This should be the most viewed blog I post because this will save you real money. I am a strong believer in increasing your purchase power and making your money go as far as possible in getting value. Yes savings and investing plays a big part with wealth but when it comes to buying stuff it’s not really mentioned or taught how to purchase wisely especially with tech. People are often wasteful, don’t do their own research and spend a lot of their good hard money when they could have got something else for better and cheaper. I like to deep dive and do my own research, it helps me to understand the market, the value and what a good price is and over the years I have built this experience up buying both new and used tech. I will go into the places I’ve used to buy stuff, the pros and cons and some tactics that have helped.
First things first though - do your research, even just a bit of googling goes a long way to understand what it is your buying. It shocks me that people don’t do this and just listen to what the sales people or influencers tell them, they get paid to sell, they won’t ever give you the real picture (unless they are in a deep moral and identity crisis like I was back when I worked in sales for a short time, but hey that is rare to find!) so do a bit of googling, understand what you’re looking for, what good specs look like and compare prices for both new and used.
Be proactive with your purchasing - if you think soon enough you’re going to need to look into this stuff then start doing your research on products now rather than later, this will get you informed sooner because if a good deal does pop up you’ll know it and can cash in sooner! If you are ever buying from retailers it is always worth checking and using cashback websites like TopCashBack, (excuse the shameless plug of my referral link )I’ve got back almost £800 from them now and it is especially useful for things like broadband and car insurance!
Understand the baseline price - googling definitely helps with this, you’ll quickly grasp how much things are selling for at brand new prices and if there any sales. I sometimes search HotUK deals to see if there are any active offers or how much something has sold for before. I then search for the same model and look at places like eBay, Gumtree, FB market place, CeX and sometimes AliExpress to understand how much a product goes for in a used market and if it’s significantly cheaper and in good condition I usually go for the second hand option.
In the above mentioned my preferences are eBay and CeX because they offer buyer protection in case things go wrong:
eBay
You can make offers to get a cheaper deal and sometimes there might be a random promo code you can use that gives you an extra 5-20% off. An example I bought a brand new Meta Rayban Wayfarers Gen 2 for £217. The sellers feedback was good and it was legit, they had multiple in stock (I know they go for over £400 retail price so don’t quite know how it was priced that well!). I used eBay as well to buy used but good condition HDDs for my NAS storage and I also used CeX for this. Just be wary of those listings where the seller has low to no feedback score, those listings are often priced where it is too good to be true so avoid that.
CeX
If I know I am definitely going to buy something there and there is more than one item in stock for what I’m after (if there isn’t I will contact customer service to make sure it’s in stock) I will go to cardyard.co.uk and buy vouchers to save an extra 10%, e.g if something costs £300 at CeX I will buy £300 worth of vouchers at CardYard for £270, £30 easily saved. The risk of CeX is their ads don’t really show the product you’re buying, they just grade it A B or C and that can be subjective so just be wary of that. My experiences with them have mainly been good, the NAS HDD I bought from them was almost brand new. They also offer a 5 year warranty on most products.
Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace
I am a bit more cautious when it comes to buying phones even though I used to buy, sell and even swap phones on Gumtree A LOT in my teen years but tablets and consoles I am more comfortable with now as they are easier to test without the fear of them getting blocked. You can definitely get some really good deals on these platforms and there many good people on there but ask the seller a few questions, how quick and how professional and reasonable they are in their responses can help to quickly differentiate between a good and bad seller. Be wary a lot of people write bad ads with vague details and if they are short with their responses I avoid them. If in any doubt do ask if the seller is willing to bring ID when you meet, that definitely scares the dodgy ones away. I usually get really good deals on furniture and kids stuff here and I did also buy a car listed on Gumtree which is still running fine..
AliExpress
I mentioned in my last post about how I got a Lenovo idea tab pro 256gb model for £175, the Chinese version called Xiaoxin which is the same thing (global version retails today at Amazon still at £350) and then a friend of mine did one better and got the 128gb model weeks later for about £105. For certain Chinese manufactured products checking AliExpress is the way to go, yes it might take a bit longer to receive but the savings can be significant. How did that friend strike gold here for the 128gb model? They timed the purchase right, better than I did. There were multiple promos running at once and it’s not a one off thing as I saw them running again recently. They purchased when:
It was ‘brand day’ promo they run for official brands, they also had the get £24 off if you spend £180 or more promo (or something like that)
TopCashBack had a 20% cashback offer on top of that
Paypal also had this AliExpress promo where if you use it to pay you’d save £12
Finally when any items are over £135 the customs cost is taken off and has to be paid when the item reaches the country except on this occasions that didn’t happen for them so they saved that cost (well that’s what they told me, I’ve seen Reddit forum discussions on these where people request for item values to be lowered to avoid paying - don’t shoot the messenger!).
From 195.99 it went down to approx £105, I think it would’ve cost about £140 anyway if it went through properly which is still a very good deal. Here is the screenshot if you don’t believe me! The 20% cashback was paid a while after the purchase. This was around November last year.
Other places you may have missed
Lastly here are places where I’ve found some really good deals and for things I’ve struggled to find elsewhere. Not many people know about these online webstores like cashconverters or cashgenerators. They can have the occasional bargain, the webstore is essentially a bunch of stores who put their products on the website themselves, it isn’t centrally coordinated so prices, condition and description won’t always be consistent which can be frustrating at times. You do have to read the description carefully and double check the condition is all fine and you can email or call the store to ask questions if needed. There prices at first might seem average but there is the bargain to be had, some examples:
Meta Quest 3 VR Headset 512gb - I found one for £220 in very good condition
Dell Latitude Laptop 5440 - £187
Redmi Note 14 Pro 5G Phone - £140
Oppo X5 Lite Phone - £80
TP-Link AV1000 (it is a Powerline WiFi Connector in case you are wondering what the heck this is) - £20
These were purchased earlier this year, all in excellent condition, prices included delivery and overall significantly cheaper than places like eBay, Gumtree etc. They do other stuff like gaming accessories, laptops and more. What is especially useful is you have the 14 day return window and offer a 6 to 12 month warranty which gives you peace of mind. Even better you can email your offer to the store or ask for free delivery if possible (worst they can do is say no or not respond), I’ve had good success here where I’ve saved an extra 10-15% from the listed price.
Ok that is all for now, that was a nice knowledge dump to get off my head. Go now and become eagle eyed power purchasers my friends!