Best and worst new price-comparison sites
Shopzilla and Yahoo Shopping are great, but there’s a pack of new shopping search engines worth trying out. The newest generation
of price-comparison sites, which sweep the Internet for the lowest-cost seller of a selected item, have cool features like
price-trend data and e-mailed updates on your search. ShopSmart put eight of the latest price-comparison sites to the test.
Here are the best and worst of the bunch.
| Love 'em | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 Frucall.com Great for when you’re in a store and trying to comparison shop. Call 1-888-DO-FRUCALL, type in the 12-digit bar code number, and Frucall.com will tell you whether you can get it cheaper online. |
 MPire.com The coolest thing here is the little graph that shows current average prices being paid on the Web for any specific item, both new and on auction sites. (Never bid blindly on eBay again!) |
 MyTriggers.com Enter a product and the highest price you want to pay. This site returns a list of vendors offering the item at or below your price. Click the “Trigger It!” button to have search updates e-mailed to you. |
 TheFind.com Gives you lots of great results. Our search for a Canon PowerShot camera returned 135 stores. Large product images are a plus, and rollover pop-up boxes give detailed product info and reduce clicking. |
| Hate 'em | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Dealio.com You’ve got to download the site’s tool bar to get all the bells and whistles, which is a major hassle. Without it, the site’s search results are lame. |
Pricefish.com Narrow search terms (a search for “women’s watches” produced no hits), and sparse results. Also, product images were sometimes unavailable. |
SmartShopper.com Requires that you download a toolbar, which works only on Windows-based computers using Internet Explorer. Search results weren’t worth the bother. |
SortPrice.com Too many irrelevant search results: when we looked for bedsheets, we got a Monty Python action figure mixed into the list. (Sounds pretty Pythonesque to us!) |
| Click any of the links below for a selection of articles from the Spring 2007 issue of ShopSmart;) Editor's Letter Greetings from ShopSmart Editor-in-Chief Lisa Lee Freeman Five ways to shop smarter Online and off, these tips will help you get the best deals Great sites for gift givers Fun and funky presents to buy online for grads, dads, brides, and anyone else on your list How to order wine Order the right wine at any restaurant (even if you have no idea what you're doing) Vitamins Which multivitamins should you take, if any? |
