(PRWEB) April 12, 2005
As an internet geek of nearly 10 years now, I am constantly being asked by friends and family for assistance while shopping online. Two of the most frequent questions Im asked are “which is the best (insert electronic gadget here)”, and “how can I find a good deal on (insert any product here)”. The answer to the first question is usually fairly simple. I can direct them to Consumer Reports and CNet and be on my merry way. After all, its tough to beat those sites for overall product comparisons and reviews. The answer to the second question is a bit more complicated. My answer usually starts with “well, it depends”. Online discounts can be tricky to locate if you arent sure where to look. Price comparison sites such as pricegrabber or pricescan work well for estimating ballpark cost, but its much harder to pin down additional savings (such as percent off coupons, or mail in rebates) beyond that.
Say, for example, youre interested in purchasing the PalmOne Tungsten T5 PDA. Youve already gotten an idea of general price and features, and you simply want to know if there are any rebates out there that might knock off an extra $ 50 or so. You would then find yourself combing the web sites of Amazon, Circuit City, Wal-mart, Target, etc to see if they have any rebates exclusive to their site for this item.
In addition to checking for rebates, you might simply want to see if there are any “percent off” coupons, or discounts for your PDA. There are dozens of affiliate sites out there that can link you to current promotions (such as free shipping offers, percent off coupons, and online discounts). However, wading through the majority of them can be time consuming and annoying thanks to blinking banner ads and excessive usage of the word “coupon” (an attempt to boost their search engine rankings). Most of these sites have similar deals, but there are enough differences among them to force you to poke through at least a dozen of the most popular ones to ensure youve thoroughly searched for a deal on your PDA.
Out of this frustration for locating discounts and rebates comes a specialized search engine called MetaSavings.com (http://www.metasavings.com). It indexes the rebate pages of major retailers, as well deals from popular and aesthetically pleasing affiliate sites. In short, its a way to search hundreds of discount and rebate pages in one shot. Using our previous example of the PDA, a quick search on metasavings for “PalmOne Tungsten” shows a handful of results. The top three are rebate pages for OfficeMax, Circuit City and Target. From the results, I now know that these three places carry a $ 50 rebate for my PDA, saving me the hassle of wading through each of these sites individually.
MetaSavings.com (http://www.metasavings.com) saves countless clicks in surfing around for deals and rebates, and provides a one-stop shop for anyone wanting to quickly find discounts and savings for online purchases.
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