Online Shopping on the Cheap, Part 2 - Promotion Codes

A terrific follow-up to Boulder Locavore's tips on eBates to ease your online holiday shopping. I always waste too much time Googling for coupons and promotional codes. I'm grateful for the tips!

I’m honored once again to contribute a bit of thrifty online shopping wisdom to She’s Thrifty readers just in time for the holiday shopping madness!

When shopping online (always my preferred method) I have an entire formula I use to make it the least expensive possible. I already shared with you that I always start with www.ebates.com. They have a vast collection of stores, some you’d never expect, so you always do well to begin there and use them to launch you to your online store of choice (they track your purchase and automatically send you a check for the rebate from your quarterly purchases).

Step two is the Promotional Codes. I’m sure you’ve noted emails from online retailers advertising a special discount with a code to be added at check out. These promotional codes vary and change but can always bring you additional savings from free shipping to a good percentage off your purchase.

There are online coupon aggregators where you can visit, enter your store name and all known active coupons and codes will be displayed. Two I’ve found most helpful are www.couponcabin.com and www.retailmenot.com. Once I’ve found what I’m looking for online, I’ll open a second browser window to search these sites for a good discount code. If I’m unsuccessful, something as simple as Googling the store’s name and ‘promotional code’ (e.g. ‘Nordstrom promotional code’) will generally yield a number of other sites carrying coupons to sort through. Not all coupons featured on these sites may be active and they often show the percentage of success when attempting to use them. They are always worth a try for some additional savings I’ve found.

To use the Promotional Code: once you begin the check out process you will note a box for Promotional or Gift Code with most retailers. It is generally found around where you’d enter your credit card information. You will know if the code has worked as the percentage off or shipping savings will appear immediately once the code has been entered. If you get an error message or if no change occurs with your final costs, the code most likely is not active.

One general caveat with this strategy is if you find a promotional code on one of these sites that requires you to press a link to get to the store, versus giving you a code to add, you will be in a separate shopping session and cannot combine that with the savings you would get by having started with www.ebates.com.

In summary, here’s my ‘avoid-the-crowd-shop-in-my-PJ’s’ formula for online shopping savings success:

• Go to www.ebates.com; look up the store where you wish to shop, select it and you will be transported to the store’s website (no additional action needed to get the rebate from your purchase),
• Complete your shopping but do NOT check out fully yet!
• Open a separate browser window and check for active promotional codes on www.couponcabin.com , www.retailmenot.com or by Googling the name of your store with ‘promotional code’. Insert the code in the appropriate box and complete your check out.

My last online shopping savings tip is that Friday December 17th is ONLINE FREE SHIPPING DAY! Over 1000 merchants have signed up to offer Free Shipping on December 17 with delivery by Christmas Eve!
Check www.freeshippingday.com for details on merchants.


Wishing you a stress free, savings filled holiday shopping season! Boulder Locavore