Free money from Amazon - should you take advantage?

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Today Amazon is running a tempting deal: if you spend £50 on the site, you'll get £10 off. The company announced the offer, saying it was celebrating being voted the number one retailer for customer service in the UK (knocking John Lewis off the top spot). It's a generous offer, but by this end of January, it becomes harder to justify.

You could be forgiven for thinking you don't have £50 to fritter away on things you don't need at the moment, but it's always worth bearing in mind that Amazon stocks a huge array of essentials.

The most obvious is groceries. A study in October last year by The Grocer magazine, found that Amazon was cheaper than the big four supermarkets for a number of items - including orange juice, butter, cheese and yoghurt. It was also able to match prices on everything from milk to pizza and fish. Take £10 off your shopping bill, and suddenly it looks even more attractive.
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You could also restock the bathroom for less. Amazon has an enormous number of branded beauty items, including everything from shampoos to makeup, perfume and skin care for less than you'd pay on the high street. Yves Saint Laurent Touche Eclat, for example, is £22.50 instead of £26.50, while Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream is £11.95 instead of £22.50.

You could even make an investment that will keep repaying you for months to come - by buying energy-saving lightbulbs. £50 will stretch to 20 of them - so the whole house is covered. A report in 2014 suggested that ten lights could save you more than £200 a year - so 20 could save you £400 - although it's fair to say that the report assumed you left the lights on for an enormous portion of the day.

Alternatively, you could save something even more important than money, by investing in a carbon monoxide tester, a couple of smoke alarms and a fire blanket - which should come to around £50.

Of course, you'll have to fight the temptation to stray into DVD new releases - and hold back from buying Legend, Spectre, The Martian and The Lady in the Van for marginally less than £50.

And it's worth bearing in mind that it's never a good idea to get into debt in order to secure a discount - because it's easy to spend so much on paying to borrow the cash that it wipes out any potential saving.

But what do you think? Will you cash in on the freebie, or is a £50 spend on the 22nd of January always going to be a step too far?

Amazon Moving Closer To Drone Deliveries
Amazon Moving Closer To Drone Deliveries



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