Money Saving Tip: Comparison Shop

As we prepare for the holiday season, I thought I'd do a few more posts on how to shop online. In the coming days I'm planning on doing a step-by-step guide on how to shop online and get the best deal. That, however, is going to take some time to prepare, so in the short-term I thought I'd suggest another money saving tip: Comparison Shopping.

One of the greatest things about the internet is that it makes comparison shopping so easy. Back in the old days, about the only thing people compared prices on was cars. The investment was so large that it was worth your time to go to a few different dealerships to see what kind of deal you could get. Today, the internet gives you the ability to comparison shop on virtually anything you buy. You can do it on your own - surf around to a few sites you know and trust and compare prices. Or you can use sites that do it for you - like the ones I recommend here:

Pricegrabber.com is your standard price comparison site. You type in the name of the item you're looking for (IPod Classic 80GB for example) and it goes out and compares prices across a ton of sites. It details the item price, the tax, shipping charges, and recommends the best overall deal. If you know exactly what you're looking for and just want to find the best price, start here.

Pronto.com offers a little different functionality than just the standard price comparison. It is a 'social' shopping site - meaning it allows people to create profiles, post user reviews, etc. Why would you use this? Perhaps you have an item that you already own and like. You don't know exactly what you're shopping for and you want to find out what someone else who owns and likes this item recommends. Pronto gives you that functionality. It also does some other cool things like allowing you to filter by region - so you can see what's is 'liked' in your area and allowing you to build a 'network' where you and your network can share opinions and reviews amongst yourself. A little different spin on the whole comparison shopping experience.


Dealio.com - Now this is a cool comparison shopping site. Why? Because in addition to searching all the online stores, it also searches Ebay for both 'Buy it Now' auctions and traditional auctions. I mentioned the other day that Ebay is often a great source for deals and this site allows you to find out if the item you're looking for is being offered at a great price on Ebay. The other comparison sites don't do this - so if you're willing to buy something off of Ebay (remember - you can get NEW merchandise there), try Dealio.com.

There are a number of other comparison sites out there: MySimon, Shopping.com, Smarter.com, Shopzilla.com, the list goes on and on (and grows all the time). What I've tried to do here is recommend three sites that offer different spins on comparison shopping - as most of the ones out there are pretty similar. The point is this - if you're shopping, you owe it to yourself to compare prices across sites. Make sure to read the reviews of the retailer before you buy - a small few of the online places are kind of shady. Even if you're headed into the mall to buy something, online comparison shopping can help you know whether you're overpaying or not.

Good luck!