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          March 29, 2000

          How to Save $60 in 52 Minutes in 4 Easy
          Stages

          By STACY KRAVETZ

          [F] or this shopping excursion I knew
              exactly what I wanted: a Palm V. That
          made searching easier, because I could
          enter the keyword "Palm V" instead of
          "handheld organizer," narrowing the
          search results significantly. The most
          obvious place to shop was Palm Inc.'s own
          Web site, www.palm.com. The price for a
          Palm V, $329, was a barometer that I
          could use to judge the discounters. The
          site also gave a detailed description of
          the organizer, which helped me confirm
          that it was the model I wanted.

          WAITING FOR A BID The reverse-auction
          sites required some time. On www
          .liquidprice.com, I had a choice: a flash
          bid, where I set the price I was willing
          to pay and waited six hours to see
          whether a retailer agreed to my price. If
          there was a match, the Palm V would be
          charged to my credit card and shipped.

          The other       -------------------------
          option required [Image]
          two business
          days of
          bartering among Introduction
          sites to see    * New Species, Old
          which one       Struggle
          proffered the
          lowest price. I Forum
          chose the       * Join a Discussion on
          two-day option  E-Commerce
          and waited for  -------------------------
          a bid. The best price was $324, including
          shipping and tax.

          SHOPPING FOR PRICE Next, I went to a
          price-comparison engine, which scanned
          sites offering the Palm V. Pricegrabber
          .com found merchants who were offering
          different prices, the lowest of which
          were at www.pcwonders.com, www.eCOST .com
          and Accompany. PCwonders offered the Palm
          V for $259.89 plus $10.97 shipping by
          ground. The engine eCOST offered it for
          $259.99 plus $22.21 tax and $9.95
          shipping, a total of $292.15. Accompany,
          which lumps buyers together to obtain a
          group discount, offered $264.95 with free
          shipping, but tax added $22.

          WHAT PRICE MILES? Lest I neglect a
          discounting option, I went to
          clickrewards .com, which linked to
          outpost.com, offering up to 1,000 airline
          miles for shopping on its site. The Palm
          V, in the $200-to-$299 range, was good
          for 200 miles.

          Outpost offered free overnight delivery
          as a standard feature, but the prices
          were higher. The lowest price was $299,
          about 10 percent higher than the price
          through PCwonders. It came down to
          priorities: How much were those 200
          airline miles worth, and did I really
          need the Palm V overnight?

          COMPARING COMPARISONS One more look at a
          pricing engine and I would feel fairly
          confident making my purchase. I tried
          www.dealtime.com, which found the same
          three top listings as PriceGrabber, but
          in a different order. Accompany beat the
          other two by offering a group discount
          price of $254.95, but the tax put the
          total at $275.98, higher than PCwonders'
          $270.86, including shipping.

          Total time for this shopping trip, which
          saved $60 off the retail price: 52
          minutes. Number of e-mail messages
          offering me deals since my shopping
          excursion: 13.



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