A little while ago I wrote an article about how New Zealanders should take advantage of the strong dollar and shop on overseas websites (here). DHL recently released some figures that show a 26.6% growth in deliveries to New Zealand between March and September. The main reason for the rise is the buying power the New Zealand dollar offers. Kiwi consumers who are becoming more aware of the fact that they can get a variety of items overseas for a lot cheaper are taking to the internet for their shopping needs.

The top 5 sites where Kiwi’s are shopping:

1. Amazon

Probably the largest e-commerce website that has a strong presence around the world. They offer a variety of items which include books, electronics and beauty products just to name a few. It is popular with Kiwis as a place to buy books, music, clothing and jewellery – Click here to visit Amazon.com

2. Shoebuy

As the name suggests, it is a site that has one of the largest selection of women’s, men’s and kids’ shoes. They stock over 1,200 brands and have everything from casual shoes to dress shoes and athletic shoes – Click here to visit Shoebuy.com

3. Shopbop

They are an online retailer of women’s apparel and accessories from a range of designers being offered at a very good price. Besides getting a fashion fix at for a bargain, if you spend over $100 your items are delivered for free – Click here to visit Shopbop.com

4. iHerb

A one-stop shop for your entire herbal health product needs. They stock natural products from over 600 brands at very competitive prices – Click here to visit iHerb.com

5. Wiggle

The UK’s number one online cycle shop offering deals on mountain bikes, road bikes, cycle clothing and cycle accessories from the worlds top cycle brands. This is sure to be a hit with Kiwi’s with their sport nature and love for the outdoors – Click here to visit wiggle.co.uk

All of the sites mentioned above not only offer great deals, they cater to a worldwide audience meaning you could take advantage of them wherever you are.

Are there any other sites that you would recommend for online bargains?

Before the start of the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Adidas started selling the 2011 All Blacks Rugby Jersey that the New Zealand public was eager to get their hands on. One thing that the public was not so eager about was the price tag of $220! That is a lot of money to pay for a jersey and what was even more frustrating for rugby fans who wanted to get their hands on it was that it was being sold by overseas retailers for about half the price.

Anyone faced with this situation and wanting to get their hands on the jersey would have more than likely opted to purchase it online and get it shipped to New Zealand. The icing on the cake about this little story was when online retailers such as WorldRugbyShop suddenly unlisted New Zealand as an international shipping destination. My guess and that of others was that Adidas somehow found a way to stop them from shipping to New Zealand for a certain period of time. Both Adidas and major e-tailers refused to comment on the situation. At the time, Adidas executives faced the media but stood firm on their ‘fair’ pricing. But, retailers such as Rebel Sport did come to the rescue and did the best they could by lowering the price to keep consumers happy. As far as Adidas goes, this could be another one of the many worldwide examples of corporate greed?

Anyway, the World Cup has come and gone with the New Zealand All Black’s crowned the victors. A couple of days ago I went to the WorldRugbyShop’s site and wasn’t too surprised to see that they are once again shipping to New Zealand. At the moment, their homepage features the All Blacks RWC 2011 Winners SS Jersey and all sorts of other bits and pieces to do with the 2011 RWC. The other bits and pieces include 2011 Rugby World Cup Balls, Team Jerseys for all the nations that took part and the NZ 2011 Champions Range.

The good thing is that you can get all of this gear and more shipped to New Zealand for less than it would cost at a sporting goods outlet. If you are looking to get your hands on rugby gear for yourself or as a Christmas gift for an All Blacks fan who doesn’t have but really wants the 2011 strip, head on over to WorldRugbyShop now and place your orders before the holiday rush starts.

Over the weekend, I drove into a Shell service station to fill up on what I thought was going to be a good deal on fuel. I paid for a predetermined amount of fuel and just when I started to fill up, I noticed that the price at the pump was a little higher than what I thought I was meant to be paying. It read 209.9 instead of 205.9!

What happened?
As I was driving along I looked at the fuel prices on their price board and saw 205.9 and below that 209.9 (see photo below). I automatically assumed that they were selling 91 Octane for 205.9 with 95 Octane being 4 cents more.

How it happened?
One of the things I put it down to is conditioning! I think what went wrong was that my brain had been conditioned to seeing prices being listed in a particular manner which in most cases is 91 Octane at the top, 95 Octane in the middle and diesel at the bottom. That being said, all other details around the price list have become non-existent as I am focused on the numbers being presented to me.

That there is how I think I managed to miss out on the detail to the left of the numbers which read “Ultra Discount Voucher”.

(The flip-side of the coin is that the marketers over at Shell are aware of this and use it to their advantage to pull in more customers)

Lessons Learnt?
The lesson I learnt from this was, I need to pay more attention to detail because it could be costly!

When you look at the short-term gains in dollars and cents, it may not seem like a big deal. But, if you look at it long-term (over a one year period for example), those dollars and cents add up and that money could be put away in a high interest bearing account or some other investment and become worth your while.

Photo taken with an HTC Desire S Smartphone

The current economic situation in the U.S. is kind of scary on a number of levels because of what could happen to not just the U.S. economy but the global economy if a resolution is not reached soon. Seeing the world sink into another recession so soon after last one (if it really ever ended) could cause more stress to a world that is already trying to deal with a lot.

All of that said, there are people (including myself) living outside the United States who are looking to the U.S. to snap up bargains. The US Dollars (USD) to 1 New Zealand Dollar (NZD) has shot up from about 0.76 at the beginning of the year to almost 0.88 today (31 July 2011), which is it post float high.

With that exchange rate, it only makes sense for New Zealand consumers to look around and maybe even shop online for all sorts from books to electronics to cosmetics to clothing and so on and so forth. The reason being, you will more than likely find whatever it is for a lot cheaper than the recommended New Zealand retail price. For example, my wife has been thinking about getting her hands on an Apple MacBook Air. If she were to get it in the U.S. she could save herself up to NZ $459 as follows:

Apple New Zealand NZ $1,549
Apple USA US $999 (approx. NZ $1,146) (NZ $406 saving)
Amazon $950 (approx. NZ $1,090) (NZ $459 saving)
In this case though, she would need to find someone travelling from the US to get the notebook over because of Amazon’s shipping restrictions on electronics. This however isn’t a problem for her because she has a friend visiting soon who offered to bring it over for her. If this is not an option for you, there is a work around for online retailers who do not ship internationally. I will write about this in the near future.

There are a number of retailers who do ship internationally and even with shipping fees included, turn out to be cheaper than New Zealand retailers. I picked a couple of random items available from NZ retailers to compared their prices against online retailers to find out how much could be saved. The results were:

Book: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [Paperback] by Stieg Larsson
Amazon.com – US $12.99 (approx. NZ $14.90) [shipping included]
Whitcoulls – $24.95
Saving of NZ $10.05

Make-up: Wonder Volume Mascara – #01 7ml/0.25oz
Life Pharmacy – NZ $55.00
StrawberryNET.com – NZ $29.50 [free shipping]
Saving of NZ $25.50

These were just an example of a couple of things that people may want to get their hands on and how much could be saved by buying them online. The main point that I want to get across is that with the current USD/NZD exchange there are plenty of savings to be made for New Zealand consumers. All it takes is knowing what you want to get, it’s retails price so that when you do your online search you will be able to calculate what kind of a saving you will make and whether it will me worth your while.

New Zealand already has it’s share of daily deal sites which include GrabOne, Spreets and very recently, Treat Me by Trade Me just to name a few. At the moment it looks like GrabOne is winning the race and covers more regions around New Zealand other than the main centres of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. If you take a look at a newspaper or billboards around Auckland it is plan to see that they are putting a lot into marketing themselves. But, the big daddy of deal a day sites Groupon is setting up shop in New Zealand and this may mean that sites already established over here may need to change the way the do things in order to compete with Groupon who have a lot more money to play with which could give them more reach.

With the introduction of Groupon to a New Zealand daily deal market that already seems quite saturated given that it only has a population of about 4.3 million it does make you wonder how successful they will be? Whatever the case may be, it will still mean even more deals for people to choose from. On the odd occasion, one of these sites may have a deal on something that you have really wanted to eat, see or do. With them offering up to 90% off whatever it is, this for you will mean a huge saving on that item. It doesn’t hurt to sign up to these sites and stay up to date with what they have to offer because you are bound to come across a deal too good to pass up.

Click here to sign up to Groupon New Zealand

One thing that can be a bit annoying about living in a country with only so many airlines servicing domestic routes is that airfares to some destinations can be expensive. A couple of weeks ago we had to fly down to Dunedin at short notice. With Air New Zealand being the only domestic airline servicing the city, the fares were what I would call ridiculously expensive. I don’t like spending more money that I need to so I spent a bit of time trying to come up with a way of getting from Auckland to Dunedin without paying more than what Auckland to Sydney return flights would cost.

After looking at the Auckland to Dunedin options where fares started around the $400 mark per person one way we looked at options of flying out of cities close to Auckland. We ended up finding flights out of Hamilton via Christchurch (for those of you who do not know where it is, it is a 1.5 hour drive south of Auckland) for $200 per person one way. Even though we had to drive to Hamilton early in the morning to catch our flight, doing that saved us about $400.

With that part of the journey sorted, next was finding a way of getting back to Auckland. This time around flights from Dunedin to Auckland were around the $500 mark per person which is just crazy! Once again, we looked at flying out of cities close to Dunedin. Queenstown seemed like the best option and we managed to got really good deals on Jetstar for $120 per person. This meant having to take a shuttle to Queenstown for $30 per person and spending a night there. We got a good deal at the Copthorne Lakefront Resort for $100 through Expedia.co.nz. As you can see, for the two of us to fly out of Queenstown plus spend a night there, it cost even less than the Dunedin – Auckland fares that Air New Zealand was quoting for one person.

Being willing to travel to/from cities close to Auckland and Dunedin cost around $800 which still is a bit pricey. But, if we had gone ahead and booked the Auckland – Dunedin flights we would have had to part with an extra $1000. The point of this post is not to take a dig at Air New Zealand because in think they are a fantastic airline. What I am trying to get across is that the next time you are making travel arrangements and the fares are a little steep, do a bit of thinking outside the box for cheaper options.

Note: when searching for flights I turn to Webjet.co.nz to see what options are out there. Once I have found something suitable I go to the particular airlines site and if they have the same fare available I make the booking directly through them. By doing this I avoid paying Webjet’s $20.90 fee for domestic flights.

If you are one of those people that are always on the look out for discount offers to save you money you need to take a look at Groupon if you haven’t already done so. Groupon is a service that features massive daily discounts (50% to 90%) on goods and services in your city ranging from restaurants to stores and even special events.

How it works is that you check in with them on a daily basis or sign up for email alerts to see what deal is on offer for the day. They also have iPhone and Android applications which with the use of GPS make searching for Groupons in your locale that much easier.

The only catch that I can think of is that in order to take advantage of the daily deal a minimum number of people have to sign up for it. Once the required number has been reached, the deal is activated for everyone to enjoy.

A number of services such a Groupon are usually only limited to the United States but the good thing with them is that they are available to users in cities across the world. Another bonus is their referral program where you get $10 Groupon Bucks when a friend you have referred gets their first Groupon. Groupon Bucks can be used towards future Groupon purchases and best of all, they never expire and there is no limit as to how much you can earn!

There you have it, another great way to save yourself a few dollars and if you play your cards right and get lots of people to sign up you could be saving even more!

Learn How Groupon Works! from The Point on Vimeo.

When it comes to iPhone apps there are many people out there who have made a killing by coming with something and selling it to the masses for $0.99. Not all of use are technically minded enough to build an application for a smartphone. We may have a good concept in mind but hit a brick wall when it comes to developing it. You can however do what Chris Guthrie has done and look for someone on oDesk and get them to develop the app for you.

If you don’t want to get that far in and are looking for an easy way of making a bit of money with your smartphone, you may want to try out WeReward. It is a mobile platform where you get rewarded for carry out certain tasks and actions. These tasks can be something as simple as taking a picture of yourself at a certain restaurant and sharing the experience on Twitter or Facebook to get rewarded.

Each point is worth a penny and you can cash out your points via PayPal once you have reached 1,000 points ($10). The WeReward site claims to have 15,000,000 businesses on their platform so getting to reach the payout amounts shouldn’t be a problem.

At launch it was only available as an iPhone app but now they have a android app available for download and soon enough they  will have Blackberry app too. All that you need to get started with them is:
- a compatible smartphone
- a Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare account
- a PayPal account

At the moment they are only available in the US but hopefully they will go global in the near future.

Cashback offers are all over the place and they seem very appealing as you are in theory getting whatever it is you are purchasing at a discount that is if you bother to redeem it. More often than not however, people just can’t seem to be bothered to fill out the forms or they don’t fill them out correctly and don’t get the cashback. That is exactly what the companies want you to do as they get to keep  more of your money.

Sometimes it may be better to just hunt around for ‘that thing’ at an up-front discounted price without the need for a mail-in redemption. If the cashback offer is your best choice then make sure you take time out to:

• read the fine print to see what you need to include to get your rebate – as is the case with just about everything out there, the small print is where we usually get caught out
• fill out the form correctly
• fill it out in a timely manner and make sure to mail it off well before the closing date
• take copies of everything – if you experience any problems later down the line you will have proof to back-up your claim

Rebate offers can seem to be more of a pain to redeem than they are worth but the way I see it, if you do purchase an item that has a cashback offer it is worth your while to take a few minutes to follow the steps above. Stop telling yourself that you don’t have time to fill out the forms or that it’s just not worth it or not bother at all. It is after all a few more dollars back into YOUR pocket.

Forget about 5 degrees of separation. As far as 2degrees sees it, there are only two degrees of separation between people in New Zealand and they want to make it even easier and hopefully cheaper for them to communicate. They are set to launch New Zealand’s third mobile network in August which with the added competition will mean cheaper calls all across the board.

It is no secret that it costs a bit for Kiwi’s to make mobile calls and that the Commerece Commission is trying to change all of that and get Telecom and Vodafone’s rates lowered. As you can imagine, the two networks see their rates as being justified and don’t want that to happen. A third operator in the mobile network market may see an all around redution in call prices especially since 2degrees promises to have everyone talking more for a whole lot less.

With 2degrees set to launch next month, they are getting peole to join the ‘Great New Zealand Chinwag‘ where all you need to do is enter your details to get a free 2degrees sim card loaded with $5 of free calling.

It doesn’t hurt to join the Chinwag and get a free SIM card and If 2degrees does live up to their promises of cheaper calls, it could very well be the network of choice if you want to save money. We will just have to wait a few more weeks to see just what they have in store for us.

Here is their TV commercial if you haven’t already seen it: