Want to save some money shopping on Amazon? If you have a VPN service, you can sometimes net a nice discount on the huge Internet retail site.
How it Works
Amazon offers different prices on some items depending upon where you’re located and other factors.
The location-based pricing differences are easy enough to understand. If you rent a movie in the US, for instance, it might be cheaper than you’d get it for if you were located in the UK.
The other issues are more complex. Amazon changes some of its pricing based on information that it receives from third parties, so there are quite a few factors other than your location that go into the final price you pay for anything you get from the site.
Changing your location, however, is a trivial affair if you have a VPN service. Doing so may net you much cheaper prices than you’d get shopping from your home nation.
The first thing you’ll want to do is figure out which version of Amazon is going to offer you the cheapest price on any given item.
CheapRiver.com has a tool you can use to get the lowest Amazon price on books. We’ll use it for our example of how to save money on Amazon.
Our example shopper is located in Chile and wants a copy of The Road to Madness, a collection of stories by early 20th Century weird fiction author HP Lovecraft. CheapRiver allows you to set your home nation and execute a search. Other comparison sites might work a bit differently, so adjust how you do this accordingly.
We search for the book title and get the results. In the screenshot below, you can see that buying from the US is the cheapest option, so that’s the Amazon we’ll want to shop at. Note that CheapRiver is particularly well designed in that it includes shipping costs.
Using Your VPN to Get to the Right Site
Use your VPN client to select a server located in the US. Go to the Amazon site and search for the book. You’ll find the price that CheapRiver showed.
All that’s left is to order it.
But, wait, what about payment methods? Amazon doesn’t take Bitcoin directly, so how are you supposed to pay for your items without getting hit with the higher price charged in your own nation?
Get a Gift Card
You can use an Amazon Gift Card to purchase the item at the local rate for the site you’re on.
Remember that the shipping will cost quite a bit in some cases, depending upon where you are, so you might actually be better off buying from a site that’s closer to you geographically, even if the site has slightly higher prices than a version in another nation.
The best bet is to choose the cheapest shipping option possible. That might mean something of a wait, but it might well be worth it considering the money you stand to save.
Any of our top VPN providers will allow you to change your apparent location, so take your pick, get a gift card and start saving!
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