Robert Wilkins of Peterborough heads FreePriceAlerts, a web browser plug-in and mobile application that notifies shoppers when another site is offering a lower price on the item they're viewing online. He said about 60 percent of the more than 100 retailers the app monitors started raising their prices before Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving — and then dropped them in the last few days to make it look like they were offering steep discounts.
"The prices that they dropped to weren't that much better — maybe 2 or 3 percent better — than they were a week or two ago," he said.
In some product categories, prices were actually higher on Cyber Monday, which was started in 2005 by a retail trade group to encourage Americans to shop online the Monday after Thanksgiving. Wilkins said power tools and kitchen items were not bargains Monday.
"If you're shopping for mixers, or plates, knives — anything in the home goods area — we're not seeing price declines. We're actually seeing a rise of 10-15 percent from two weeks ago," he said. "So you might be shopping and say, 'This is the best price I can get today,' but from a couple of weeks ago, it's actually up."
As the name suggests, FreePriceAlerts is a free, downloadable app that posts a small message on a shopper's computer screen if the product being viewed can be found at a lower price elsewhere. A small green check mark pops up if the consumer has found the lowest price. Shoppers also can set alerts for particular items, and will be notified by email when an item hits a particular price.
Though there are other similar apps out there, Wilkins said his is different in that it weeds out items that are out of stock or those that have artificially low advertised prices coupled with hidden shipping costs. And the app doesn't kick in until a specific product page loads, so it doesn't slow down the shopping experience, he said.
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