Sccope best price finder
Consume with confidence
iOS App of the Week I decided to avoid last week's royal rave-up by engaging in some retail therapy. We’ve seen a number of shopping-related apps recently, but this price-comparison app is the one I've found most useful when I’m in shopping mode.
Sccope helps you compare prices online and on the high street
Available as an app on iOS devices and BlackBerry smartphones, and as a widget for a number of phones on the T-Mobile and Vodafone networks, Sccope maintains its own database of price and barcode information. It's focused primarily on electronics, books, games and DVDs.
You can browse through various product categories while you’re still at home, and then filter the results to show either online or high-street prices so that you can order online or head straight to the nearest shop for a spot of instant gratification.
It can also do a price search on Google, although this filtering option is only available for items found in its own database.
Scan a barcode on an item (left) and cheekily buy it online (right)
When you’re in a shop you can also use Sccope to scan the barcode on an item and check to see if it’s available more cheaply elsewhere. The only problem with this option, of course, is that it requires an internet connection to work properly.
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COMMENTS
Not good for the retailer
The problem I have with this kind of application is you are using the facilities of the shop to browse and look at items then seeing if you can buy it cheaper elsewhere. Not just from another shop around the corner, as you would do in Tottenham Court Road for those Londoners, but from companies that have a different business model who don't need to pay for the expensive high street front and the staff to help you.
If you want to use their 'value-added' services then at least have the decency to help them continue to provide that service by spending your money with them.
(It does look like quite a nice app though, I just have moral feelings about it's use)
Re: You've got to buy online!
It's like my mum who proudly said how smart she was to browse the books at her local Borders bookshop but then bought them from Amazaon, and then complained bitterly when Borders went bust.
If you like having your local high street full of boarded up shops and charity shops and not having anywhere local to go if you need to buy something in a hurry then absolutely, go for it, and do all your shopping online.
That makes no sense
By that logic you must buy everything you want from the first shop you see it in. No matter what price it is. That's insane. If you want to waste your money to prop up a business which benefits people you don't know, you knock yourself out.
Haggling on TCR?
For 'ticket' items like TVs, maybe, but last time I haggled over component prices I got duff hardware. Yoyotech won't haggle, even for cash - I've tried, repeatedly..
