My mission today was from one of my employees: Find a good printer for his mother-in-law, but make sure it's not expensive. Tough assignment, but I took it.
Step one was to visit staples.com, which is usually my first stop but never my last—until today. Seems they have a great Hewlett Packard laser printer for $179.99, but I knew 180 bucks was going to be too much. But wait, they have a promotion going on that says there is an instant rebate for 80 bucks off, bringing the cost to just under $100. Not bad, but if you knew this guy like I do, you would know that price was still probably going to be too expensive. Hmm, what's this little banner on the Staples Web site? Get a $50 rebate now through May 2 when you recycle any printer and buy another printer for $179 or more? I knew there was a reason why we kept all those broken printers and monitors in the supply closet.
So let's see what we got: an HP Laser printer for $179.99, less the $80 instant rebate, less the $50 recycling rebate, for a total cost of $49.99—$130 of savings within a matter of 10 minutes by shopping online.
Sounds like a great deal to me. I'm sure he'll be in good standing with his mother-in law when he brings it home tonight, especially after he told her about the money-saving prescription Web site I wrote about last week.
Charlie Stroller, president, CEO and CFO of Financial Advisor
magazine’s parent company CFPN, has 25 years' experience running
companies and has specialized in expense reduction and cost
containment. Those who know him can attest that he is an expert on
finding the best deals when it comes to both business and personal
expenditures.
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