How To Knock £100 Off Of Anything Thursday, November 20th Money Making, Security

Ok, before I go into this, let me state that I have not done this – its a wee bit naughty if you ask me, but the theory itself is sound as a pound…just don’t let the lions know I let on to this secret. This idea can, in theory, allow you to get £100 or more off of a lot of things, yet it borders on the realm of the unethical. I’d like to hear your views on it, although I probably know what they will be, lol.

Ethical Protection Statement: I only provide the following below to give you an idea of how susceptible some ’systems’ are, and to allow you to possibly protect yourself against it

I first came up with this idea about a year or so ago, when I was short of cash and really wanted to buy a new TV. I wanted the best TV I could get but didn’t want to pay full price either. I looked around, online and offline to try and find the best deal I could. Now what you usually find is a lot of offers and deals but never an ideal price. Well I went into one shop to just have a browse, and I noticed a sign where they claimed they had the cheapest prices on TV’s, and that if you could find a price cheaper than theirs, they would match it. Turns out a lot of shops have these offers nowadays! I looked at a couple of the TV’s in the shop and knew that they couldn’t be the cheapest prices, and that surely somewhere online would offer better rates. Then it hit me – what’s to stop me taking the HTML from an online site that sells the TV, change the price, print it off and claim that its cheaper! Surely a great idea no?

Well, I thought about it some more, and then realised that printing off the page probably wouldn’t be enough proof for them. I mean, as soon as they log onto the website they will be able to see that the price is different, and will know that something is amiss…so how do we get round this? Well, its going to take some work…

Firstly, go into the shop you wish to ‘target’, and note down the item you want, along with the model number etc. Once home, you want to start building a website that looks like an online retailer. Now there are many ‘ready-to-go’ templates out there that you can get essentially for free – the website doesn’t have to be pretty either, it just needs to hold up to inspection. Then you want to enter a selection of products, which includes the item you want to purchase (hence whywe grab the model number etc.) - this you mark up at whatever price you wish to pay for it – so say its a £500 TV, you could mark it up as £399. Now you can print off the details of the TV, and when handed to the shop owner, they can also visit the site to check that the price matches! Ahh, but what if they try to put a purchase through, and buy the TV from you? Surely that will put you out of pocket very quickly! Well, here’s where we get even sneakier – when they try to go to the checkout, we want to change the files so that the checkout page presents a maintenance page, saying that the site is currently experiencing difficulties and will hopefully be back up soon. Here you can provide an email address – or if your feeling even sneakier, a phone number, of which on the other end is an accomplice. The accomplice can then say that they are offering the TV for that amount as they have ’special relations’ with the suppliers or something similar.

There are flaws in this plan, as its possible that the shop you visit will say that it won’t do you the price deal because of ’such and such’, so you might want to get someone to ask the shop owners for the terms of the price match/bust offer, before you start doing the above. Its important that you don’t ask personally, as they will remember you and realise that its a potential scam. If you also know the terms and conditions, and the company still refuses, you can then ask them to present their terms, of which you should be all in order with. Sadly, most of the time it is upto the seller though if they decide to go through with it. Another potential issue is the cost of setting up the site, with phone numbers etc.

Well there you have it, it’s not the worlds most perfect plan, and it does have a couple of issues, but it is a method of knocking a significant price off of an item you might wish to purchase! Maybe I will set up the site for you guys and then charge a pound to list the items you want to get offline ;)

Dan