Shopping:
Assistants
| Computing
| Dept.
Store/Mall
Person-to-Person
| Specialty
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Shopping
Assistants |
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BizRate.com
Wouldn't
you like to know which online stores really
know how to serve their customers? The
answer is at BizRate.com, a site that
compiles information from satisfaction
surveys attached to over 1,700 stores.
The result: ratings of up to five stars
that reflect how shoppers feel about a
store's ordering process, selection, and
prices. This is the Web's most thorough
and unbiased assessment of shopping satisfaction.
Make a visit here before you commit to
doing business with a Web store you've
never shopped at before.
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DealTime
DealTime
is a shopping bot that, unlike its competitors,
stays on the case even if you can't find
the item you want at the price you want.
Just give it those two pieces of information,
and it will continue to search the Web
for you until it finds the item. Then
it will notify you in the downloadable
Desktop Notifier, and you can go make
the purchase. New to the site: the DealAgent
feature, which lets merchants respond
in real time to your shopping requests,
thereby cutting your waiting time to zero.
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Mercata
One
of the trendiest ways to shop online is
to use "demand aggregation"
to get the best deal. The concept is simple:
If a gang of people can get together to
make a volume purchase of laptops, VCRs,
or anything else, they'll get a better
deal. This method of shopping isn't for
everyone because you can't be sure how
low the price will go and you may have
to wait several days to find out, but
Mercata is also valuable as a research
site: Like an auction site, it can give
you a good idea of how much a particular
item should cost in the current
market.
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mySimon
This
is the shopping bot to beat. mySimon queries
so many sites (more than 1,500--15 for
tea alone) that it does a better job of
finding the best deal than other shopping
agents do. It offers dozens of categories
that cover just about any item you're
likely to buy on the Web. You can also
search auctions (such as those at eBay)
and classified ads. The site searches
all major merchants, and advertisers are
denoted by their logos.
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Productopia
Productopia
goes to the trouble of teaching you about
the category you're shopping in before
it sends you off to shop at recommended
stores (or dispatches a bot to shop for
you). Read the tutorial and visit the
discussion group before you decide which
watch, pants, or garden tractor you want.
This site makes it much easier to make
an informed buying choice.
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Chumbo.com
The
site is arranged into six easy-to-browse
main categories, and the posted reviews
from users and ZDNet give it a very appealing
sense of community. Meanwhile, the excellent
downloadable software section points users
toward the future.
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