Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Wholesale Club Shopping Costco and BJs Review

!±8± Wholesale Club Shopping Costco and BJs Review

Wholesale Club Shopping Online

OK! Before you read my entire article, I will tell you the summary. Costco and BJs are worth giving a one year membership a try. Costco will even refund you at anytime if you are unhappy.

Worst case, a wholesale club membership only costs you a couple of dollars a months. You spend more than that on a cup of coffee. Wholesale clubs become money drains only when you feel obligated to use your wholesale club for everything because you paid a membership fee. That is not necessary to get your money's worth out of a wholesale club membership. If you have a wholesale club membership, that does not mean you have to buy everything there!

I can only comment on Costco and BJs wholesale clubs. I have never used Sam's Club even though it is right across the straight from their owner, my favorite nemesis, Walmart. I, like most people, have a love hate relationship with Walmart. You usually can't beat the prices but hate what they stand for. The truth is for a savings point of view, Walmart offer many items in bulk now. I shop there enough to stock up on TP and paper towels without paying a wholesale club membership. (Walmart should be paying me a membership fee! or at least offer a frequent shopper club!)

I had been a member of BJs for 10 yrs, until I let my membership lapse last month. I realized my once weekly visits had lapsed into every couple of months, to longer than 3 months stretches. I do not need Bjs anymore because I have the time to comparison shop and can get out more easliy now that the kids are in school.

I have been a member of Costco for 2 yrs with a business professional membership. I use Costco for many of my business purchases so I switched to only using Costco instead of having both memberships. Bjs and Costco carry most of the same things. Costco has a more ofice supplies, toys, etcs I need for my online retail business.

I feel Costco and Bjs are equally professional and offer good customer service. BJs has the benefit of accepting MFR coupons and accepts all major credit cards! Costco only accepts checks and American Express in their warehouses (they do accept all major credit cards online though) BJs lines seem to move very quickly, and their aisles, at least at the ones I have been to, are better organized.

BJs was a lifesaver when my children were babies. With triplets plus one, I went through alot of diapers and baby wipes. OK, now I need toilet paper in bulk, but as I mentioned before, I can get bulk TP at Walmart and Target too. I do have the luxury of many shopping choices nearby.

When my kids were babies, I could not follow the sales for the best prices because getting out with 4 babies was tough! BJs also offered the huge double seater shopping carts. My membership fee was worth the ability to safely strap all 4 kids and do all of my shopping plus get a bunch of boxes I could use for packing and shipping on my eBay business! (How did I strap in 4 kids? Well, the shopping carts with the toy car in front fit 2 kids, and the shopping cart also had double seater in the carriage. So worth it!)

I could get my eyeglasses reasonably at BJs, tires for the minivan, coffee and even my copy of People magazine - two of my few vices. I also purchased alot of our clothes there. Quality clothes like Levi's jeans, Dockers Khakis, Polo Oxfords, and Carters clothes for the kids. We stocked up on socks and undies too.

So although the grocery prices were not great compared to what I could find at local supermarkets, the convenience more than made up for it for me.

With small kids, one stop shopping is best! Of course, I would always end buying stitckers, snacks... loved the crossiants I would eat two in the car while driving around with all 4 kids sound sleep surrounded by our BJs loot.

Of course, the crossiants would go stale in a day, and I actually ended up paying a fortune for the two I ate! Some things just aren't meant to be purchased in bulk. Cheerios, Huggies, wipes, and paper towels... yeah families with small kids need those in bulk!

I use Costco mostly for business purchases. I also find the same deals as BJ's on name brand clothes for my family. Their prices are good on toys and gift items. I am an authorized retailer for many of the same MFRs represented at Costco in the toy, furniture and gift departments. I can tell you the Costco markup over actual wholesale is only 10-12%. You are getting a great deal. I use them to supplement my stores when the MFR has a backorder on a certain item. AND there are also alot of eBay sellers making a nice profit off of dropshipping Costco items to customers! That is how good their prices can be!

I use Costco for seasonal and big purchases, like tires. We will eventually get that extra shed we need. I will make most of my big purchases and business purchases ONLINE and have them shipping to my front door. Now you can wholesale club comparison shop from your couch. Both BJs and Costco have great websites, and good deals online.

Costco and Bjs carry major name brand toys, bedding, baby, and electronics items online that may not be available in their warehouses near you. They even have exclusives with some MFRs on certain products. For example, if you want the most gigantic wooden Barbie Dollhouse by Kidkraft, you can only find the Grand Villa at Costco.com.

Costco also had the best and fastest photo processing for our holiday photo cards this year. I created and ordered our Christmas photo cards online on a Friday night, and picked them up at my local Costco Saturday morning.

When you are trying to decide if the - is worth the membership, look beyond bulk purchasing rotten tomatoes! Look at what you can get and still be thirfty, online!

I never had success with fresh fruits and veggies at BJs. Nothing ever lasted long enough for me to get my money's worth. I prefer paying money for fresh produce. The only exception is that Costco does have some cool exotic foods, and ya gotta love their bakery!

Buying in bulk can save you money. You have more choices now than when wholesale clubs first started popping up. you have Target, Walmart and similiar stores. You also have wholesale clubs online on the internet. BJs and Costco are definitely worth a try!


Wholesale Club Shopping Costco and BJs Review

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Sunday, October 23, 2011

Buying Disposable Diapers on eBay

!±8± Buying Disposable Diapers on eBay

Everyone knows that eBay is good for two things, finding a great deal, and thinking you have a good deal, but subsequently finding out you overpaid tremendously. A recent search of eBay showed that they have almost 20,000 listings for "diapers". It would take you an unthinkably long time to go through all of these results. Even worse, when you find something, how do you know if that price is really a good deal or not?

Introduction to buying diapers on eBay:

The first thing to do is to simply search for diapers, but to get the right results, normally type in the brand name, type and size you are looking for. Sometimes you can find good deals by just typing in words like "diapers" or other search terms, in case someone misspelled Huggies, Pampers, Luvs, Etc. This is impractical though as we previously mentioned there were almost 20,000 listings on eBay, but you might get lucky. In addition though, most sales on eBay use the "buy it now" feature, meaning that diapers are not listed in auction format, and finding a mislabeled package of diapers where you can "snipe" it is probably not going to happen.

Buying diapers on eBay, and their search and sort functions:

Initially, you can type "diapers" in the search box on eBay. This will give you a list of roughly 20,000 (or so, depending on the number of active listings, etc.). After searching "diapers", there is a link on the left-hand side of your screen under the bold heading of "Categories", which says "disposable diapers". Click this link, and your results will drop several thousand (a recent search diminished this by roughly 18,000 results). One word of caution is that this will only show those results in this category. Sometimes people list their items in the wrong or different category and if you restrict the category here, you may miss some good deals. To avoid this, you can search by brand name and size in the search bar, which we detail later.

The first thing you can do is to specify the sort functions. One of the first methods is to sort by newly posted listings. Sometimes people post a "buy it now" listing with a price that is really low. By searching these newly posted listings, sometimes you can take advantage of these very low prices first. Normally though, these listings get picked over pretty quickly, and you will want to stop looking after listings have been on eBay for several hours (usually about 5 hours is where the author stops).

If this does not work, then select the "auctions only" button, and sort for "items ending soonest". This will give you a list of all of the auctions that are ending in the next few minutes. Many times you can find packages of diapers that no one has bid on. Make sure you check the price per diaper before you bid though. Also, make sure you include any shipping charges (many sellers no longer charge shipping, but sometimes, the shipping charges can be , or , so be very careful about this).

Another search method is to sort by price + shipping lowest first. Normally, you should select the "buy it now" only tab in the center of the eBay screen, because many people list auctions at Body.99 or some other small amount. Therefore, by looking at the "buy it now" only links, you will be able to find the least expensive deals.

A final note is that you can always do the aforementioned searches and filters with a search of "diapers", but you can further specify, for example, "Pampers Cruisers size 3" to get a list of more accurate searches. The problem with this level of detail in your search is that not every seller will list a size or the type (i.e. Cruisers in the above example). Therefore, broader searches should yield better savings, but unfortunately, they take more time. Keep in mind though, that many sellers sell similar items, coupons, or other things aside from diapers. In the "Categories" heading on the left side, you should always select "diapering", "diapers" or "disposable diapers". This will depend where you are, but this is the easiest way to narrow down items that are otherwise irrelevant to your searches.

Finding a good deal:

Finding sellers on eBay claiming to have the "best price", "lowest deal", etc. is usually marketing puffery. You have to be very careful about what you purchase, and again, a seller may have the lowest price on Huggies size 2, but might have an extraordinarily high price on Huggies size 3. The key is to make sure you do an apples-to-apples comparison between eBay, other websites, and even your local store. Sometimes, you can find diapers at your local store for much cheaper than you can on eBay, but generally eBay will at least be as competitive as your local store, and will often times, depending on how hard you look, have better deals than other online stores.

An example of this, is one eBay seller's website who claims to have the "bestselling diaper" and they have the "lowest price on eBay". This seller offered a box of Huggies diapers, which were available in five sizes. Size 1-2 offers 192 diapers for .99 at a cost of Body.21 per diaper. Buying at a warehouse club saves you .45 on a similar-sized package, and even purchasing at WalMart.com saves almost .00 over this package. These savings mean that you are paying almost .00 more buying this package on eBay. However, size 6 Huggies Sung and Dry from this seller offers a better deal than anyone else, at Body.01 less than anything else available.

Tips and tricks:

One of the tricks the author used in the past was to find damaged boxes of diapers. Bags of diapers are different from boxes. When a bag is punctured, the diapers are exposed, and subsequently whatever the bag is exposed to, the diapers inside are exposed to. Boxes are different, usually they have several individually wrapped packages. Therefore, if the box is smashed, cracked, cut, broken, etc. the packages inside often may be perfectly preserved. Although this is a risk, finding "ugly" boxes of diapers has proved to be a very big cost saver for the author's family.

Another tip is to use calculators, or to do your own research. There are a few sites that offer online calculators that make identifying whether a deal on eBay is good or not.

Finally, be aware that just because someone says "best", "cheapest", etc. on eBay, does not mean it is necessarily true. There are exceptional deals on eBay, but they are far and few between.


Buying Disposable Diapers on eBay

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Friday, October 21, 2011

Diaper Pricing Pitfalls - How Do I Know If I Have a Good Deal?

!±8± Diaper Pricing Pitfalls - How Do I Know If I Have a Good Deal?

Diapers are confusing. They come in almost uncountable varieties, brands, styles and more. Most brands have at least two or three different types of disposable diapers - for example, Pampers has Cruisers, Baby Dry, Swaddlers and Sensitive. After you weed through the type, you buy a package of diapers, including; convenience packs, economy packs, jumbo packs, bulk packs, jumbo box, value box, economy box... What is worse is that many places who sell diapers will actually sell up to 10 to 15 different package styles of the same style of diaper. An example of this is Diapers.com sells 11 different packages (not sizes, packages) of Pampers, Size 3 diapers, of which there are 6 different options of purchasing Pampers Cruisers. Now the purpose of an online store is to give the customer variety, but grocery stores are not much better. A recent trip to Target gave the author the option of purchasing 16 different types of Pampers, of which there were six different package quantities of Pampers Cruisers.

So, how do you make sense out of all this? Well, generally, it is true that the largest package is the best deal. Back to Diapers.com and their Cruisers, the largest package ranges in price per diaper of Body.2687 for size three to Body.4299 for size 6. However, buying just a slightly smaller quantity only increases your price per diaper by Body.0170 (size 3) to Body.0048 (size 6). In essence, there is almost no difference in prices, except that, based on average diapers used in a specific stage, the price savings from size 3 to size 6 will save you 5 over the time your child is in diapers.

Why would you buy a pack for less when you can get more? The answer is simple, and that is in the risk of having unused diapers. For example, assuming again specific averages of time spent in a specific size, buying the package that has more diapers will create 308 unused diapers, while the smaller package will only leave you with 112 unused diapers. Meaning, if you buy the bigger package, you will spend 0.37 on diapers that would not go to use, versus only .30. However, this means that you are buying two extra packages of the largest size, and one full extra package of the smaller size.

So, is the answer to buy smaller packages? Smaller packages do not offer better pricing, although, some pricing is decent, especially if you are not able to spend a pop for the biggest packages. In fact, when looking at packages priced at .99, the price per diaper was only Body.3016 to Body.4860 for size 3 and size 6 respectively. This means there is only a per diaper price difference of Body.06 to Body.08. This does add up though, and from the cheapest price to this one means that overall, you would spend an extra 6 on diapers. However, when looking at two other packages, one sells for .99 and another for .99, this skews the pricing. Both offer near identical pricing, except for a key difference, the package sold for .99 in sizes 4,5,6 is actually cheaper, by roughly Body.02 to Body.03 per diaper. The .99 packages offer a better deal than the more expensive package, except for size 3, which is only Body.005 per diaper higher. However, buying either of these two packages routinely will still cost 7 more than buying the cheapest diapers.

Finally, the worst offender is the "convenience" package. Even on diapers.com, where the site is supposed to offer some of the best prices on diapers - which it does for the most part - will ultimately break your budget. At .29 per package, this only saves you roughly .00 per package over the .99 pack, but, and this is a huge but, the price per diaper increases dramatically $.10 to $.14 per diaper more than the cheapest package. This creates an overall extra cost of 6 (based on average diaper use).

The final way to compare diapers is to look at the package that is the best deal and then figure out what the savings are versus the cheaper package. For example, the best deal (in size 3) is .99 for 160 diapers. Compare this to the packages at .49, .99 and .29 that have 76, 116 and 31 diapers respectively. This means, that when you buy any of the following, you are actually spending .29, .28 and .30 less buying the biggest package over the convenience packages.

Keep in mind that the previous discussion only concerns diapers from one size, at one store, and that store is a discount store that prides itself on offering the best prices. When buying diapers at a local store, the pricing changes dramatically.

The database used shows [1] that there are substantial price differences in diapers. The average lowest cost per diaper is Body.22, and the highest average cost is $.51. Therefore, this means you would spend over ,025.88 extra on diapers. If you have twins, triplets or quads, you might as well multiply this by that number, which is a decent used car, or a down payment on a new house. To demonstrate the difference in product prices, a comparison of the price difference by brand, type, size and the lowest and highest prices. The price differences range from a mere Body.04 per diaper to Body.37 per diaper. This means that again, based on that 7,000 figure, there is a potential of paying nearly ,570 more for diapers. Even at Body.04 per diaper though, based on 7,000 diapers, you are spending 0 more on diapers. Of course, the average price difference in the database was Body.15 per diaper, or ,057.75. The final thing to note is that the pricing database does not list sale prices, but only the regular prices. In addition, the database does not record "convenience" packages, or other items that are clearly a bad deal.

Lastly, buying diapers on sale or by using coupons can further decrease the cost per diaper by Body.05 to sometimes Body.10 or more. This adds up quickly, and can decrease your costs dramatically. Just saving Body.05 per diaper average, on the lowest prices (on average from the database), could mean paying only 0 for your baby's diapers. This is a stark contrast to the average highest price, which would mean you would pay (on average) Body.39 per diaper or ,701.91.

[1]This compares only Huggies, Pampers and Luvs, and in the common sizes. In addition, the author removed" Warehouse" store packages, along with preemie and newborn sizes to illustrate an apples-to-apples comparison.


Diaper Pricing Pitfalls - How Do I Know If I Have a Good Deal?

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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

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