Price Tracking Websites for Holiday Shopping

Price-Tracking Web Sites for Holiday Shopping

Even though Black Friday and Cyber Monday have passed, you can still find good deals online for holiday shopping without the stress of going over your holiday budget.

While Amazon always has many items marked down and can provide savings for the consumer, their pricing is not as straightforward as it might seem. Many consumers don’t realize that Amazon’s prices may change throughout the day. Fortunately, with the help of a price-tracking Web site, you can keep tabs on their prices and find the best time to buy the items you want.

CamelCamelCamel, for instance, tells whether a price on a specific item has increased or decreased over time. Copy and paste the URL of the item from Amazon.com—or the product keyword—and it tells if there has been a price change. CamelCamelCamel only tracks Amazon prices at this time. Their Web site is http://camelcamelcamel.com/.

To check prices from other online retailers, try Invisible Hand. This free download is an extension for your Web browser. It tells you if the item you are looking at online is being sold for less elsewhere. You can also use it for booking hotels, plane reservations and rental cars, as well. Their Web site is http://www.getinvisiblehand.com/.

PriceZombie is another free, downloadable Web browser extension that can notify users of low prices available at various stores. It gives an item’s price history and shows where you can get the item at the best price. It also notifies users if a recently purchased item is now selling for less, so you might be able to get a refund on the price difference. (Also check with your credit card company to see if they provide price-difference refunds when the price has dropped for an item you bought with your card.) Find them at http://www.pricezombie.com.

READERS, what do you think?

1.     Did you know that prices on items change all the time? What do you do to find the best prices?

2.     How do you plan to save money on holiday shopping?

Reference:

AOL, Inc. (n.d.). Price-tracking tools for holiday savings. Daily Finance. Retrieved December 1, 2015, from http://www.dailyfinance.com/2015/12/01/online-price-tracker-holiday-shopping-savings-experiment/.