In the US, retail businesses are offering individualized and general coupons via the phone apps. I wonder if this pricing can be tracked, as it results in significant differences.
For example, I recently purchased fruit and dairy at Safeway in the western US, and after I had everything I wanted, I searched each item in the Safeway app, and it had coupons I could apply for $1.5 to $5 off per item. The other week, my wife ran into the store to buy cream cheese. While she did that, I searched the item in the app, and “clipped” a $2.30 discount, so what would have been $5.30 to someone that didn’t use the app was $3.
I am looking at the receipt now, and it is showing I would have spent $70 total if I did not apply the app discounts, but with the app discounts, I spent $53.
These price obfuscation tactics are seen in many businesses, making price tracking very difficult.
I wrote a chrome extension to help with this. Clips all the coupons so you don't have to do individual searches. Has resulted in some wild surprise savings when shopping. www.throwlasso.com
It's published as a Firefox extension and you should be able to find it by searching for Lasso but I think I need to push the latest version and update the website. Thanks for the reminder. Which other browsers would you like?
Personally I only care about Firefox, but I think its pretty standard to support Firefox, Chromium, and Safari.
Tried it out and works well after I figured out how to start clipping but didn't work for a couple sites I tried, mostly the financial ones like Chase and PayPal. Looking forward to the update!
For example, I recently purchased fruit and dairy at Safeway in the western US, and after I had everything I wanted, I searched each item in the Safeway app, and it had coupons I could apply for $1.5 to $5 off per item. The other week, my wife ran into the store to buy cream cheese. While she did that, I searched the item in the app, and “clipped” a $2.30 discount, so what would have been $5.30 to someone that didn’t use the app was $3.
I am looking at the receipt now, and it is showing I would have spent $70 total if I did not apply the app discounts, but with the app discounts, I spent $53.
These price obfuscation tactics are seen in many businesses, making price tracking very difficult.