I’m a bit of a geek when it comes to shopping for stuff. I like to get the best price (don’t we all?), so I often find myself shopping around a lot when it comes to buying anything that’s higher priced. And, so long as my patience holds out, I usually do end up getting a good price on whatever it is that I’m shopping for.
Most recently, I needed to buy a new set of tires for our Suburban. Now, if you’ve bought tires for anything recently, you know that they aren’t very cheap. In fact, they can be downright expensive. The bigger they are, the bigger the price tag too. Winter is almost upon us, though, so it was time to bite the bullet and get shopping. I looked around locally first, wanting to keep money local if possible. That was silly. $150 a tire? That’s crazy.
So, geek that I am, I went looking online. There’s several online tire dealers and they usually have decent prices. I found one that had a good price on a good tire. Closer to $120 a tire. That’s better, but still not great. I noticed that a different model of tire had a nice rebate attached to them. $75 off a set of 4. Getting better. Closer to $100 a tire. The rebate didn’t expire until November 6th, so I had some time to shop around.
Then I got an email from eBay. eBay has a program called eBay Bucks where you get a certain % of your purchase back as an eBay certificate to use on your next purchase. In the email, they told me that there was a 48 hour special. Buy from a list of select shops and earn 20% back in eBay Bucks. The tire shop that I had been looking at was featured right on the front page of that special list. Rock on!
After a bit of searching through their store, I managed to find the exact same tire I had been looking at, for the exact same price that they had it for on their website. Except, now I get 20% back from eBay too. The deal just got a whole lot sweeter!
Not to be outdone, and wanting to save as much as I possibly could on the tires, I went looking for extra deals that I could stack to save even more money. Which is where Discover comes in. Each quarter, Discover runs a bonus program for their cashback program. Instead of the normal 2% cash back on purchases, they bump it up to 5% on certain categories. In the third quarter, the category was hotels and travel. I used that when I went to Denver. In the fourth quarter, the category is online shopping. I’m assuming that’s a clever ploy to get people to pay for their online holiday shopping with their Discover card. Well played, Discover, well played. But, I’m just buying some tires today. 😉
Discover card in hand, I went on over to the eBay store, and bought some tires!
- 4 Tires: $472 (with free shipping)
- Rebate: -$75
- eBay Bucks: -~$94
- Discover Cash Back: -~$24
- Total: $279 (or about $70 a tire.)
- Stacking discounts, cash back, and rebates for the win: Priceless
Taking my time, making sure I checked for all the possible discounts and rebates I could, then stacking them all where possible saved me a ton of money! Granted, most of that is in the form of cash back. The eBay Bucks must be used on eBay but we actually buy a fair amount of stuff on eBay because it’s generally far cheaper than anywhere else. We haven’t bought hardly any Christmas presents yet, so I’m sure we’ll find a good use for it, and we’ll save on that stuff too. The Discover cashback can be redeemed for gift cards and such, but I prefer to build it up over $50 and then use it as a credit on my account. And, the rebate, when it comes (why does it take forever to get those?), will likely be used to buy some groceries or something that we would have already been buying anyways! Plus, we needed the tires, so we were going to be buying tires anyways. (I don’t suggest you do this for frivolous things you don’t need!)
One other note, that’s probably specific to this purchase and not, necessarily, others is that some tire places will charge you a bit extra to mount the tires if you buy them elsewhere. I’m aware of that, and will probably try and bargain that down a bit, but it makes some sense. There’s a new local (not a chain) tire shop in town, anyways, so I’ll likely take it up there and pay the small premium to give the local guy some business. Even if they charge me $25 a tire to mount them (I think it’s closer to $12), the total cost per tire will still be well below what the original price would have been. And, if I had paid that original price, I still would have had to pay to have them mounted, so I still win!
Do you try and stack discounts? When was the last time you had a win in discount stacking? What was it for?
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I stack discounts on non-perishable food and things like shampoo/conditioner. If I see a good sale on something like cereal that has a shelf life on 1 year or more I will stock up with 5-10 boxes. By using both store coupons and manufacturer’s coupons I can get the best deal possible.
Never did the stack discounts but I feel your pain with the tires. Heck you are getting off cheap compared to the price my of tires my wife’s car and my friends cost. I have shopped for them both and the cheapest per tire is $235 each. The best is buying the tires online and shopping for a place that will put them on. Usually you have more room to bargain. They will usually want you to order through them so most times if they can they will price match and cut you a deal on the labor.
I’m always a big fan of stacking a coupon on top of a sale. Normally this works best at a grocery store or drugstore, but your instance is definitely a good way to apply this, and it saved quite a bit more money in the process. Way to go.
That is pretty sweet! Getting the cost lowered like that makes an expensive purchase a lot easier to stomach.
I’ve never tried anything like that, but I might now that I have seen how you did it.
Hats off to all your efforts!! You have really done a great job by getting the expense lower. I have tried lots of time to do this but I am not adept in this. But I am now stimulated by your tire purchase. It’s a massive victory for sure 🙂
Wow, great stacking!!! I don’t usually play that game so well, but I do always use my Discover and Google for coupon codes. I guess my most recent “win” was our four ceiling fans for the new house. I bought a 20% off coupon for $1.33 from Ebay, purchased them online with my Discover card, but set it for a local pickup. 4 hours later, we had $300 in fans for $240 and more Discover cash back. 🙂
I always try to stack discounts if possible. You just have to be extra resourceful and check out various discount sites or coupons on magazines. A few months ago, I got to save a few bucks for a pair of shoes that I bought online. I found an online coupon that saved me 10% on the shoes, then I also discovered that if I used my Visa credit card, I get an additional 15% off my purchase. So, I got a pretty good deal for my shoes as it saved me 25% from the original price.
I love stacking discounts. I just bought an expensive in wall oven for over half off from lowe’s. 40% off due to black friday sale. I bought the gift cards to buy the oven from gift card zen at 7% off face value (getting 2% cash back on my credit card rewards). I bought a 10% off coupon from ebay for $2. Then used a cash back site (mr rebates) for another 2% reward when I completed the transaction at lowe’s.
I’m also getting free groceries using “no beer purchase required” rebates + grocery store promotions for $15 off a $100 gift card purchase + coupons the grocery store gives at checkout. I filled my trunk up with expensive groceries for $30 or so.
Always maximizing discounts – that’s how our family of 5 live well on $32k per year.