Money-Saving Tip: Don't Assume All Deal Sites Offer Great Deals

Here's a little cautionary tale about automatically assuming all deal sites online actually contain, you know, great deals.

I was browsing on Fancy.com this afternoon and came across this Retro Pierced Carving Flowers Owl Necklace.

It was priced at $15 and had a whopping 567 likes on it -- which I thought was very interesting, considering Amazon sells an almost identical necklace for 79 cents!

I also found this Vintage Silver Copper Charm Owl Necklace on Fancy, which also retails for $15, and also looks suspiciously similar to the Vintage Owl Pendant Long Bronze Chain Necklace available on Amazon for $1.50.

Now, I don't mean to pick on Fancy.com here -- I actually really like the site.  It's got a great selection of gift ideas, and it has a terrific referral program (users get $1 in credit for every friend they refer, plus $10 in credit if the friend makes a purchase in 60 days, plus $5 in credit for every 10 referrals!)

In fact, the whole reason I was on the site was to use referral credit, and I found some great deals today (including a jewelry organizer that I bought myself as an early birthday gift.)

It just goes to show how easily shoppers can spend more money than they need to, just because they don't bother to price check an item against a couple of other websites.

And sometimes, the 'deals' can be downright deceptive -- I just got an email from another website this week, advertising a BOGO deal at the San Antonio Botanical Garden.  But when I did my research it turned out that their 'free' ticket was for a special exhibition inside the gardens -- that is actually free with any ticket purchase.

Moral of the story: take a minute or two to price-check and/or Google deals before whipping out your credit card for an online purchase!