In part 2 of our buying guide we spoke about price, now the focus shifts to finding the right place to buy your new netbook.

It’s easy to tell you where to go but instead I want to outline some of the pluses and pitfalls of buying from certain stores.

The first thing you want to avoid are stores which don’t allow you to return your netbook purchase at all.  Many times you’ll find a great online price and think that no strings are attached.  They are able to provide these great prices because if anything goes wrong you don’t deal with the store but instead you work directly with the manufacturer.  If you’ve settled on a model you want to purchase and can’t envision a scenario where you’d want to send it back or don’t mind waiting for the manufacturer to figure it out then this is the best way for you to go.  Many stores like Zipzoomfly.com and Newegg.com fit in this category.

The next thing you want to be on the lookout for are restocking fees.  Some retailers have discovered that people love to bring back technology purchases.  Since they have to process the returns and try to sell them or send them back to the vendor they got them from they pass those costs onto the customer.  One of the biggest offenders of this is Best Buy.  They have a great selection but if you want to bring it back to one of their stores be prepared to not get as much back as you paid.

Before you whip out your credit card make sure you know what the return policy is.

Lastly you have stores which really don’t care if you want to return your netbook and want to get your money back.  These are obviously the best stores to shop at since you know that you’re completely covered.  The tradeoff is that you likely won’t always get the best price on your purchase.  If you’re willing to make that kind of trade-off you may want to plan your next netbook purchase on a site like Amazon.com.

Regardless of where you shop you want to check and double check what you are getting into.  Don’t bother emailing someone in customer service before you make your purchase because the email won’t matter when something different is all over their website.  Don’t be discouraged though, this is an expensive decision and I’d rather you know what you’re getting into.

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