What's Shakin'?

By popular request, Price Protectr now supports CompUSA. Keep the requests coming, I'll eventually get around to all of them!

Labels: retailers

Price Protectr has been featured in The Consumerist's latest article, 10 Shopping Tricks That Stores Hate. Check it out for a bunch of other great tips for the savvy-minded shopper!

And, not to be outdone, Thrillist has posted a great review as well. HDTV prices are dropping like hot cakes, so take their advice and pick one up for that Superbowl party! (It's going to take you all week to figure out all those fancy new features anyway)

Labels: links

Here's a quick tip: If you want to protect an item that needs to be added to your shopping cart before you can see the price, just protect the main product page. Price Protectr will find the right price automatically!

Labels: tips

There are a couple fixes tonight:

• Prices weren't coming up properly for backcountry.com (thanks Edward).
• Price Protectr had incorrectly sent out a few emails for Costco items saying that they were no longer available. Appologies if you got one of these erroneous emails -- I've fixed the bug and put the items back on price protection. If you guys notice problems like this before I do, please shoot me an email so I can get it fixed up.
• I've noticed a lot of small price drops lately, so Price Protectr no longer sends emails for price drops under a dollar (or a pound).

Now when you add an item to Price Protectr, you can expect a cheery confirmation email in your inbox. I hate automated email as much as the next guy, which is why I've been avoided confirmation emails for this long. However, some people have been confused as to whether anything actually happens when you press that 'start protecting' button -- so now you know. Plus it allows people to see whether their spam blocker will stop that $200 price drop email. It's a small price to pay, really.

Plus, tonight 6th Avenue Electronics has been added to the ever-growing list of supported retailers.

Labels: new features, retailers

Yourstuff@priceprotectr.com, that is. Over the weekend I received a number of email challenges for price drop emails. For those of you unfamilar with challenge-response spam filtering, here's a link to an explanation on Wikipedia.

I obviously can't go through the process of authorizing the Price Protectr address for everyone running this kind of software, so do yourself a favor and add yourstuff to the whitelist.

And, as promised, Price Protectr now supports Staples.ca.

Labels: retailers, tips

By popular request, the Price Protectr Blog is now available via RSS feed. Now all you Price Protectr junkies never need to miss a post again.

I also did some work on improving foreign currency support, which should make it easier to add more non-US sites in the future.

And, last but not least, Price Protectr now supports Staples. Don't worry, Staples.ca is coming soon!

Labels: new features, retailers

I was hoping to get more user visible changes done tonight, but it's late... and I did end up finishing a number of backend fixes that should help things run a bit smoother around here.

Oh, and a quick shout out to all the new visitors from Lifehacker and Gizmodo. Good luck catching a price drop!

Labels: links

This afternoon the total savings counter topped $10,000. That's pretty good! At this rate, Price Protectr will have saved people $167,000 by the end of the year. Think it'll happen?

Here are a few more interesting stats -- people have protected approximately 1.6 items each with an average savings of $34.27. The largest savings so far has been $450.00.

Aside from collecting some stats, I also added support for a couple new sites: Bike Nashbar and Cooking.com and changed the format of the links to supported stores on the main page a bit. Cyclists and cooks, eat (and spend) your hearts out.

Labels: retailers, statistics

Over the past week or so I've had a lot of requests for retailer support, and I'm working hard on getting them added. If you write in -- make sure the site you're requesting has a price protection guarantee! Just because Price Protectr can watch it doesn't mean they'll give you any money back ;-)

Another user wrote in to tell me that Best Buy is currently offering 60 day price protection on their HDTVs (US stores only, sorry guys). I updated the protection dates for everyone who had entered a qualifying purchase. The promotion lasts until February 5th, 2007 -- so go ahead and buy that HDTV with confidence. There's never been a better time to do it.

Do you have a tip or story other Price Protectr users might be interested in? Email me!

Labels: tips

This morning, Price Protectr was featured on New York City's ABC7 Tech Guru! Check out the online article, Sree's Thoughts on PriceProtectr.com. In the bottom right you can watch a video of the actual news segment. Or, if you're on the run, get the Tech Guru podcasts! Sree reports on a lot of great sites and gadgets -- it's well worth the listen.

He also makes a good point on the air that some people might not have known; Price Protectr works both for online and in-store purchases. Just hold on to that receipt and take it to the customer service desk if the price drops. They'll refund you the difference with no questions asked. Keep in mind that in-store and online prices might differ, so give em a call and double check the price before you drive all the way out there!

(10/15/07 -- the above links are no longer active)

Labels: links, tips

Price Protectr has been getting more popular and people have been saving a lot of money. Every day (actually, every hour) I watch the savings total on the main page grow. As I write this, you're just as likely to save up to ten bucks as you are not to save anything. In fact, looking at the nifty graph of average savings, you're more likely to save money than not. So what do you have to lose? Price protect it all!

While the amount of money people are saving is a little surprising, it's not too unexpected at this time of year. Retailers tend to drop their prices after the holidays but, in general, prices tend to vary a lot more than the average consumer expect. And they don't just go down -- sometimes prices drop with sales and promotions only to go back up a few days or a week later. So if you're lucky enough to get one of the price drop emails, don't wait -- go get your refund!

Labels: tips

I've had quite a few requests over the past few days for bestbuy.ca support. Well, there you go!

Happy shopping.

Labels: retailers

Since being linked on Digg, Price Protectr has been getting a lot of attention. Over the weekend visitors submitted about 700 new items and saved over $2,000. Not bad for two days.

I've received a lot of requests via email and have a number improvements planned for the site, so I figured this blog would be the best way to everyone up to date on what's happening around here.

Since the original post, I've added support for amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk. Not having made a purchase from those sites myself, I made a best guess as to where to go to request a refund. If anyone goes through the process and finds that the instructions are incorrect, please let me know.

It's also worth mentioning that if anyone has problems with or comments about the site, you're welcome to email me about it. It's more productive than making snide comments on forums... although maybe not as satisfying. Really, there's no reason you can't do both. Chances are if you contact me about it, it'll get fixed faster.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by. Take off your shoes and stay a while.

Labels: links, retailers, statistics