Shopping "robots" search websites to find you the best deals on the products you specify. Up come the results and, boom, you've found the cheapest price out there, right?
Nope. I tested eight of the top bots Shopzilla, Shopping.com, DealTime, NexTag, MySimon, BizRate, Yahoo Shopping, and Google Product Search by searching for lowest prices on three popular products: Britax Marathon car seat, the EyeClops Bionic Eye, and the Fisher Price Elmo Live. Not one of the sites delivered the cheapest price on all three products.
All of the bots' results required resorting according to lowest price. In fact, many of the sites accept payment from merchants to be placed high in the results list regardless of the price they're selling the item for. Google Product Search is one that does not, but Google Product Search returns also contained some pretty obscure stores that I'd hesitate to shop without checking with the Better Business Bureau.
The results:
Britax Marathon:
Shopzilla:$186 at Amazon Marketplace ($9.99 shipping)
Nextag.com: $186 at Amazon Marketplace ($9.99 shipping)
Dealtime.com: $195 at Amazon Marketplace (includes shipping)
Shopping.com: $198 at A Dolce Baby (free shipping)
MySimon.com: $198 at A Dolce Baby (free shipping)
Google Product Search: $198 at A Dolce Baby (free shipping)
BizRate.com: $198 at Baby Catalog (free shipping)
Yahoo Shopping: $199.99 at Amazon (not accurate)
EyeClops Handheld Bionic Eye Multizoom:
Nextag.com: $33.74 at Amazon (free shipping)
Google Product Search: $38.99 at SuperSales (an Amazon Marketplace store)
BizRate.com: $39.76 at Walmart.com (.97 shipping)
Shopzilla:$39.88 at Amazon Marketplace ($7.72 shipping)
MySimon.com: $39.88 at Amazon Marketplace ($7.72 shipping)
Yahoo Shopping: $39.88 at Amazon ($7.72 shipping)
Dealtime.com: $46.90 at Amazon (not accurate. Was really $39.88 at Amazon)
Shopping.com: $46.90 at Amazon
Sesame Street Elmo Live:
Google Product Search: $49.99 at InterstateDeals.com
Dealtime.com: $64.87 at Amazon (free shipping)
Shopping.com: $64.87 at Amazon (free shipping)
MySimon.com: $59.99 at Meijer ($67.94 with shipping)
Nextag.com: $59.99 at Amazon Marketplace (plus shipping)
BizRate.com: $59.99 at Amazon Marketplace (plus shipping)
Shopzilla:$59.99 at Amazon Marketplace (plus shipping)
Yahoo Shopping: $69.99 at KBToys.com ($77.21 with shipping)
Note: Elmo Live is $59.88 at Walmart with free site-to-store shipping. None of the bots picked up this price (It's $69.85 with shipping)
The lesson? When you do your holiday shopping, use a couple of shopping comprison sites to start your price research, but back it up by checking prices at discount retailers like Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Trusting one bot to give you the best price is a sure way to short circuit your savings.
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Angie blogs at BlogCoach.org and BabyCheapskate.com. She is also the founder of free-baby-stuff site Freepeats.org. Angie lives in Atlanta with her husband, young son, and very fluffy dog. This article is an update of one that appeared last year on BabyCheapskate.com.
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I often use bizrate.com and used it this past Friday. It actually gave me the Elmo Live price for Walmart with the sitetostore price. maybe it was a glitch.
That's good. It's been about a week since I did the test. I guess bizrate's prices updated.
Angie, great post.
You bring to light a very good point here. Many comparison shopping sites miss a lot of the best deals because they are only written to pick up data feeds from certain stores or the data they're pulling from hasn't been updated yet. Also, a lot of deals nowadays are found with bundles, coupons and rebates, which aren't picked up by comparison shopping engines.
Consumers should be aware of this and make sure they check out all sources to make sure they're getting a good price. Deal websites are a good place to look, but many times the deals are for random things and are not relevant to what the user is looking for. A good list of deal websites can be found here. (http://probargainhunter.com/2008/11/05/popular-deal-sites-october-2008/)
I work for Wishabi.com, a website that has come up with a solution to this. At Wishabi, users create a wishlist and our community of deal hunters post deals for these items from all over the internet. Users are they notified when there is a good deal on any product they are wishing for. The deal hunters are paid by a commission sharing structure at Wishabi. Users know they're getting a good deal because we have a deal-rank algorithm that rates each deal based on numerical and user inputted variables.
Hope this helps