I’ve mentioned this before and I’ll mention it again…..my favorite shopping is done in the comfort of my home, with my personally selected music providing the ambiance (no elevator music for me), and without the hassle of fighting the sea of other frantic shoppers! I have come to love a couple of sites that provide me the cheapest yet safe way to shop on-line – use price comparison websites! I have appreciated two sites very much and wanted to highlight some of my favorite features of both.
PRICEWATCH®
- PRICEWATCH.com – I list this one first because I started using it 12 years ago when I began shopping for hard drives and other miscellaneous computer items. However, now the site is all grown up providing the best prices on clothing, providing information on great coupons, and much more!
- LIKES: I love how they display the user rating for the listed merchant, the expected shipping charge, and gives flexible links to help you know of other products that might be a better value than the one for which you are searching.
- DISLIKES: I remember they used to provide you a list of merchants (not only the best price) in order of price. This may seem odd at first (why would I want to buy a slightly higher priced item?), but sometimes you might prefer using a merchant that you trust or already have promotion codes that would make that item a better deal.
- Google Shopping – Bringing in the best of Google is always a nice touch!! I’m not sure about you, but Google has impressed me as the company that seems to make everything they touch pure gold!
- LIKES: Unlike PRICEWATCH, Google Shopping does provide a list of merchants for a given product, provides their user rating, and lets you be the judge of where to shop! I really enjoy their sort flexibility of the results (by price, relevance, seller rating, etc). Google really does provide a lot of information such as user reviews, images, additional search criteria (search for those with free shipping, etc) that gives you all the information you might need at your fingertips!
- DISLIKES: Google Shopping doesn’t provide the easy drilldowns to find the products (from the initial search). It really helps to know exactly which product and model you are looking for, but searching for brand and category does have benefits.
I must admit that I really lean toward Google Shopping as my favorite price comparison websites, but I’ll leave the final decision up to you. Obviously you can’t buy everything you might need on-line (well, close actually), but if nothing else these sites will help you know whether you really need to gain the strength to go fight the crowds to be disappointed that the item is already out of stock. 🙂
Of course, maybe you like the crowds…either way enjoy your holiday shopping!!
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