NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, February 2004
Internet Comparison Shopping
by Jerry Wonderly, Dayton Microcomputer Association, Inc.
editor@orcopug.org
(click to email author)


Whether we’re ready or not, the Christmas season is fast approaching. We will soon be caught up in the rush of going from mall to mall and store to store in search of that unique gift. However, many Americans now do much of their shopping online and the savvy shopper uses comparison-shopping websites. After some research, I think I’ve come up with some sites that will be helpful as you begin to Christmas shop online too. I’m admittedly no expert so please consider the following as my own personal opinions.

In preparing for this article, a list was compiled of six possible gifts from six different categories because some comparison shopping sites are more comprehensive than others. The six theoretical gifts include: a highly-rated Canon Powershot A70 3.2 megapixel digital camera; a best-selling book called “Founding Brothers – The Revolutionary Generation” by Joseph J. Ellis; a top 10 PC game called “Rise Of Nations” by Microsoft; a bottle of Estee Lauder perfume called “Pleasures” in a 1.7 ounce size; a board game called “Harry Potter: Heir Of Slytherin;” and a popular golfing putter called the “Titleist Scotty Cameron Studio Design 1.5.”

Next, a list of comparison-shopping websites was put together. As with last year, some of the popular sites have been swallowed up by their competition. Deal Time, for example, is now Shopping.com and Epinions is now run by Shopping.com while Lycos Shopping uses the Bizrate search engine. Strangely though, affiliated sites don’t always return the same merchant results and even the price results can vary. At any rate, the following comparison shopping sites were used in my research:

An improvement over last year is that most of the comparison-shopping sites now have merchant reviews, and automatically compute tax and shipping to get an accurate display of true pricing. These include Lycos, BizRate, Price Grabber, Shopping.com, Epinions, Yahoo, and NexTag. My Simon and Price Scan don’t compute tax but do for shipping and also have merchant reviews. Shop Best and Value Find have unusual sites in that the results usually took me to only one vendor to choose from. Shop Best had a very slow search engine and Value Page’s frames are cumbersome and wouldn’t react properly when clicking links. However, overall, most of the sites worked extremely fast, were laid out well, and offered several categories and stores to choose from.

Many online merchants are listed on multiple comparison-shopping websites. Their prices often vary from site to site though so it pays to search more than one comparison engine. Many sellers offer free shipping. As with brick-and-mortar stores, use good judgement when deciding which vendor to buy from. Don’t be hesitant about getting seller information from the Better Business Bureau at www.bbb.org/. Also, consider looking for coupons and discount codes from websites like Amazing Bargains www.amazingbargains.com, Deal Catcher www.dealcatcher.com and Deal Of Day www.dealofday.com.

Here are the results of my make-believe shopping trip:

On the camera, NexTag had the lowest price from a merchant called Dbargains at $240 plus tax and shipping. Unfortunately, you don’t know what the tax and shipping are until after you’ve completed all of the online purchase orders. The next lowest price on the camera came from a Yahoo vendor called Rush4Digital. They are selling it for a total price of $264.80. However, Rush4Digital is an unrated merchant at the time of this writing. My Simon’s vendor, Beach Camera, offers the camera for $269.00 plus tax, if any. Beach Camera www.beachcamera.com appears on many of the comparison search sites.

[DataBus Editor’s Note: Whenever purchasing electronics over the Internet, be sure to ask the vendor if the item you want to purchase comes with a valid U.S. warranty. Sometimes the very lowest prices found in searches are for “gray market” goods that were intended by the manufacturer to be sold overseas and thus do not carry a U.S. warranty (and, infrequently, may not even have an owners manual written in English). The lack of a manufacturer’s U.S. warranty should only be a problem if you need warranty service so every buyer must decide for himself whether to assume the lack-of-warranty risk with some gray market merchandise in exchange for a potentially lower price. See what the New York Better Business Bureau has to say about gray market merchandise at http://www.newyork.bbb.org/library/publications/subrep45.html.]

For the book, Lycos and Bizrate bested the competition with identical deals of $9.19 with tax and shipping included from Overstock www.overstock.com. I’ve bought from Overstock before and have had good experiences.

As far as the PC game, Yahoo had the lowest price at $37.95 total from a company called Purplus based in California. They have a high merchant rating on Yahoo.

Shopping for the perfume led me to the lowest price at Price Grabber’s LuxNY.com based in New Jersey. They offered it for a total price of $34.94. The drawback is that LuxNY is an unrated merchant. Shopping in the fragrance category on all of the comparison shopping sites was a bit unusual. None of them formulated tax and shipping for some reason.

Next, I looked for the Harry Potter board game. Most of the search sites came up with nothing. Only Lycos, BizRate and Yahoo had listings. The lowest price was found on Lycos and BizRate at a merchant called TovBid.com. They sell the board game for $8.99 with free shipping. There’s no mention of sales tax.

Lastly, the Titleist putter was kind of hit or miss. Five of the sites either didn’t have a category of Sports or just didn’t list this putter. Of those that do have merchants selling this putter, Price Scan has a store called Golfalltheway who lists it for $219.99 plus tax and shipping. Yahoo’s Need2Golf.com sells the putter for a grass blade less at $219.00 plus tax and shipping.

In conclusion, I was pleased overall with the improvement of the Internet comparison-shopping experience over last year. There are several good competitors out there with many reputable stores in their listings. It is pretty easy to navigate their sites and most of them allow you to sort the results by total price. This year we can be spared some of the aggravation of running from mall to mall and store to store in search of that perfect gift by doing at least some of our shopping online. But, you want to know something? Even if I do find all of my gifts online, I think I’ll still venture out into the madness of the store crowds just to get that Christmas feeling.

Then again, I might just stay home and watch that “Charlie’s Angels” Christmas Special…

Happy Holidays, everyone.

This article was originally published in The DataBus, newsletter of the Dayton Microcomputer Association, Inc. (http://www.dma.org/). Permission is granted to non-profit organizations to reprint or quote any material contained herein (except that which is copyrighted elsewhere) provided credit is given to the author, Dayton Microcomputer Association, Inc. & The DataBus. The Editors request that when reprinting material from The DataBus, you forward a copy of the reprint or its URL to the Editors. The mailing address is: Editor - The DataBus, P.O. Box 4005, Dayton, OH 45401-4005 or Editor@dma.org.

There is no restriction against any non-profit group using this article as long as it is kept in context with proper credit given the author. The Editorial Committee of the Association of Personal Computer User Groups (APCUG), an international organization of which this group is a member, brings this article to you.

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