Our daughter's baby shower is coming up. We waited until almost the last moment to choose a gift from the registry because we want to give something practical that will get a lot of use.
So when we checked the registry, we saw that no one had bought the child seat. Ah, the perfect gift! It was listed at $179.99, but it was only available online and the site indicated that it was " temporarily unavailable."
We really wanted to give the car seat and rather than pick another item, we went outside of the registry to another site, Baby Catalog of America. There, the same car seat was listed for $159, $20 less than the registry and the shipping's free. Now that $20 savings can go to something else for our new grandchild! (We had to spill the beans to my daughter, by the way, so she could take the car seat off the registry!)
Gift registries are a great convenience for family and friends looking for gift ideas. They're a profit maker for the store that gets the sale.
But what about price? We're always looking for the best quality at the best price. In this case, the registry site wasn't offering any discounts for using it, the item wasn't even available, and because we took an extra couple of minutes, we were able to find the car seat at another site, and saved $20 with free shipping to boot.
Lesson learned: Before you click to finalize any purchase, take a minute or two to check out a comparison shopping site like pricegrabber.com.
