Consumerist
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deals
Ask.com Launches New Service To Find The Best Deals
Ask.com has launched a new service—ask.com/deals—dedicated to finding the best deals online. We don't know how well it works, but we like the tabs that let you quickly jump to free shipping offers and printable coupons. It might be a decent starting place if you're in the market for something and need to comparison shop first. Update: Our readers say it's not worth your time, at least in its current state—results are paltry and frequently old or expired.
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insurers
How To File A Complaint Against Your Insurer
After our post yesterday ended up crashing the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' consumer information website, we received an email from them. They said they wanted to explain how the site works to address some reader questions, as well as point out that you too can contribute to the rankings by filing complaints when your insurer does something objectionable. More » -
how to
Find Out How Much Your Insurer Sucks
So you suspect your health/auto/home insurer is run by the devil, but you're not sure whether the alternative you're considering is any better. Kiplinger Finance has posted a helpful article on how to find the complaint ratio of an insurer via the National Association of Insurance Commissioners' website. Update: here's how to file your own complaint. More » -
saving money
Are Dollar Stores Really That Cheap?
Kim McGrigg at Blogging for Change took a look at the dollar stores in her neighborhood and found that it can take some work to make sure you're actually saving money. In fact, on a couple of items she actually paid a fraction more than what she would have at a superstore like Walmart. This matches what Consumer Reports' shopping mag, ShopSmart, discovered in their recent "Dollar Mania" report (free PDF download).
"Do you get a deal at the dollar stores?" [Blogging for Change]
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funerals
Study Shows Mortuaries Vary Widely In Pricing
A non-profit group recently surveyed the prices at 49 different mortuaries and crematoriums in San Diego, and found that "prices vary widely, with some mortuaries charging nearly twice as much as others for similar combinations of services." Although the study focuses on one city, it's a good reminder that you should check around and not assume that pricing is consistent throughout the industry. More » -
If you own a G1 phone from T-Mobile, Google has added a special barcode scanning feature to its Product Search page just for you. Yeah, you've already got other barcode scanning apps, but this one integrates with Google's search functionality so you can scan and see product search results in Google immediately. [Phandroid]
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credit cards
New Credit Card Rules Won't Stop You From Making Bad Decisions
Barbara Kiviat in Time takes a look at the one aspect of credit card debt that no amount of government reform is going to fix: the human brain's tendency to fail miserably when it comes to making decisions about spending. More » -
If you have an iPhone or a G1, Google has just announced a new version of their Product Search specially formatted for those phones. Here's a video demonstrating how the mobile version looks and functions. [Google Mobile Blog via IntoMobile]
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comparison shopping
Duane Reade May Want To Rethink The Instructions On Their Generic Sandwich Bags
Duane Reade wants you to compare their store brand sandwich bags to Ziploc's bags, and you should, because Ziplcoc's bags are $0.50 cheaper.
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budgets
Watch Out For Supermarket Price Spikes
A penny-pinching reader discovered that Giant Eagle—a supermarket chain that heavily promotes a savings club where you earn slight discounts on gas—has some jacked up soup prices, especially on their private label. Remember, if you're not comparison shopping among local supermarkets, you can expect easy-to-miss price spikes like this one to wipe out any savings you thought you were getting. More » -
skiing
LiftSift Helps You Find A Ski Lift In Your Budget
Nate at Idea Shower (responsible for the awesome Read It Later Firefox extension) has created a nifty online tool to help you narrow down your ski and snowboard destinations. Visit LiftSift.com, adjust a few sliders to set your price range, vertical rise, and location, and compare away. The data behind the service is public so that users can add new locations or make updates when lift prices change.
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home depot
Home Depot Website Prices Have Nothing To Do With In Store Prices
Remember, Home Depot's price match policy doesn't apply to online listings, including its own website. At his local store, Michael paid more than twice the online Home Depot price for a coaxial cable, but Home Depot refused to refund him the difference. They even say as much in small print on each page of their website. With Home Depot, be sure to call and get a valid local price quote before heading off to purchase something you saw online. More » -
guitar center
Guitar Center Adds $100 Premium To iPods
Update: Guitar Center has fixed the pricing error and offered refunds. More » -
Here's the 35 most popular online price-comparison sites. Happy deal-hunting. [ProBargainHunter]
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isps
Tired Of Your Entrenched Service Provider? Consider A Local Alternative
Few consumers realize they can ditch their monopolistic service providers in favor of local, independent telecoms that often offer similar services at competitive rates. These smaller outfits depend on service, not size, as reader Sharpstick recently discovered:In the Charleston SC area we are fortunate to have local a internet / phone / cable provider called Knology that has made customer service an art form.
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drastic measures
Harvard Bookstore: "We Own ISBN Numbers"
The Harvard Crimson ran a story last week about a student who was asked to leave the premises for writing down the prices of six textbooks at the Coop, Harvard's bookstore of record. The bookstore's president says that there's no official policy against students writing down information, but "we discourage people who are taking down a lot of notes." But what's more surprising, he tells the Crimson that the textbooks' ISBNs—which can be used to look up the same books online—are "the Coop's intellectual property." More » -
travel
New Farecast Service Tells You Whether That Hotel Rate Is Really A Deal
Farecast.com is testing a great new feature that evaluates a hotel's given rate, then tells you how much of a deal it really is when compared to past quotes and fares at similar hotels, says the New York Times:The $179 rate for a room at the Hyatt Regency was listed as "average" because it was 28 percent more expensive than rates at that hotel on the same date in past months, according to Farecast. It was also 13 percent more than recent Friday-to-Monday stays at the same hotel.
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credit cards
Easily Compare Best Credit Card Offers
Bankrate has a very handy online tool for comparison shopping for a credit card. More »
comparison shopping
New York, 10:12 AM
Thu Nov 12
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