I have shifted to buying a lot on-line for the convenience. I shop pretty hard, spending a lot of time comparing prices. I've long used Google... had good luck or so I thought. I recently watched an ad for the BING search engine. The claim is that while Google claims not to "sell" search results placement, they teach corperate advertizers how to get higher placement. It takes a huge investment in time to did through 10, 15 or 20 pages of search results... just repeating the same sources. Search results weighting is, of course, a secret.BING claims to not do that... Well, I just bought spare belts for my TravelScoot (expected delivery tomorrow). The spare belts arrived & the belts & slip sitting on my desk. So I tried BING. On the first page or so of results was the same belts, FROM THE SAME SELLERS through ebay, for a couple of bucks less & less for shipping too. (Since it is the delivered price that counts.) I'm changing my shopping research technique. In the future, I'll compare BING & GOOGLE...

Shopping online has a lot of benefits. Some sites are a little sketchy as in they may not give enough details to narrow it down to exactly what you want, but for the most part you can figure it out. Thing is, you can get up to 20% cash back if you buy it with cash back credit cards.. I recently cashed in all my rewards over the past year and got $620 back. Its the same money as you spend regularly, you just use a credit card instead. As long as you pay it off every month, it doesn't cost you a dime, plus makes you a lot of money. I recently applied for penfed credit card which gives you 5% cash back on gas year round with no limits. Getting off track. Anyways I always aim for online. It ships to my door which saves me a ton. I bought a 100ft ethernet cable at staples a couple months ago for $80. It's $20 online, free shipping. I used at least 2 gallons getting it so theres another $6. Plus you only get like 1% cash back. Bing is good for some things and bad for others. It likes to be "too" smart and narrow results to things you don't want. Google is really dumb in that aspect so you get anything and everything which is usually what I want since some terms I search for apply to something that is hardly covered. Like uhhhhh old engine model numbers....bing will throw everything out and show you only things recent or something, google shows everything which you can quickly scan through and find the one in a million website that applies to what you wanted.

I shop a lot online for my truck also. But I start in the lat couple year dealing locally. I would rather give local place a chance so I can deal with them face to face. It so give me someone to yell at when it something wrong.