Today I went shopping for some clothing for thing such as dress pants and shirts. At first I started at the well known stores as apparently they were having a sale. Despite this, the prices were extremely high to the point where you juts have to wonder how much the item is marked up. So I decided to go to a clothing discount store as I know this is usually a good way to see how cheap the products can get.

Not surprisingly, I was able to find pretty much the same brand of clothing for about 60% cheaper. While the variety was obviously way less, this then gave me a good price basis to determine if I should keep looking for a better deal. This greatly helped as for the bigger stores that were having a sale I could pretty much tell which ones were a good deal versus the ones that may say it is like 40% off when really the price seems to be inflated.

Even if you don’t intend to buy anything, those discounts store are a good way to price compare on the spot I think if you don’t happen to be an expert when it comes to shopping for certain items.

The other day I was looking to buy an item and was just doing my regular price hunting. The funny thing was my search resulted in me going to the actual company’s website which happened to give people he ability to buy their products in a non wholesale way. Interestingly enough, they were selling them cheaper than what their retail partners were able to offer them for.

Usually companies try to avoid that as they don’t want to jeopardize the sales of their retail partners. I guess since it is fairly easy to set up an e-commerce store nowadays that companies see no harm in trying to sell the items directly themselves. For you as the average consumer I suppose its’ a win for you either way as you can get the item cheaper. In this case it seemed like it was 30% cheaper too.

It seemed like the top story in so many news reports here today was how the Company Best Buy was closing down a few of its stores due to the lack of sales and how this meant hundreds of people are now unemployed. Interestingly enough the main thing about the story that interested most people was how employees were essentially blind sided over this as they simply showed up to work only to find out that the store was immediately closed and that they would all have to find new jobs.

That painted the business in a negative light it seemed as to many it demonstrated that they didn’t really care much about say the employees or the public to even give them some kind of warning that this was going to happen. Not something you would think would be that big of a deal huh? I suppose it’s worst for businesses that have a lot of stores as the image of it will carry on to the other businesses as well. Even big businesses have to show courtesy compassion at times.

Today I went to the supermarket and decided to buy some fresh apples by the pound. As usual, there are different brands for you to choose from and usually they are all set at different prices. When I went to the checkout to get them scanned I noticed that the cashier entered a different brand to calculate the total weight and cost. That would have meant paying more which I brought up.

I was just trying to imagine how many times something like this happens where people don’t check the receipt for this. Especially when you are buying a load of items as you are usually inclined to just assume that what they are entering is correct. Guess that is an example on how eyeing the item scanner display can help you save money from those kinds of mishaps.

There was news recently about HP touch pad tablets that were being cleared as the company made an announcement that it was trying to exit that business. As a result, you saw companies slash the prices from about $400 to as low as $100. Not surprisingly, a lot of bargain shoppers jumped on the deals immediately.

There were some interesting comments from people that wouldn’t buy it though as since the company is exiting the market that means you won’t receive any kind of support for it. Funny thing for myself I thought is that usually when I buy outdated products brand new I don’t expect a lot of support anyhow as usually I only do that for items that I am fairly knowledgeable about. Therefore, I am simply getting a good deal on a product but not having to pay for the fact that it is new on the market.