Deal Locker maximizes online-shopping savings

July 11, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

I’m a huge fan of shopping online. I love how it affords me the convenience of shopping without having to leave my room. In fact, I’m already way past the point of wondering how I ever shopped without the Internet. And I’m not just talking about holiday shopping. I mean everyday shopping such as buying clothes, shoes, groceries, you name it.

No longer must I schlep down to the store, pay money to park, take the elevator, try and find the items I want, go back to the car, drive home and finally unload everything that I loaded into the car (I’m exhausted just having to type all of this). Now I just simply click a mouse, and poof: It’s waiting for me at my front door.

But there is one frustration when I get ready to check out and proceed to the final few screens. It’s usually one field into which I can type some information that I more than likely don’t have. It just sits there, taunting me. It’s the field that’s asking me to type in a coupon code. It could also be the field that’s asking me for a gift code or a discount code or some other kind of code that holds the promise of even more savings.

It’s like a secret password you don’t have, so you can’t get into a club. It feels like a slap in the face, an ultimate thumb-to-nose taunt from the vendor.

What? You don’t have our special secret discount coupon code? Then you don’t get our special deep discount or free shipping. You are not worthy. You weren’t smart enough to find it or maybe we just didn’t bother to send one to you. So YOU must pay the full price.

But now there’s a way to get some of those valuable coupon codes. There’s a website that actually makes them available to you, and they do it for free.

No special password or secret handshake required. Just surf on over to Deal-Locker.com and you’ll find a repository of literally thousands of online coupon codes just waiting there for you to use.

Deal Locker gets these special codes from active participants who contribute them to the website and from the companies themselves. The Deal Locker staff is constantly verifying these codes, updating them and removing them when they are no longer active. Users report back to Deal Locker when a code is no longer valid, so the accuracy is pretty good.

Companies also offer coupon codes to Deal Locker in hopes to entice shoppers to their website as well. These are what Deal Locker calls “Guaranteed Codes” and that classification speaks for itself. But even if a code doesn’t work, what do you have to lose trying it? If it works, you’ll get a better deal, free shipping, who knows?

And for the most part, the online companies really like what Deal Locker is doing. The bottom line is that they are selling more stuff because Deal Locker visitors actually find out about what companies are selling when they visit the website. If not for Deal Locker, they might never have known about the deal.

Deal Locker also has features like the Secret Amazon Discount Tool that lets you search items being offered on Amazon by the discount being offered. You pick a category, such as Kitchen and Housewares, and pick a minimum, such as 70 percent off, and it will find all the items that fit. Very nice.

Another savings feature is the ability to find products on sites such as eBay via misspelled words. Too often, items can’t be located by potential buyers because the seller misspelled the item’s name. Their Typo Buddy finds these items and you might find yourself being the only bidder.

If you’ve been shopping online, check out Deal Locker. Like me, you may be a bit sad at first when you see all the online coupons you could have used during your recent shopping and discover how much money you could have saved. Don’t let that happen to you; check it out right now.

For more information, visit www.deallocker.com.

Craig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. For more information, visit his website at www.computeramerica.com.

2010 McClatchy Tribune