Being a geek on a budget doesn’t mean that you can’t afford cases for your hardware, it also doesn’t mean that you can’t afford to outfit your home, office and car with iPhone docks and accessories. As a moderately “thrifty” (or as my brother says, cheap) guy you can count on me to explore the avenues to purchase products for a reasonable price – without spending more gas/time than its worth. Although I’ll revisit “Geek on a Budget” in the future, I’m going to start with the biggest item that geeks overpay on which is accessories. Before we continue though, I’ll give fair warning that it’s unlikely that my advice will be supporting your local economy – so if this bothers you, you may want to exit now and keep overpaying.

Whatever large purchase you’ve made I’m sure that the first thing they want to do is protect your product. If you’re like most people that I know you’ll head to the store and start shopping for a case. As you begin looking you’ll find something that appears to offer great protection and you’ll get excited about something fairly beefy that drastically changes the footprint of your device (have you seen how big an otterbox case is?). I also suspect that just as you settle on the big bad case you’re going to look down at the price tag, have a mild heart attack and continue looking, likely finding a “great deal” on a case for only $19.99! Now that you’ve seen this case you’ll compare its twenty dollar price tag to the other one at fifty, and you’ll settle on it heading out the door completely unaware you’ve just paid 5 to 6 times more than I did for the same product.

As any modern person knows most of technology related products are manufactured outside of North America. Now although the importing process will jack up the price a bit, what many consumers don’t realize is that retailers still make money on accessories – and a lot at that. I’ve worked in retail in the past and many companies will pay $5 for an item that they will sell to the public for $20 or higher. If you’ve worked in retail you know as well as I do that business can’t be blamed for this number though as the margin in most high-ticket hardware is so slim that the profit needs to be made up through other means. So now you’re wonder “How do I get these whole sale prices?” Well, it’s actually quite simple to do – in fact, you’ll actually probably get it a bit less than the wholesaler sells for. To do this you need to go to a little place that starts with the letter e and ends with the word Bay.

eBay is definitely your best friend when it comes to purchasing accessories. Over the past few years eBay’s market has switched from largely auction-driven sellers to a balance of this and buy it now sellers. A lot of foreign manufactures and vendors are aware of this shift and now use eBay as a way of increasing their direct sales by selling a high volume of low-priced “Buy it Now” sales. Here’s an example of the savings that I’ve recently received. I was in the process of needing a new cell phone case and for these I prefer the “TPU style” cases as they are lightweight with relatively low footprint yet also offer some decent protection. Although my local big box store sells these TPU cases for $19.99 (which as mentioned might seem like a good price), I managed to go onto eBay and order the same TPU case for only $1.83 USD including shipping. Don’t believe me? Just hop onto eBay right now and do a search for “iPhone 4S TPU” and check that little “Buy it Now” checkbox on the left hand side to filter the results. Ok, now that you’ve confirmed I’m not making things up I’m sure you’re thinking “that has to be a scam and I’ll never get my item.” I encourage you to click further into the product and you’ll see that these low-priced sellers have tens of thousands (or greater) of user feedback – often boasting a 98 to 99% positive rating. What many people have troubles understanding is that these sellers are using the same basis that pleases like Costco use which is to make very small percentage of profit per item, but make it up by focusing on a large volume of sales (ever notice that Costco has no express lanes?). Although I’m making no guarantees (any private sale including eBay is always at your own discretion), over the past 3 years I have done purchases of this nature more times than I can count on both hands. Aside from the occasional user-error, I ordered the wrong product, I have never had any problems.

Now what are the down sides to ordering on eBay? Well, the biggest complaint most people have about ordering these products is that you will be waiting for at least two to three weeks to get your item. The other complaint that I’ve heard is that SOME products can be of lesser quality than those in store; however, this is something that you can explore and get to know what looks good and what looks bad. Those TPU cases I mentioned early, for example, appear to be the same quality on eBay as the ones that the big box store sells. The best advice I can give for keeping a good success ratio is to look at the seller feedback ratings and more importantly read the product descriptions. A couple months ago I misread the description for a camera battery and when it didn’t work in the camera I went back and looked at the listing finding that I misread it as saying “works with Nikon D3100” when it actually said “Doesn’t work with Nikon D3100”. I felt like a bit of a fool but that lasted only a couple minutes as for only a handful of dollars I wasn’t about to cry.

Overall if you’re willing to wait a few weeks for a product I highly suggest doing your geek accessory purchasing online in places like eBay. When you go to order I encourage you to remember the price you would pay if you bought in store and purchase multiples/replacements for when you need them (heck, for $2 each, why not give yourself some color variety?). If you do decide to try out eBay be sure to take precautions such as using PayPal and remember that I’m just telling you my experience with eBay – ultimately it’s up to you and at your own risk. That being said though, at the very least I encourage you to do a quick search on eBay the next time you want any accessory whether it be cell phone case to an iPhone dock to a digital camera battery – you may be pleasantly surprised.