eBay used to be the default place to sell concert tickets and tickets for other events if you could no longer use them. There were also a lot of people selling tickets on eBay making large profits on the original cost price of the tickets. But can you still sell tickets on eBay? Continue reading Can You Still Sell Tickets on eBay?
Category Archives: Shopping
What to Buy People for Christmas and Birthday Presents
So we often struggle to know what to buy people for Christmas or for their birthdays. Coming up with gift ideas can be a tricky thing at the best of times. Well there is a possible solution that will help you out if you are stuck for ideas.
Most people (well I guess maybe only in a certain age group – you may struggle with the older generation) will be users of Amazon. And as you may know yourself, Amazon have a service called ‘wish list’. You can add things to your own wish list for other people to buy for you but the great thing is that if you want to find out what to buy someone, you can search their own wishlist. You can find an Amazon wishlist either by searching with the person’s name or with their email address. if they have a unique name then this can be easy enough to do but if they have a common name then that may not be a great way to search. So, best bet is to use their email address.
Once you have found a wishlist for someone you can see when they put stuff on their wishlist, so it may be better to buy them something that they have added recently so that there is less likelihood that they have already bought it for themselves and forgotten to take it off their wishlist.
The other great thing is that if you buy something through their wishlist then it is then removed from the list so that if someone else goes to look at their list it is no longer on there so they do not get duplicate presents.
Both Amazon US and Amazon UK have the wishlist service and you can check them out here:
Cheap Bottled Water
It is important for people to drink enough water but unfortunately some people can be against drinking tap water – whether that be from the taste or the fact that we may not know exactly what chemicals go into our tap water which can be slightly worrying. Although all tap water in the US and UK must meet certain standards, there are some people who, for their own reasons, prefer to drink bottled water. Whether or not bottled water is better for us can be disputed but it looks like bottled water is here to stay for the time being at least.
Personally I have different preferences depending on which country I am in at the time, as tap water tastes different in each country. I would prefer to drink tap water wherever it tastes OK, but maybe in some countries where I am not aware of what is being added to the water I feel like it is advisable to be a bit cautious on this.
However, there is a solution which means that you can drink tap water and filter it while you drink it, so that it tastes and is as ‘clean’ as bottled water, but without the waste of throwing away the empty bottle, and I will give details of this below.
Bottled Water – Too Much Waste
However, I do have an issue with bottled water in that it just produces far too much waste. Bottled water is amongst the highest rising beverage in terms of sales over the last few decades. Although the bottles are recyclable, the incidence of people recycling water bottles is quite low in the USA in particular, but also in other countries. This means that the build up of plastic waste is excessive. Over 50 billion bottles of water are consumed in the US every year and this figure is rising and not enough of these bottles are being recycled. So it is important that we find a way either to recycle more water bottles or to use less of them.
Drinking Filtered Tap Water
So here is a revolutionary new way to effectively drink bottled water, but to drink it out of your tap, and not have the problem of having to keep recycling the bottles, or producing lots of plastic waste.
This new product is called the Bobble and it is an FDA approved, BPA free, refillable, reusable and recyclable bottle that you can use as much as you like.
To use the Bobble, you just fill it up with tap water – it is like a sports water bottle and whenever you drink out of it, it automatically filters the water as you drink it. The filtered water meets all of the FDA standards for drinking water and the filter eliminates toxins and chemicals such as chlorine as well as other organic contaminants.
Each filter lasts for around 2 months or 300 fills of the bottle and is fully recyclable itself. The Bobble comes in 3 sizes, and for around $10 or under you can get the equivalent of 300 bottles of water – so effectively a price of under 4c a bottle, so this also makes financial sense if you are used to buying bottled water.
Check out the links for the Bobble in the UK and the US below:
How To Get Cheap Furniture
When times are tough it is vital to save as much money as you can when buying goods. One way to do this is to buy second hand rather than buying new. There are many bargains to be had buying second hand furniture in particular and for large pieces people are often happy to get rid of furniture for a low price just so that they can get rid of it, particularly when they are moving house and they have no room for it in their new place.
So, if you are looking for furniture then think about going for a second hand set. For example, you many see the exact model that you like in a shop and then you can pick and choose the pieces from that set from either online ads or from somewhere like eBay. eBay is a great place to pick up furniture second hand as you can set up an alert to advise you when someone puts something up for sale that you might be interested in. You can also set up a geographical limit so that the furniture is within reach of you picking it up.
I have a great example of this myself where I picked up an Ikea Malm wardrobe for £10, a fraction of the new price. I set up an alert in eBay to warn me whenever anyone posted an ad that included the terms ‘Ikea Malm Wardrobe’ within 20km of my address. I had to wait a few weeks for one that sounded perfect for me but I got it as the only bidder for that knock down price. Ok so I had to go and pick it up but that was worth the trip.
you can often pick up complete sets of furniture but you may need to have a little bit of patience to get exactly the pieces that you want. On the flip side of the coin I had to get rid of a piece of bedroom furniture a few years ago and someone actually came from about 200 miles away to pick it up as it was exactly the matching piece that they needed.
So, set up your alert with your key words in and wait for Ikea to notify you of available pieces. You don’t have to go for the first one that you see as there will likely be more, so have a bit of patience and you are likely to be able to save yourself a lot of money.
Buy Books In The UK
If you are looking to buy books in the UK, and at a good price then you have a few options. There are still a few high street shops selling books like Waterstones and Borders but overall book sellers are moving onto the internet where you can search for the best prices on books that you want.
The advantage of book stores is that you can browse through shelves of books until you find one that takes your fancy by reading the back cover etc. Book stores may also have special offers on 3 for 2 books etc that you can’t get online. Also if you need a book straight away then you can just pick one up and take it home.
However, if you are looking for a particular book and you know what you want, then you don’t necessarily need to go to a bookshop. The most popular place to buy books for years has been Amazon, and many people go there by default when looking for books as they know that they are a trusted retailer.
But, there are many more booksellers on the internet and quite often you can find one that will sell the book you are looking for, for less than you have to pay on Amazon. One of these cheaper book stores is Abe Books which source there books from many areas, including abroad. Just enter the ISBN of the book you are looking for and it will give you a selection of sellers to choose from.
AbeBooks sells new, second-hand and collectible books. I recently looked for a technical book that was £19.79 on Amazon and I managed to get it for around £3 less on AbeBooks – it was a new book too so I was surprised that I could get it at such a low cost compared to the Amazon price.