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Show HN: Get the Best Deal on Products You Want, an Uber for Annoying Searches

5 points by aashaykumar92 ↗ HN
http://skanout.com/

Submit a link to a product you want, the price it currently is, and the price you want it for--we'll run a search for you, for as long as you want. And we'll send you a link to the best deal we find, no strings attached.

Background of the idea: Search is at the heart of our everyday lives. But there is such a thing as annoying searches. Think about when you want a certain product but it is too expensive. You probably try all the different websites that sell that product but then realize you will have to do this everyday to see if the price comes down. It is annoying and quite frankly, a waste of your time.

We're trying to solve this problem and perform these searches for you. Any and all feedback to the website, service, or anything else would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance :)

9 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 34.9 ms ] thread
reitanqild
Sounds brilliant.

Basically crowdsourcing in disguise?

aashaykumar92
I wouldn't go as far as crowdsourcing quite yet, but yes, all in disguise. So from the users point, they hardly have any work to do when it comes to the searching. And we'll let them know how the search goes from our end :)
reitanqild
If I understand the idea correctly you have two sources of input: users inputting links to new web shops and polling existing web shops.

If a user asks enters a product that is already in the database and you already have a better price, notify him in a mail a few minutes later that you have a better price and he will be impressed.

If a user enters a product that is already in the database and he has a better price, -send the first user a notification.

Additionally you will habe a growing number of sources for anything tjat you can poll and mine.

aashaykumar92
Yes, you're right, so crowdsourcing is appropriate to say. The second option, "If a user asks enters a product that is already in the database and you already have a better price, notify him in a mail a few minutes later that you have a better price and he will be impressed", is a little longer than a few minutes right now but we will improve that very soon.
leepowers
One suggestion:

Instead of "Desired Price" could there be an option like "Email whenever the price drops"? My "Desired Price" might be $50 under current - but if it drops by $25 instead I'd still like to know.

aashaykumar92
Basically a price-alert, right? Heard this from a few users now and have put that down as a likely addition for the next iteration. Thanks!
melvinmt
My "Desired Price" is effectively zero for all things I want :) Instead of having to decide what my desired price would be maybe it could be an option to run a search for x amount of time to get the lowest price possible.