Get the goods online

What's the story with web bargains, asks CONOR POPE

IN ADDITION TO containing more wisdom than the Oracle and more waffle than 10,000 years worth of Dáil speeches, the Internet is one of the greatest money-saving resources ever created. Tips and articles on how to spend less are two a penny, making it easy to research better value on everything from anoraks to zips. Then there are the auction houses, which sell everything for half nothing, and the people who are desperate to give stuff away for free.

Crunch your credit card

Anyone interested in saving money on their credit card interest should visit the financial regulator’s consumer website, itsyourmoney.ie. It provides clear cost comparisons on credit cards and home, life and car insurance amongst a range of other financial products. Last week we learned from the site that AIB’s Click credit card is currently offering the lowest APR at 8.5 per cent, while Ulster Bank Classic Card looks like a very poor deal with an APR of 17.9 per cent.

Buy American

You’re familiar with the scenario. You find a camera, MP3 player or laptop selling on a US website such as amazon.com for substantially less than it costs at home, but when you try and take advantage of the deal, the site wags its finger at you and says that the deals are only available to US shoppers. No problem: register with myus.com, a site which allows you to use a real US street address for restrictive sites such as Amazon. It then ships packages from that address, allowing you to take advantage of a comparatively weak dollar and discounts and sales offered to US consumers.

It does cost money to sign up – between $10 (€7.70) and $35 (€27) – and some (but not all) of the subscription packages have monthly charges of between $7 (€5.40) and $25 (€19.30), but if you are buying goods from the US regularly, signing up could save you a lot of money.

Come and get it

A walnut kitchen table and eight chairs, an entire kitchen with appliances, a 32” Philips television and a free standing punchbag are just some of the items available on the remarkable jumbletown.ie for absolutely nothing right now. The only catch – and we don’t really consider it much of a catch – is that you have to arrange collection of the items yourself. Not only can it save you money if you’re in the market for free stuff, but you can also save by giving it away through the site, as you will cut down substantially on refuse charges. Similar sites include freecycle.org and dublinwaste.ie, although that site is, as you might have guessed, confined to Dublin.

Weigh up the packages

The Communication Watchdog ComReg’s consumer website callcost.ie compares mobile, landline and broadband packages and is comprehensive and idiot-proof. People searching for a new phone company would do well to visit the site to work out which of the many companies currently providing landlines offer the best deals. The site allows users to compare the costs of landline, broadband and mobile services as well as combined packages based on specific usage.

Tell us about it

The site is but a baby, but goodbuy.ie has the potential to become an excellent resource for canny Irish consumers. It aims to develop into an important online community where people can share information about bargains they have come across and businesses can post details of sales and discounts and specials in real time. To succeed, we reckon it needs a lot more impartial user-generated content than is currently on the site, but it’s early days yet. The Irish market is crying out for such a dedicated online resource and the more people who contribute to it, the better it will get.

Whatever you want

Try as you might, it is hard to top eBay.ie when it comes to bargains. We have raved about it before on this page but it does bear repeating that if you’re in the market for pretty much anything, this should be one of the first places you go looking, even if only to get an idea how much you should be willing to pay for a particular product. Pricewatch has bought everything from solid oak dining-room tables to digital recorders and a Nokia e71 on the site for a fraction of what they would have cost in a regular shop. And, apart from the time a pair of gold cufflinks bought in a moment of madness was thieved from the envelope, and the replacement pair mysteriously replaced by a single silver-plated antique fork, we have never had any problems.

Advice on a budget

British journalist Martin Lewis has made a living out of providing people with ways to save money. His site, moneysavingexpert.com, is very popular in the UK. While many of the tips on the site and in his books are useless for an Irish market because of differing tax regimes and regulatory systems, there are some gems to be found, such as his handy free budget planner tool, tinyurl.com/agy3wm. As he says, we are always being told to draw up budgets to better manage our money. “The problem is most budgets don’t work; they only look at a month’s spending and miss too much out.”

Fine tips for foodies

We’ve mentioned this site before, but in case you missed it, it bears repeating. We think cheapeats.ie is great – it is updated way more often than similar blogs we have come across and carries a whole lot of genuinely useful, nicely opinionated information on special offers in restaurants, cafes and supermarkets. Just by visiting the site last week, we learned that Supervalu was doing half-price sirloin steak, a loved-up Tesco was selling cheap chocolates for Valentine’s Day and five coffee shops in Dublin were offering lunchtime discounts.

Make the right contact

Contact lenses are not cheap, unless you buy them on the web. The US-based contact lenses site aclenses.com comes with a health warning. It does sell exactly the same brands of contact lenses as Irish opticians, with savings of more than 50 per cent, but there are some self-imposed rules we suggest you follow.

Globally, there are only a handful of manufacturers of contact lenses – Boots’ daily disposable lenses, for example, are made by Bausch Lomb. Identical lenses can be found at widely differing prices depending on the brand, so if you find the cheapest brand you can save a fortune, without compromising the quality – assuming, of course, that they are suitable.

For people who do decide to buy lenses from companies based outside this jurisdiction, it is absolutely essential to have regular check-ups – at least once a year – to ensure that your prescription is up to date and your eyes remain healthy.

Power up your home

According to the Power of One campaign, which promotes energy efficiency at a personal and environmental level, families can save between €500 and €1,000 each year by making fairly small modifications to the way they heat and light their homes. A quick stop at powerofone.ie will show you how to make those savings.