Tips on holiday shopping via Amazon: Talking Tech podcast
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Hey there listeners. It's Brett Molina. Welcome back to Talking Tech. My co-host Mike Snider is off today. Well, we are getting closer and closer to the holiday shopping season, which is crazy to think about in light of the fact that it's still the middle of October. We haven't even gotten through Halloween yet and we're already starting to think about things like buying gifts for the holidays. But it is something to think about. There is a lot of talk about shortages of certain items. There's talk about maybe higher prices. Lots of talk about, are you going to find the right holiday gift in light of everything going on? Issues with staffing at stores, issues with the supply chain, things like that. So that's why we're talking about it now.
One of obviously the biggest places to go for holiday shopping is Amazon. My colleague, Kim Komando has a column. She writes about this on tech.usatoday.com called Amazon holiday shopping tips to get you what you want and save money. We're going to share one or two of those tips right here to help you get a head start on the holiday season. The first one that Kim mentions is getting a discount on brand new tech. So Amazon has its own trade-in program. And what you can do is look around your house, if you see any older devices that are sitting around that maybe you don't really use, you can check it out on Amazon's trade-in website, type it up, figure out what it is you have, and then you get a little money back. Kim talks about how she had a first generation Amazon Echo and it got her a $25 Amazon gift card. So if you're just looking for ways to save, that's one really quick way. Just kind of scouring through your closets, garage, wherever it is, looking for those old devices, maybe getting a little bit of your money back.
Another tip that can help too, is you can have your loved ones create their own Amazon wishlists. So what they can do is go to their own account, they can create a list, and then once they have it all set up and created, they can then send that list to others and other people can use it in a view only mode. So it saves a lot of time. It's a quick way. If you already know you're shopping on Amazon, it's a pretty quick way to get a sense of this is what my partner wants, my spouse wants, my kids want, my friends want. And it's all right there waiting for you.
One more tip that Kim offers, use up any older gift cards. I've had this happen to me before where I'll use a gift card and then forget I have a couple dollars left on that gift card. Some of that adds up if you get a lot of gift cards. All you need to do is you take it to the website, you type it in to redeem and you can apply it to your balance. And then that just allows you to, again, to kind of build up a little bit of a balance. And again, you save a little bit of money. So it's those little tricks like that that're going to help you save a little bit as you're shopping for the holidays. You can read more of Kim's advice on tech.usatoday.com.
Listeners, let's hear from you. Do you have any comments, questions, or show ideas? Do you have any tech problems you want us to try to address? You can find me on Twitter @brettmolina23. Please don't forget to subscribe and rate us or leave a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere you get your podcasts. You've been listening to Talking Tech. We'll be back tomorrow with another quick hit from the world of tech.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tips on holiday shopping via Amazon: Talking Tech podcast
