Who doesn’t like discounts, right? After all, why would you want to pay full price when you can get the exact same product or service for significantly cheaper.
But, there just one little issue, discounts, and deals don’t come around too often. You either have to wait for the holiday season or hope that you get your hands on a discount coupon.
That being said, with the help of a VPN, you can get better prices throughout the year on a number of products and services.
VPN or a Virtual Private Network is an amazing tool that can help you spoof your original geographic location. You can physically be in the U.S but appear to be in a totally different country with a totally different IP address.
But what does spoofing your geographic location has to do with discounts?
Well, if you don’t know, some products and services are actually cheaper in some parts of the world than in others. For instance, Netflix's premium plan is a couple of dollars cheaper in the U.S than in Spain. Similarly, you can save a dollar here and there on car rentals, hotel bookings and even games with the help of a VPN.
No matter which website you visit online, you’re going to give up some personal information. Online retailers usually collect the following information to fiddle around with customized pricing:
With the help of cookies, a website can track and store your browsing history. So, if you search for something several times, retailers can increase or decrease the price of that specific product.
Your IP address is like your home address. This address is enough to tell retailers your exact geographical location. Even you can see your IP address and your location by simply visiting whatismyipaddress.com.
Saving money with the help of a VPN is super easy. Not only that, but VPNs are also really inexpensive. In fact, there are dozens of cheap VPNs such as these available in the market.
Anyways, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s check out how you can save money on Steam games, car rentals, Netflix subscriptions, and even hotel bookings.
As I said earlier, you can save a couple of dollars when you purchase a game by using a VPN. For instance, the price of GTA V in Mexico is 599 Mexican Peso, which is around 30.79 USD. However, the same game in the U.S costs only $29.99 USD.
Similarly, other games might be cheaper in the U.S than in other countries. However, do note that you might want to use a new account to purchase games since Steam discourages the use of VPNs to purchase games specifically.
You can also use a VPN to book rental cars for cheap. For instance, if you book a car from a different country, you can get the same car for significantly cheaper. In fact, when I tried booking a car from enterprise.com with the help of a VPN, I managed to save $20.53 USD.
I simply compared rental prices from Spain and the U.S for the same car on the same day and found that I was getting a better deal with the Spanish IP. With the U.S IP, the per-day estimated rent I got was $71.65 USD. Whereas with the Spanish IP, I got an estimate of €46.42 which is around $51.12 USD for the same car. That’s a saving of $20.53.
Since the price of Netflix subscriptions varies from country to country, you can actually use a VPN to save a couple of dollars. For instance, the price of Netflix’s premium subscription in Spain is €15.99/month, which is around $17.61 USD.
Whereas the same premium subscription plan in the U.S costs $15.99/month. That’s a saving of $1.65 USD.
Lastly, you can also use a VPN to book a hotel room for cheap. For instance, when I compared the prices of hotel accommodations in Paris using the Indian and U.S IPs, I managed to get a better price with the U.S server.
With the Indian IP, I got an estimate of $98 for a 3-star hotel in Paris.
Whereas with the U.S IP address, I got an estimate of $79 for a 4-star hotel. That’s a saving of $19 USD for even better accommodation.
So there you have it. This is how you can use a VPN to beat price discrimination on a variety of products and services from anywhere in the world.
I hope you found this short blog post informative. Do let me know if you want me to add more ways you can save with a VPN.
