John Curley’s guide to Cyber Monday savings

Millions of shoppers will be hitting the online stores for what’s expected to be a huge day of Cyber Monday sales, among them will be KIRO Radio’s John Curley.

John’s on the hunt for a new TV, the first one he’s bought in years. After a little research, he’s convinced he’s come up with a surefire way to get the best deal, without having to spend the day online.

Curley started by figuring out the ballpark price for a TV he wanted through Price Grabber, one of a number of sites that identifies the best price and sends you an alert when it finds the best deal.

“The price alert sends you automatic emails throughout the entire day that it’s searching for you to try to find you the price that you want,” he says.

He’s also getting some help from Invisible Hand, one of several browser extensions available that automatically search for the best price and notifies you when it finds an even better deal.

Another popular online tool this year is Decide.com, a Seattle startup that not only shows you the best prices, it also predicts the best time to buy based on a complex algorithm. It even guarantees to pay the difference if a price drops below the posted price on over 200,000 popular products.

But Curley isn’t stopping there. He’s also discovered several sites offering coupon codes and rebates for even bigger savings. Among his favorites, Ebates and Retail Me Not.

“They’ll show you a coupon code. Put that in, it saves you even more money,” Curley says.

If he ultimately gets the TV from Amazon, he’s also figured out how to get free shipping. While many Amazon customers pay $70 to get free shipping via the company’s Amazon Prime program, Curley discovered a workaround. By visiting Amazon.com/mom or Amazon.com/student, you can get free shipping for three months.

“Then after the three months you can dump it,” he says.

Thanks to all this, Curley is convinced he’ll get the best deal possible on his new TV, plus he won’t make the boss mad by spending all day surfing the web at work to do it.

“It is so cool to get an email saying ‘Ding, here’s your TV for $530, plus no shipping, plus here’s the coupon code,’ that’s money in your pocket.”