If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you may already know that I am frugal. Here in New England, it is considered a good thing. New Englanders are strange.
I have to admit, I have a dislike for shopping in general. I don't like waiting to work my way through what seems like the one and only open check out line. I'm also one of those people that makes the store go and check, then correct, the price when it is wrong. I didn't even like stores even when I worked in retail on the other side of the register.
Guess what, Christmas is less than 7 weeks away. I know this. It doesn't matter. I will start my shopping December 23rd, no doubt, as usual.
If you dislike shopping like me, I have a pretty good tip for you. Try to get a specific list of what those people on your shopping list want, then you can pretty much finish your shopping in minutes! Just go to www.froogle.com, a nice little online shopping site brought to you by those nice people at Google. Froogle is acually "Google Product Search" and is currently in "beta", which means it is not a completely finalized product yet.
Let's see how it works. I thought I would see just how good Froogle.com worked for finding Webkinz. My daughter is really into Webkinz. If you have a young kid, you probably know what Webkinz are. My daughter has over 50 of them (many were gifts, I'm frugal ... remember?). For everyone else, Webkinz are simply stuffed animals with a special coded tag that lets the child "play" with their stuffed animal in virtual web land. They have "special" editions and new animals coming out all the time. Well, my daughter wanted one of the latest to come out, a white seal.
In Froogle.com, I typed "Webkinz Seal". Up came 4 pages of places where I could by it online, showing the item description, in some cases a picture, and the price. A nice feature is the sorting capabilities. I sort by price, low to high of course. One of the other sorting features is to sort by rating, which is how online shoppers who have bought something from the listed company rate their experience.
In many cases it is best to know the specific brand and any other details that help find what you are looking for. For example, I can type "Wine" and get hundreds of pages returned. But, if I know someone likes Cabernet I can comparison shop just that specific wine by entering "cabernet wine". If I know they like Kendall-Jackson Cabernet wine I can really do some comparison shopping!
Now if I can just get free overnight shopping I'll be all set when I start my shopping on the 23rd...
Thanks for the tip Wayne, that's awesome... I do hate shopping, just like you =p so I'll definitely put froogle.com to the test this Christmas... thanks for the info!
Posted by: Caleb | December 05, 2007 at 04:51 AM