If you know the right skills, you can save a lot of money while shopping online. Which day of the week is the budget for which products? Are the prices on the smartphone different? The money check of the ARD provides answers.
Online shopping is only evident at first glance. Although you can compare tens of offers with a few clicks and find the supposedly cheapest price. But if it really is a bargain, is far from agreed. Because prices are constantly changing online: What seems cheap today can be expensive tomorrow. And also the choice of the device, with which one buys online, can influence the displayed price.
Is online always cheaper?
To check whether it can not be cheaper in the store, ARD presenter Roberto Cappelluti runs eight hours through the city to find the lowest price for three products: a perfume, a food processor and a camera. The advantage in the shop: Some traders let themselves act with themselves. So the perfume seller goes down on demand ten percent of its price – instead of 112 euros, the men’s fragrance of Chanel costs only 100.80 euros. However: Online there’s the same product on the same day for 91.90 euros. And if you have a little patience, you can strike even cheaper online. The price monitoring service Spottster keeps track of offers over a month and noted the lowest price at 74.70 euros.
Even with the other two product examples online is cheaper: The food processor’s store is not under 599 euros, online is the lowest price at 419 euros. And the camera acts Cappeluti indeed with reference to the competition in the network still violently down: from 529 euros to 475 euros. But online, there’s the model for only 329 euros. However, only for a very short time, because in electronics, the online prices fluctuate particularly strong.
Which day of the week is the cheapest?
If you want to get the lowest online price, you need to compare prices over a longer period of time or use tools that do it for you. And if you do not feel like it? Even for spontaneous buyers, the expert of the price monitoring service Spottster has some helpful rules of thumb ready. On average, some products are cheaper on certain days of the week than others.
Household goods should be particularly cheap at the beginning of the week. On Tuesdays, clothing, jewelry and electronics are cheaper. On Wednesday, it is worth to look for sports and on Thursday for wine. Eyewear and medications are announced on Fridays, and there are bargains on furniture and beauty products on weekends.
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Is shopping on the smartphone more expensive?
The Internet prices fluctuate not only from day to day (or even more frequently), but sometimes also depending on the device used. On a flight comparison page, the ARD checkers are looking for a flight from Dusseldorf to Barcelona. The smartphone spits out the cheapest price 128.91 euros, while the PC displays the same flight from 89 euros – a difference of about 40 euros.
The same with the hotel search: Again, the room is much more expensive, if it is booked via smartphone. “It has been discovered that smartphone users are generally quicker at making decisions, faster in time pressure, and therefore not so much comparing prices,” says Helga Zander-Hayat of the German Consumer Advisory Council for ARD Money Checkers. She takes a critical view of this development at personalized prices.
For example, companies may charge a higher price for someone living in Munich and shopping with an Apple device than for a rural Android user – assuming that one person is willing to pay more than the other. And the customer from Munich does not even realize that he has to pay more.