Show HN: See lower prices in your cart | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: See lower prices in your cart

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21 pointsericn28 comments

I use something similar, Invisible Hand. http://www.getinvisiblehand.com/

I haven't had a chance to check out Buy Happy yet, but it seems to me that displaying competing prices on product pages rather than when adding to cart might be a better experience. I use price as one of the deciding factors on whether to buy, and there have been a few times where the lower price that Invisible Hand found convinced me to actually buy a product.

Perhaps both approaches are useful.

Another app that uses the cart method is http://www.shopgeniusapp.com/

The reason the cart method is powerful is because shipping can be compared (FS on $X+) as well as promo codes or other cart-based deals.

Good point. We're trying out the cart because we don't see many competitors there yet. Plus we have some more ideas for using the cart in the future. Stay tuned!

I would sure like to see one of these extensions that doesn't use affiliate links. I often want to use specific affiliates to support organizations like the EFF or Child's Play charity.

Not trying to be trollish, but I genuinely dislike this sort of monetizing and wish these extensions were at least more upfront about it.

How else would they make money?

> I genuinely dislike this sort of monetizing and wish these extensions were at least more upfront about it.

Do you have a reason for feeling this way, aside from not wanting someone else to earn money from your action?

They are providing you with a service that saves you money, so I don't understand the hesitation.

What other reason is needed? Some of us intentionally use affiliate links from a person or cause we care about, and would like to know when the affiliat-izing changes.

>>>and wish these extensions were at least more upfront about it

It's the third item on their FAQ (http://www.getinvisiblehand.com/faq). That's hardly hidden. I don't even use these services, but it seems like a reasonable way to make money.

I haven't checked the source code of the plugin, but I wonder if they add affiliate links when they link to the other prices that are lower? If they don't, I don't see why not, it seems like a nice & easy way to skim off the top of those transactions for providing a nice extension. I'll definitely try this out for a bit and gauge how good it works.

It looks like they're going to be monetizing by partnering with specific retailers. From the plugin description:

> Buy Happy retail partners will soon be giving you deals to share with friends and family via social media. And we’ll be adding more powerful features to Buy Happy as well — while building a fun community along the way. Isn’t it time to add Buy Happy to your browser?

Also, don't forget the data they are harvesting. From their privacy policy, they are monitoring your shopping habits and what you do before/after you look at a product. So, that will let them "support our relationships with the operators of the retail websites from which we  provide you with information about lower priced products"[1]

Basically, this is a data-farm.

[1] http://buyhappyapp.com/privacy-policy/

We would like to partner with retailers directly to get offers they cannot advertise on their website.

It's not always easy to become an affiliate so it may take time to get a good rooster of stores. A common approach is to crawl the data even if you don't have an affiliate deal. Not only is it proactive but it also enhances the product since it will show more alternatives.

Yep. We started with scraping, though we prefer affiliate data feeds. We still use scraped data while we wait for the affiliate approval.

OP here. We definitely use affiliate links when we can.

Good luck reading the code! It's compiled by Google Closure compiler, so it's highly minified. The bulk of the extension is actually written in ClojureScript.

Just for reference,

At the moment, the best price we've found on this product is on Best Buy. If you add it to your cart and view your cart, you should see a best price confirmation.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/radar-laser-detector/1470022.p?i...

You only see a confirmation if we could find a match. Otherwise, we stay out of your way.

This Blu-ray player is cheaper elsewhere:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Sony+-+Smart+Blu-ray+Player/7829...

Add it to your cart and go to your cart and you'll see a better offer.

What do you mean you "stay out of your way"? I seem to get a confirmation pop up regardless if the price is higher or lower.

You get a a dialog if we find a match (whether it's higher or lower). If we don't find a match, we don't show anything.

Updated the comment to be more clear.

Looks very nice!

Our Zinc Save [0] extension takes a slightly different approach. We add a button on at checkout that guarantees a fixed, better price. If you use it, we then do the price shopping for you and place the order on your behalf. If we don't get the price we promised, we keep or eat the difference.

[0] zincsave.com

FYI OP, I had to remove the extension because it caused other extensions to break.

I get this error code in the console when the extension is turned on:

Denying load of chrome-extension://amplgponnfkfhnbgojhehcaaiocgmpam/jquery.min.map. Resources must be listed in the web_accessible_resources manifest key in order to be loaded by pages outside the extension.

(I'm using Chrome Version 33.0.1750.146)

Thanks for the report!

As far as we know, that error is harmless. It has never affected us negatively before.

Can you give more details about which extensions stopped working?

Thanks

It's another extension that's using jquery, I think. It's something custom I added awhile ago, so I don't actually have a direct link to it in the Chrome extension store or anything. :/ Sorry about that.

Just a quick tip -- if you link directly to the extension, nobody except those using desktop Chrome can see anything about what it is.

I have a hard time believing this. I can see the chrome store in Firefox.

You can't see it in in Chrome on Android, and of course not in anything using the web component, such as Hacker News clients.

Nicely done.

If you're not in the US, you can give a try to our extension Shoptimate [0]. It does not compare in your cart but at the product page.

[0] http://www.shoptimate.com

By the way, extensions for Firefox and other browsers are coming soon.

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