10 Urban Smart Tips for the Shopaholics

The Shopping Season did not end with the closing of 2009, the shopping frenzy to those trendy and shopaholics continues this Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day.  With the shops and malls offering 50% up to 80% prices slashed.

For the Shopaholics out there, here are the tips to make your shopping spree not only fun but safe.

1. If you are trendy, and would like to get the gist out of you bargain hunting – I suggest, wear simple but comfortable clothes and do not wear expensive jewelry or expensive looking jewelry.  Drop the trend for now, if you’re in Manila it attracts the bad elements, so it’s better be safe than sorry.

2. Carry and use a bag with shoulder strap so that you can tote it in front of you or tuck it under your arm. Be sure to hold your bag all the time and it’s only your other arm that is holding the items you are checking out to buy.

3. When buying fruits, vegetables, or any food products that is sold by the weight, look carefully at the weighing scale, make sure that the scales are weigh in to zero at the start and no other item or element goes in to the weighing container except your food item. When buying items that are measured by length, width, or height such as fabric, garters, and ribbons, double check the item before paying, make sure you get you desired and required measurement. Otherwise you could be cheated by a few inches or centimeters.

4. For clothing items, check the buttons, zippers, and if there are minor damages to the fabric.

5. Make sure that you are paying the correct price, most of the items are tagged with bar codes – bar codes are those with vertical lines, and this system is not 100% fool proof. Make sure that before you head on to the 

counter and pay for the item, you double check the item for their correct price, make sure to get the actual price of the item. List down item price you’re buying.

6. Bring the store fliers and adverts to compare the published price with the scanned price. There are instances that the promotional prices are not immediately tagged into the stores system.

7. Check your receipt before leaving the counter. If you noticed an error report it right away so it can be addresses by the customer service, it will save you gas and time if you had addressed the billing mistake right away instead of discovering it when you’re already at home.

8. If you are paying in Cash, Avoid paying using large denomination bill or pay almost in exact amount of your total purchase.  The vendor, cashier or attendant may be tempted and immediately drop and hide the large denominated bill without you noticing it, and they might declare that you hand them over a smaller denominated bill. This is one of the scam that usually happens in stores, In case you don’t have another bill and you need to pay them in large denominated bill make sure that before you hand them over your payment you tell the cashier that you are handing her a large denominated bill. Watch the bill carefully as it goes to the cashier’s hands because there might be another switch that can happen - they can announce that your money is faked but in reality your money has already been switched with a fake one, yet another scam – so be watchful. 

9. Don’t carry big amount of cash, Bad elements can detect if you’re carrying a big amount of money, I just don’t know how they do it, it seems like they have a money sniffing device. They can tell and they can distinguish those who are carrying cash from those who are not.

10. Make sure that you carry a debit or a credit card in paying for the items. Cards accumulate reward points that you can exchange in your future transactions.