Ok, so here we are, a mere 4 days away from Christmas
You'll here a lot of words cropping up around this festive time... Presents, Snow?, Drink, Food, Turkey, Busy, Shopping... But the one that seems to crop up more than all the rest is Money. Let's face it, unless you're under the age of 16, Christmas is an expensive holiday! Just look at the price Wiis have been selling on Ebay and in those 'Bundle packs'. Families spending 300, 400+ on their loved ones this Christmas. I've spent a lot on my family this year as well, but I've got to age where I can appreciate all that they have done for me in the past and I was to thank them for it
The thing that surprises me the most when everyone is complaining about how expensive Christmas is... Is that it seems to me that most people don't go around looking for the bargains anymore. They're quite happy to go into the high street and pick up whatever is on their families' wish list at the price in that shop. They see the price of the item and think 'That must be standard' and just pick it up.
This is the total opposite of me! For me to buy something that costs a fair bit of money £10+, I would first have to have a good look all over the internet to see what the cheapest price I can find it at is. It amazes me that people are still wary of using the internet even though 9/10 it's cheaper and easier.
For example, this year Me and my brother have got my Mum one of those Digital photo frames. The standard price for a 10" one is £100+, but after a quick look on the net, we managed to get one for £69.99 which instantly made it more affordable for us so that we could get the bigger version
All that took was a quick search in good and a few minutes of going through the pages. I get the feeling that people aren't prepared to do this anymore. With sites like Kelkoo that do the Price Comparison for you, it's tempting to just go straight through them. But I did a quick search a second ago and did the one I purchased come up? No it did not!
So using Kelkoo alone just isn't enough to save you those extra pennies.
I can't help but feel that if we all shopped like this then prices would soon drop as people would only buy from the cheapest places. It really amazes me the number of times I'll be in Game and looking at their Wii games priced at £39.99 when a family will walk up and just pick random games off of the shelf because they 'Look like they might be fun'! That's £40 on something that you may only play a couple of times! All of my games I own because they were on special offer at the time. Excite truck, Endless Ocean and Heatseeker cost me £16 each. Eledees cost me £22 (Although that definitely wasn't a bargain
) and Metroid cost me £25. All those prices I paid are well below the RRP and that's simply because I did a bit of research on them to see how cheap I could find them. All it takes is a quick trip to a Wii Game price comparison site (
GamesTracker is excellent) and you could instantly save yourself a few quid.
Do that a few times and you'll have saved enough for another addition to your console! If you compared two people who had the exact same Wii set up (Games, Controllers, Accessories etc) and one of them used High Street Shops, the other used the internet, I have no doubts the internet user would have saved a vast amount more than the High Street shopper.
Yet people still won't shop this way!
Going back to the families in Game picking Wii titles off the shelf, I will never get a game unless I am really sure it's a quality title. That means using (once again) the internet to look at a whole host of reviews, not just the first one I find. You will soon get a good idea of the game's good point and bad points and also what other 'real' users got from it. £30 is too big an investment for me to be taking gambles with the quality of my games. Once again, it amazes me that people won't check out the general view of a game before deciding to go ahead and buy it. Just coming to a forum like this will tell you more about the game and give you a much better idea of whether it is right for you. There's nothing worse for me than purchasing a game, only to find that I don't get along with it. These games are for our enjoyment and I want to make sure that's what I get!
I know that most of the people on this forum are not the kind of people I am talking about here. If you're using a forum on a regular basis then I have no doubts you're using the internet to help make decisions on how to spend your money wisely! The trouble is that I'm not sure if we are in the Minority or Majority here... That's mainly because the Wii has targeted traditional Non-gamers, so this is a lot of people's first console. This is why shops like Game get away with charging more for games, because people think that's their only option and they're such a big shop it must be standard. Then again, maybe it's me who's playing into the industry's hands... I bought all those games when they were on 'Offer'... But were they really? I mean, it costs them very little to physically produce these games... So perhaps the traditional Bargain Hunters are just as guilty as the others!
Still... Boogie at half price! How can I go wrong?!
Thanks for reading