Get a Great Deal on Anything

Rewards

At tarazz.com, the more you buy, the more rewards you can claim – no joke. This site offers a reward programme for using the site to shop from its online merchants such as Amazon, Target and Marks and Spencer. It rewards you by offering a redemption gift in the form of Tarazz$.

The programme gives you 5 Tarazz$ for purchases between S$100 ($70) and S$200, and up to 50 Tarazz$ for purchases of S$500 and more. That's a five to ten percent reward on your purchases. Tarazz currently has sites for Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea and will be launching its Indonesia site soon.

The downside: Online shopping rewards, yes. Miracles, certainly not. The site gives you the cash rewards only for future purchases made on the site. There is also a 90-day expiry date on your Tarazz$. Still, it does offer you additional discounts if you shop online regularly.

Codes

You're paying for something online – a shirt, suit, or scarf – and notice a place to key in a code for a discount. But what are these secret codes, and where can you find them?

They're at retailme not.com, and it takes almost no time or effort to search – alphabetically or by category or store (there are over 15,000 stores listed). The site offers codes for home products, sporting goods, luggage and even food.

We found codes to get $10 off a $100 order at homedepot.com, 15 percent off purchases at the sporting-goods store modells.com, and $20 off a two-night stay booked through hotels.com. Before you pay for an item you want on a site, check retailmenot.com first to see if there's a code. The discount codes work for online sales only, but the site has a thriving printable coupons section.

Codes come and go, often timed to the season. Some offers have fine print that excludes certain brands. Also check out currentcodes.com (stores are listed alphabetically), keycode.com (for the latest offers, sign up for RSS feeds), and rather-be-shopping.com (the site updates coupon codes daily). 
And with many sites offering worldwide shipping, shoppers here in Asia can still benefit.

Bulk discount

If you wanted to buy, for example, a Deuter backpack, it may cost $80 at a store. But what if other people wanted the same item and they banded together to order a larger number of the bags? The item may now cost only $70 instead. Tumpang.com calls itself the world's premier online bulk discount store. Its mission is to Gather, Buy and Save: finding users who want an item and connecting them to sellers with surplus items.

The site shows the difference between the retail price – selling price of item in retail outlets and stores – and the Tumpang price – asking price on the site. For example, an Apple iPhone 3G colour case is going for around $4 (original price $12). To ''Tumpang'' an item is to only book it; the sale is only finalised when a specific quantity is reached within the deadline.