My
favourite cheapest best place at the
moment for bargain DVDs is the More
Buying Choices option on most Amazon
sales pages. This is where individuals
and companies can sell stuff under the
Amazon umbrella - Amazon itself charges
your credit card and does the admin.
Just go to amazon.co.uk,
look up the thing you want to buy and
then look to the right of the screen
for the More Buying Choices
section. Sometimes these prices are
even half Amazon's normal price, and
the 
quality
is explained in the description (either
Used - Acceptable, Used -
Good, Used - Like New or
New). Don't like the idea of
buying a used DVD? Go on! it's environmentally
friendly to recycle!!! and really, in
my experience, you can buy a cheap used
like new DVD and you can't tell the
difference from new (the used one won't
have a cellophane wrapper, but that's
about all). I have bought about ten
things, most of them second-hand, through
these traders and had no problems at
all. All DVDs are £1.24 for postage
and packing. Only one possible drawback
here is that if you buy through the
traders you can't get the standard Amazon
super saver delivery which might make
a difference if you are buying a few
things at once (over £15 you can
get free delivery albeit a few days
slower than normal delivery). Thing
is that most times even with the postage
added the traders can be considerably
cheaper than Amazon's main price. Aside
from the traders, then Amazon itself
is one of the most trusted and consistently
one of the cheapest places to buy DVDs
anywhere. (You
may wonder why Amazon bothers with these
traders as they seem to consistently
underprice them. Well, the reason probably
is that Amazon gets quite a chunky percentage
of the sale and if they offer this service
to their customers they might not be
tempted to look elsewhere - having said
this you should look elsewhere
because Amazon and the traders are not
always the cheapest place to buy DVDs.)
Play.com:
These are worth a look, although are
generally more expensive than the
Amazon main site, but they have special
offers which are competitive. Play.com
also have a PlayTrade section where
new and used items are sold. I've
just bought something for the first
time from one of these traders and,
whilst it is only two days ago and
the item hasn't been delivered yet,
the transaction went through fine.
The nice thing about play.com is that
there is no postage to pay on anything
so you can quickly see what the cost
of the purchase is. The trouble is
that often even with free postage
and packing it is sometimes more expensive
than Amazon traders with the P&P
added. Comically on more than one
occasion the price from the PlayTrade
traders for a dvd is higher than the
main play.com price, don't know what's
going on there or why they bother.
HMV.com
I have now bought two items from hmv.com
and both times the item was excellent
value, but you have to shop around
and get lucky. Generally the prices
here are nothing to write home about,
sometimes they are quite expensive.
But they are worth a look and they
have short term special offers which
can be unbeatable. While researching
this article I found a bargain on
HMV through price comparison site
find-dvd.co.uk, below. I had a few
problems with the HMV site in that
it crashed after I put in the order
first time today. I tried again a
bit later and the order seemed to
go through second time without any
problems. Site certainly seems slow.
A
few of the price comparison sites:
Perhaps
one day the price comparison sites
will improve so that you don't need
to look anywhere else. We aren't there
yet however, so use the price comparison
sites as a guide only and check the
direct sites for yourself to make
sure you have found the best bargain...
find-dvd.co.uk:
Nice interface here and it returns
a list of prices it has found from
the cheapest up to the comically overpriced.
When testing it for this article I
found a bargain, clicked through to
the site and bought it. I will definitely
use this site again, however it doesn't
always seem to return the sometimes
amazingly cheap Amazon traders or
play.com traders details. This site
is definitely a place to check before
you buy if you are looking for a bargain.
kelkoo.co.uk:
I have always felt disappointed with
this price comparison site. I have
over the years of using it found a
couple of cheap dvds but the hit rate
is low. In tests this morning it missed
my test bargain completely.
Google
Shopping. I am completely in love
with the search engine, of course,
but their shopping search is nothing
to write home about at the moment.
In my test search this morning it
didn't find the cheap 'test' bargain
I knew was out there, or it might
have done but it was too far down
the returned search terms list - I
certainly didn't see it. There were
also a lot of irrelevant items returned
too. Hopefully this will improve over
time.
Ebay:
If you are looking for the strange
and esoteric then Ebay is still the
best bet. For mainstream dvds however
you take your chances. I have bought
a good deal of the public domain content
for my other sites from Ebay - it
is a vibrant market filled with loads
of rough and tumble, as you would
expect in a large street market. Had
a couple of problems with sellers,
one cancelled the purchase after I
had put in a successful bid and paid
for it, he refunded the money but
it was annoying. Had a problem about
a month ago when the person (who was
new to Ebay so had no stars) just
took the money and then killed his
shop. Paypal refunded the money through
their complaints procedure after about
a month. Tips you will see everywhere
and must always be followed: Always
use Paypal with Ebay, never send postal
orders or cheques through the post
or deal with the seller outside of
the Ebay system.
Cheap
DVD bargains on Snail Street:
On
the high street if you have a Cash
Converters take a look in there for
quality second hand (and sometimes
like new) DVDs and box sets of TV
shows - they probably are the cheapest
national brand on the high street
and they check the DVDs before they
sell them. Only had a couple of problems
and the return was handled promptly
and without fuss.
