The ShoppingNotes blog

Here’s a price alert email sent to me by ShoppingNotes.com on May 5th.

I took one glance at it and concluded the following: the US dollar has really depreciated; the second item is no longer available; and the third item is probably no good.

Why?

The first item is from an Italian furniture store, so the price is converted from Euro. The “old” price was the price when I saved the link months ago (I only set price alert on this item the day before, so the price stayed “old” for last few months), and the “new price” is what it is today. Even though I never planned on buying something like that, it still feels “Ouch!” to see the difference.          . 

The second item’s “new” price is blank. The reason for that is because there’s no longer a price listed for this item on its original website, which means it has been either sold out or discontinued.

The third item is a return.  I know this because its “old” price is blank (meaning it was sold out).  Now the price is back at $990, someone must have returned her bag so it’s available for purchase again.  If I buy it now, I would be getting a returned product. For a bag it doesn’t matter much, but if it’s a 42 inch LCD TV, I’d better think twice.  Is there some flaw with this product (otherwise why would someone want to return it)? A dead pixel maybe?  Do I want to go through the hassle of dragging it back to UPS?

So, depending on your level of price-obsession, you can have a lot of fun deciphering your price alerts like the DaVinci code J.

To set price alert on a product:

You can either do it on the ShoppingNotes front page following these instructions (or refer to Illustrations in my previous post) or using the ShoppingNotes bookmarklet following these instructions.