Online Discount Cologne
Online Discount Cologne
We’ve discussed discount colognes on this cologne blog and on our static site, too, but I’ve never discussed online discount colognes specifically. I talk about online perfume stores and quote prices from online cologne retailers all the time, so I should probably talk about what these Internet cologne sites.
What is An Online Cologne Site?
An online cologne website is an online merchant, such as Amazon.com, which sells perfumes and cologne through the mail. Online customers go to the website, browse through their hundreds and even thousands of selections of fragrances, select one or more you want to buy, then point-and-click to move that brand into your cart and finally check out.
Online Colognes Sites and Credit Cards
To buy colognes on the Internet, you’ll have to have a credit card or debit card, which is a big stumbling block for some people – especially of the older, more technophobic generation. I’m not saying you don’t have a credit card: I’m saying you don’t want to give your credit card number out to just anyone, and I don’t blame you.
Personally, I wish every online merchant just used PayPal, because I trust that PayPal is going to keep my information secure. Since few online cologne sellers, even Amazon, don’t take Paypal, you’re going to have to go out on a limb, or take other measures.
Other measures?
Here’s one suggestion: go to Wal-Mart and buy a “gift card” debit card. These are usually found in the candy aisle near the checkout stands. Wal-Mart gift cards usually come in $25, $50 and $100 types. Buy one of these large enough to cover the expense of your Internet cologne purchase and use that in the transaction. Wal-Mart gift cards work just about anywhere a debit card works, since that’s essentially what you’re using. The great advantage is, if the online merchant wants to use your credit information, all they can take you for is the amount of the gift card. They don’t have your credit information or your banking information.
Sure, it’s still annoying if they steal the money you used to buy the gift card, but that’s more annoyance than disaster. By the way, you can do this with any type of online purchase, not just with online perfume stores. I’ve done this a few times with online sites I wanted to purchase an item from, but didn’t know enough to trust. (I’ve never done it for online cologne, but it would work.) But I digress. Let’s get back to what an online perfume store is.
Why Buy Online Cologne?
The reason you buy online cologne is because it’s a whole lot cheaper. Internet perfume purchases are cheaper because you’re cutting out several middle men, having it shipped directly from the warehouse to you via postal service or package shipping company.
Think about it. The person that trucks all those perfume bottles gets paid to ship them from the warehouse to the fragrance store. The fragrance store has to pay its employees to unload and stock these perfume bottles, then check you out when you purchase them. The same fragrance store has to pay some kind of crazy lease to a shopping mall or strip mall, while also paying a utilities bills and lord knows what other costs.
Those are all middle men. By purchasing cologne online, you cut out all of the prices inherant in buying through a brick-and-mortar fragrance shop. It’s just you, the distributor and the online cologne store – which has small overhead, and therefore can charge a small fee to transact your purchase.
Can I Trust Online Cologne Sites?
You can’t trust them all. Heck, read through Amazon reviews of perfumes and colognes and you’ll find 1-in-30 reviews involve Amazon using a warehouse that doesn’t ship the right cologne or ships a fake cologne. I would say, even with Amazon, you still face around a 3% chance that you’re going to be dealing with shysters.
But you can cut down on the dangers of online cologne scams by doing a little research. Google the online cologne merchant you’re dealing with and see if other customers have been scammed by them. I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about.
Example of Online Cologne Scam Search
Imagine you find an online cologne store called “Colognes Unlimited” (to my knowledge, a completely made-up, fictional online colognes store). So you find this “Colognes Unlimited” and decide to research them. Put into a Google search “colognes unlimited scam” or “colognes unlimited credit card scam” or the Colognes Unlimted dotcom url and “credit card scam”.
Check to see if anything comes up. If people have been scammed by them in the past, they will be lodging their complain on some online message board or otherwise letting the public know what’s up. If so, move onto the next online colognes discount store and do the same.
If no scam warnings come up, buy your cheap colognes and wear them in style.
Online Discount Cologne
The thing is, there’s no reason to buy department store cologne, because it’s outrageously priced. It’s commonly 40% to 50% more than the same product online, if you do a little bit of research. When I say a little bit, I’m talking less than five minutes to find a good price. Heck, sometimes Amazon, one of the biggest companies on the Internet, has the cheapest cologne prices.
Sure, you can’t test the cologne yourself. But you can always do that in the mall or the fragrance store, then make your purchase online. If that makes you feel guilty, using your local perfume store to test scents you’ll never buy, then split the difference and buy half your colognes or perfumes in the local stores – keeping them in business means you can continue to test their fragrances. I’ve done the same myself, out of guilt.
However you buy your colognes, I would suggest you give online discount cologne a try. In these bad financial times, you have to cut the corners, and discount Internet cologne is a good way to do it.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 14th, 2009 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Cologne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.