get surprised looking at the quality; it will be par with other expensive ones at cheaper cost. I am sharing my experience of buying suit for my friend. We went to high street shops Debenhams, Doherty perkins, Bhs etc in Oxford street, London. Prices were ranging from £125 to even more than £ 500. We went to Primark we found some suit for £50 but quality was compromise for the lesser price.

We did a search in Google for “cheap men suits”. We found a retailer called “Moss Bros Group Plc” attracted by the caption “The UKs No.1 Branded Suit Specialist - Suits - Dresswear - Shirts – Knitwear”. Website address for them is http://www.moss.co.uk/ . We were browsing varieties of suits and started comparing prices. We found a suit for which the original price was £149 and the discounted price was £49. WOW…. Jaw dropping discount isn’t it. Looking at the picture we concluded that it is not bad really.

Generally buyer would like to tryout the size and would like to have a feel of touching and seeing the suit. But how a person can buy a suit online without these things? hmmm!!!!!!!

So we started looking for nearest stores in the city for this retailer. We found a nearest store in Ilford, London. We went there and found the suit which we saw online, my friend went to trial room to pick the size of best fit. We decided to purchase and looked at the price tag, SHOCKING!!!!!. Price of the suit was nearly £100. We took it to cash counter and asked the store keeper why the price is different from online price. He told that he is not sure if the price of this suit is £49 in Online shopping, but always the online price will be lesser than store price. But we were sure that it is the same suit.

We came out of the shop, but decided to buy that particular suit in online shopping as we know the size of best fit. We ordered online with other accessories like belt, socks etc to make the total order cost of £75 and above to get free door delivery. We ordered online by Monday night and surprisingly it was delivered on Wednesday though it was instructed that it would take up to 10 working days for delivery. The suit was amazing, fine tailored and good quality. I’m sure you can’t get a suit for £77 with additional accessories and free door delivery.

Please do research before buying anything and buy it online if the price of online shopping is a good deal. Shop what ever you want but do it in smarter way…