Friday, November 27, 2009

Guide to Online Holiday Shopping

By Quang Nguyen



With the advancement of the Internet, there are many ways to save money on online shopping for this year's holiday sales. Instead of going straight to the store's website, there are other websites that help you compare prices. You can go to FatWallet.com, Ebates.com, or a credit card issuer's online shopping portal to help you make intelligent decision. Beside getting a better deal, you can also earn extra rewards or get cash back from your credit cards.

In order to reach out to the new generation of Internet users, companies are now on sites such as Facebook and Twitter to promote their products. When you get connected to their pages, they will offer you special promotions that you don't see on regular ads. National stores such as JCPenney and Best Buy are part of this innovation.

Credit card companies also try to push sale through the use of their cards. Chase recently has a program where they pay for a random's customer bill when he or she use Chase card. Bank of America has a program called Add It Up where you get point on the amount of money you spend on their card.

However, customers need to be smart when making decision. There are a lot of scams on the Internet. For example, they could get fake products. The popular hamster toy Zhu Zhu now has an imitated version called Zhu-Zhus. Some websites also appears just for this holiday sale season to steal people's identities and credit card information. In addition, beware of phishing emails from eBay and PayPal. Moreover, sites that are collecting donations are mostly fake.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/your-money/28money.html?ref=business
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33670121/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
http://www.katv.com/news/stories/1109/681903.html

No comments:

Post a Comment