My husband being the frugal shopper that he is, or maybe it’s just because he’s indecisive (probably a little of both), hates to buy things that are “on sale” without really knowing what price something has gone for in the past.  He likes to know if he is really getting a deal or not.  Since he tends to buy a lot of high end electronics online, he figured there had to be a better way to figure this out than just shopping around to a bunch of different stores and wasting hours on end looking up price information.

Lo and behold, he discovered an awesome price tracker program that allows you to see the lowest, highest, and average prices an item has gone for, and shows a running graph of how the price has changed over time.  This program is seriously awesome!  You can now, in one place, see if you are really getting a deal or not.

The website is camelcamelcamel.com (weird name, I know, but it really is neat!)

 

 

 

 

The way it works, is you find the item you are looking for on Amazon, Best Buy, or NewEgg, copy the URL from that site and paste it into the camelcamelcamel site.  It will instantly show you all the previous pricing information.

For example, my husband and I are considering buying a new stove.  One of the ones we are considering is this one (among several other brands): 

According to Amazon, the price on this model right now is $1,987.33 with free shipping, or $1,799.00 + $228.89 shipping from another seller on Amazon.

If I take the URL of this item from amazon and enter into camelcamelcamel, it tells me that the price of this item is fairly high right now, and in fact the average price is $1586.88.  The lowest price could be found on Nov 24th, which was of course Thanksgiving day.

Here, see for yourself!  (click the picture to see it full size for a better view)

 

We just started using the program, so I am not sure of the long term reliability, but I thought it was a great tool to share with my readers to help them make smart shopping decisions!

Even though this is a relatively new tool for me, it does have some promising features that mean I will probably be visiting this site before all of my online purchases!

These include:

  • Camelcamelcamel (CCC) lets you set up price-watch alerts for virtually any Amazon/Best Buy product. For example, when Amazon (or a third-party seller) drops a product to below a certain price (a price that I set), CCC will notify me via e-mail and/or Twitter.
  • You can also set up an RSS feed for an individual product or all the products you’re tracking.
  • CCC lets you import your Amazon Wish List, which can be a big time saver if there is something you have been wanting and waiting for the price to drop.
  • Finally, CCC has prefab RSS feeds for “biggest Amazon price drops,” “most recent price drops,” and “most popular products”–all great tools for the avid Amazon shopper.

 

Try it out and come back to let us know how it worked for you and if you saved yourself from any outrageous purchases!