Dick's Sporting Goods -- $59.49
For some time now, the Daughter has had a pair of boots on her clothing wish-list. A couple of weeks ago she moved those boots from her out-of-my-own-clothing-budget list over to my what-do-the-kids-want-for-Christmas gift suggestion list. 
It seemed like a reasonable request to me -- especially since the only other item on The Daughter's list is a Jonas Brothers [don't ask] wall calendar.
The Daughter is clear that she does not want a pair of Uggs. She knows what Uggs cost and simply isn't comfortable having someone pay that much for an article of clothing.
She has tried on quite a few pair of boots in places like DWS, Target, Shoe Carnival, Off Broadway shoes, Kohls -- everywhere she's been in the past two months that has boots in stock. So far, she hasn't found a pair that has all of the features she's been looking for (comfort, quality, price, color, and size).
So the other day I hit the Information Superhighway for a little boot browsing. By first looking for boots of the right style and then reading customer reviews, I narrowed my search down to a style offered by EMU Australia called "Bronte Lo" in chestnut. They seemed to be exactly the style The Daughter was seeking, were very well rated by reviewers, appeared to be high quality and made from high-quality products, and, though slightly on the pricey side, are half the price of Ugg boots.
The next step was to show them to The Daughter. She agreed that, at least on a computer screen, the boots appear to be what she's looking for. Color on a monitor is hard to gauge and the chestnut color appears quite differently on different sites.
Naturally, my preference would have been to find a local source for EMU boots so The Daughter could see, feel, and wear the boots before buying them. I have enough experience with buying clothing online for kids to know that any savings realized by online bargain shopping can quickly disappear in shipping costs. But the EMU Australia website only listed two local retailers without a reasonable driving distance and neither of those stores ended up carrying the style we were looking for.
So I went back online today and decided to get the best deal I could find. First I Googled the boots and used the "shopping" tab to help narrow my results. Unfortunately, using Google Shopping as a means of comparison shopping isn't as productive as it used to be.
My next step was Amazon.com. The best price on Amazon was the best price overall on the web -- $53.99. That's $11.00 better than the next lowest Amazon price and $16.00 less than the average price overall. Even better, we still have a $39. Amazon gift certificate balance that I could apply to the total. At first (and second, and maybe even third) glance, this low price seemed to clearly be the best option.
But I kept my head and looked deeper into the total cost of the boots before making the Amazon purchase.
First I checked on shipping costs. The lowest price seller charged $9.99 for shipping bringing the cost to $63.99. That brought the cheapest seller within $1.00 of the second cheapest seller. A quick glance at the seller's return and refund policies was the final strike against them. If the boots have to be returned, I have to pay shipping costs and I'm be issued a merchandise credit; no cash refunds offered.
So I took a closer look at the second best price. Their return and refund policy was slightly better in that they offered either a credit or a refund but, again, return shipping would have come out of my pocket. Time to look further.
Piperlime and Zappos were the most obvious choices as both are large, have good reputations, and offer free shipping -- even for returns. But I already knew that Piperlime didn't have the right size in stock and Zappos doesn't even carry the coveted style in adult sizes. So I went back to Google.
This time through, Dick's Sporting Goods caught my eye. The price, $69.99, was the same as most the big name stores. Okay, check the details: Free shipping? Check. Free return shipping? Yup. Return for exchange or refund? You betcha'. Size, color, and style in stock? According to the website, yes.
Okay, now we're getting somewhere but can we sweeten the deal even more?
Taking a page from Pinyo's book, the next thing I did was Google for a "Dick's Sporting Goods coupon" and found one for 15% off on CouponAlbum.com. That took $10.50 off my total. Next I checked eBates and learned they were offering 3% cash back for Dick's -- by my calculations that's another $1.78 saved. Finally, I charged the purchase to my American Express Blue Cash card which, according to my current cash back level, will result in an additional 1.5% ($0.89) savings.
My final cost, for boots that I still don't know whether or not The Daughter will like: $56.82.
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One Comment
That’s awesome. 15%, 3%, and 1.5%…wow.
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