One of my favorite and convenient shopping sites is Amazon.com. I used them first in 1997 to help me find a book I’d been trying to find for a handful of years. Their search expired, but I found it a few years later, likely on Half.com. I kept an eye on the site, though, finally placing my first book order in late 1999 for a book about the internet. My orders picked up in 2000; I’d just gotten a new job and wanted a few specialized technology books to help me on my learning curve for new software.

After that, I mostly bought baby gifts for friends, or household goods. As the kids came along, discounted toys and baby stuff, more household goods, and baby wipes. I’ve always been more comfortable in a “real” book store or library, and while I appreciated the expanded selection of Amazon, it was and is more useful to me as a list-maker and gizmo site. I’ll build a list of books – and look for them at thrift stores or borrow them from the library or trade among friends.

But I noticed a couple of years back that you could leave stuff in your “shopping cart” for longer than the amount of time they say items will stay in the shopping cart. And if the price has changed since the last time you looked at your shopping cart while logged in, the site will post a message for a moment, informing you of the change.

So I started buying my items, then immediately putting them back in the shopping cart. If the price changed within 30 days to a lower price, I called Amazon and they honored their 30 day pricing guarantee, giving me a price adjustment. But I had to remember to keep the item in there, and I had to remember to check the price … it made sure I logged in daily; kind of a hassle. Plus some sellers would adjust their prices minutely. Up or down a couple of pennies, which was useless to me for price matching purposes, but served as an annoying reminder that I hadn’t gotten around to buying or reading the biography I’d wanted after hearing an interview with an actor a few months ago.

Then I found refundplease.com. They’ll track the 30 day window on prices for you, and send you an email. I’ve been using it for a few months to track prices (along with my old method of keeping it in the shopping cart and logging in daily) and it’s caught the price changes every time. I’ve heard of a few other sites, but this one has worked well enough for me. I’ve never been spammed as a result of adding my address there, but I wonder just what they do with that immense database of information. Or could do. Can you imagine trending prices and discounts on Amazon? Seeing what’s hot and what’s not? Cool beans.

Keep things in my basket to watch for price changes before I buy, using refundplease to keep an eye on it after I buy it, I usually can keep my purchased priced reasonably. Or convince myself the items will never go on sale, so I should find another way or do without. I use another method for buying bulk repeat items online through Amazon, but I’ll touch on that another day.

For more WFMW ideas, head over to the mothership at http://www.rocksinmydryer.net!

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