ProBargainHunter.com

Last Friday Yahoo! launched a new web portal dedicated to personal finance. I was skeptical at first (their shopping portal hasn’t impressed me a bit) and it took me a few days of convincing myself before I set aside some time to browse through the pages. Man, was I wrong! The web site is very well built and is loaded with an array of useful resources.

The Calculators section is overwhelming. I have never seen before so many online financial calculators in one place. The Rates page pulls in data from BankRate into a neat table for comparing rates on Mortgage, Home Equity, CD’s, and Auto loans, and is in fact less messy than BankRate itself. The Glossary was also fun to read. I learned that “amortization” actually has come from “amortize” which means “to bring to death” (referring to a loan).

The portal aggregates news from such sources as CNN Money, The Walls Street Journal, and USA Today in addition to the Yahoo’s own crew of experts. An interesting side note, each article is conveniently featuring “Digg This”, and “Bookmark to Del.icio.us” links at the bottom. At last Yahoo! is learning something from bloggers. ;-)

The most interesting section for me was the collection of How To guides categorized by different aspects of personal life — from Getting out of debt (something I hopefully will never have to deal with) to Buying a car (which I hope to do a lot ;-)).

Overall I was impressed by this effort from the Yahoo! team to regain the status of the ultimate destination for everything on the Net. It is certainly worth your time to check it out.

I learned about Frucall a while ago but have never really taken time to look at it until today. This is one of those things that you put into your back burner and never have time to go back to again. I guess one of the reasons is that I am just not doing much shopping in the stores these days. Except my groceries and maybe some stuff for home (think Target and Home Depot) I seem to buy everything else online. Why is it important? Read on.

Frucall is about assisting you in making the decision should you buy the thing you are looking at in the store or order it online -- and you do it all from your phone. How does it exactly work? If you just want to check the price you dial 1-888-DO-FRUCALL from your cell phone, wait for the short commercial to play (this is how Frucall makes money), and enter the UPC or ISBN number of the item you want to check. If the item is found on-line then you will hear the price range and the list of stores selling it.

I have tested UPC's off of several boxes from my recent purchases (those that I could find around the house) and the results are pretty satisfactory. Most of the items were found with the exception of stuff I bought from Sams Club and Costco. As for the prices, the popular items such as printer or tape recorder would return 2-3 alternatives while less popular items would only have one or none at all.

In addition you can do such generally useful things like bookmark the item you are checking the price for or leave yourself a voice message tagged to that item. This might work for some however I prefer to use my PDA for things like that. First, it is visual (I can see it on the screen in front of me), second it is accessible (turn on PDA and go to your notes), third it is processable (I can copy, email, edit, or delete my notes).

If you sign up with Frucall for a free account you can then buy things on the spot via Frucall if you like the on-line price you hear. Keep in mind though that Frucall works off of a network of affiliated stores and this alone already indicates that there is a good chance you will not get the best price (think cash back).

In general I see one big problem with using this tool. Making a call and checking the price takes time and you are not going to do it for small items like tooth paste or a magazine. So it really works for big ticket items (priced $50 and up). The advanced shoppers (the most likely users of this service) will do their research before going shopping for anything this expensive. The mainstream shoppers do not know about Frucall or do not care.

So is Frucall a useful shopping tool or a toy? I think it is for each of you to decide for yourself. Everything depends on your personal shopping habits. As for my advice to Frucall team, get additional funding, do more mainstream media ads, and... support blogs like this (my big evil grin goes here). Educating shoppers works to your benefit.