Comments on: Ugenie Crunches Shopping Numbers

By: uGenie Launched « My Tech Log

uGenie Launched « My Tech Log — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:44:55 +0000

[...] ugenie – went live for the public last night. We have some reviews at Techcrunch and some comments thereafter. There is an interesting podcast interview with one of the founders: Harish Abbott by [...]

By: uGenie Launched « My Tech Log

uGenie Launched « My Tech Log — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:44:52 +0000

[...] which I work – ugenie – went live for the public last night. We have some reviews at Techcrunch and some comments thereafter. There is an interesting podcast interview with one of the founders: [...]

By: Amit Sehgal

Amit Sehgal — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:40:43 +0000

Check out this site http://www.bookase.com, A price comparison search engine for books and textbooks. It searches for the lowest prices among the major online stores worldwide and also offers discount coupons. You can also choose among various shipping options to calculate the lowest price

By: fridayrelease

fridayrelease — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:47:23 +0000

Let’s see every one is coming with new shopping concept.Older will be first always because old is gold

By: SocialWizards Blog » Social Wizards - Ugenie’s Facebook Avatar

SocialWizards Blog » Social Wizards - Ugenie’s Facebook Avatar — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 03:17:21 +0000

[...] week of its launch, was the story that everyone in the Valley was talking about. Having built an innovative and powerful comparison shopping engine, and faced with mounting traffic acquisition costs in the shopping space, we started looking at [...]

By: ugenie launches iread and socialwizards- mid course correction..or? |Technology and Business Startups in India

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:55:48 +0000

[...] what’s really surprising is that uGenie is no longer about shopping comparison (the way it used to be), and the site only talks about their facebook/bebo app, [...]

By: Rose

Rose — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 17:00:51 +0000

Its a good site, especialy for those of us who still pay for our music, but for textbook shopping it is a bit cluttered. I prefer to use more streamline search engines like Textbook411.com or even gettextbooks. Overall its a good site to have bookmarked.

By: Compare book prices — Web20 approach (Poll) at ProBargainHunter.com

Compare book prices — Web20 approach (Poll) at ProBargainHunter.com — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 10:34:16 +0000

[...] Ugenie shouldn’t complain about lack of publicity. Covered by TechCrunch and other blogs it is the only vertical engine in the niche that I know to have attracted financing from the side. The startup has offices in California and Bangalore, India. [...]

By: PriceFight: Because There’s More to Shopping Than Low Prices » JenIT

PriceFight: Because There’s More to Shopping Than Low Prices » JenIT — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 12:31:19 +0000

[...] If online shopping magic is of interest to you, see also our reviews of bundling, math intensive Ugenie and our round up of aggregate review services. [...]

By: PriceFight: Because There’s More to Shopping Than Low Prices

PriceFight: Because There’s More to Shopping Than Low Prices — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 17:44:02 +0000

[...] If online shopping magic is of interest to you, see also our reviews of bundling, math intensive Ugenie and our round up of aggregate review services. [...]

By: TechCrunch en français » PriceFight: parce qu’il y a plus important que le prix d’un produit

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 15:32:18 +0000

[...] J’aime cette idée bien qu’elle ne semble pas difficile à dupliquer. Peut être que le plus grand défi se révèlera de rendre le système populaire avant de le rendre public afin de disposer des résultats concluants. Peut être aussi que le mystérieux algorithme de Peoples’ Choice se révèlera particulièrement efficace à l’avenir. PriceFight est agréablement conçu et possède une URL facile à retenir. Il est de plus agréable de pouvoir comparer certaines choses comme la politique d’envoi et le service après vente des revendeurs. Dans la série nous vous invitons à tester aussi uGenie et JeffyFish. [...]

By: Techcrunch » Blog Archive » PriceFight: Because There’s More to Shopping Than Low Prices

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 19:53:13 +0000

[...] If online shopping magic is of interest to you, see also our reviews of bundling, math intensive Ugenie and our round up of aggregate review services. [...]

By: Kumi

Kumi — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 11:16:58 +0000

This thing is flipping amazing. I decided to try this out for myself based off of a referral from my friend and it is great. I bought 3 books and a book on cd. I priced my “bundle” had I just purchased everything from Amazon vs. Ugenie, and I ended up saving about $25!
That’s incredible.
I’m a raving fan of this site, and Ugenie is one of the major reasons all of my family will be getting books, dvds, and cds this Christmas.

By: Ugenie in a blog » Blog Archive » Surge of traffic

Ugenie in a blog » Blog Archive » Surge of traffic — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 21:09:49 +0000

[...] http://www.tech...01/ugenie…; [...]

By: Mona

Mona — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 17:51:47 +0000

Ajit:

Not to put words in their mouth, but I interpretted Chris and John as pointing out that if you simplified the technology behind uGenie to search just a few places you would get results that were not a whole lot different than if your searched many more.

If this were true, it would beg the question, is the Ugenie in the bottle big enough for a venture investment. They seem to make a big deal and also take a fair amount of time searching something.

By: Prem

Prem — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 16:56:15 +0000

Chris, No you are not dumb but remember, you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Would you agree or not that even with 4 places (Amazon, Half.com, Overstock and Alibris), uGenie is offering value to you? And all this is free!! uGenie does not charge you a penny. I agree with you that showing savings compared to list prices is over the top but hey, as long as we are getting savings for free, I’d always give uGenie a try!

By: Ajit

Ajit — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 09:11:56 +0000

Chris and James Carter III , you guys are talking about visiting three sites to get the best prices for a new book (Amazon, Half.com and Overstock) or a used book (Amazon, Half.com and Alibris). You would end up visiting 4 websites in case you are not sure about buying a new or used book. uGenie will find the best deal for you including shipping,taxes and coupons in one place in one click! If you are buying for more than one item then you would end up wasting a lot of your time and energy in figuring out the best deal if you dont take the help of genie i.e. ugenie . Try it, its all free! It saves so much of your time and effort. Isn’t that cool?

By: Shan

Shan — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 02:44:01 +0000

Finally, a comparison shopping site that caters to both men and women! Most of the comparison shopping sites I have tried seem to be so completely targeted towards men (in UI and content) that I had almost given up. It appears Ugenie actually gets what people want – the product combinations I want, from vendors I have heard of, at the lowest price and highest quality possible. I don’t want to investigate every option possible, I just want what I want, asap. Nice work ugenie for getting that. I’ll be back, again, and again.

By: James Carter III

James Carter III — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 20:05:24 +0000

Chris:

Your observations match mine. Even if it isn’t broadly true right now, it is fairly unlikely that Amazon, Ebay, Alibris and Half, which are probably the most efficient channels for selling books, will yield their customers to others.

But I would love to be proven wrong.

Sunil

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 18:17:26 +0000

Maybe I am dumb but why do you need to search through trillions of combinations. If you are looking for new books, check at Amazon, Half.com and Overstock. If you are looking for used ones, check at Amazon, Half.com and Alibris. I think that will cover 90% of your cases. Atleast that is what I’m seeing in most of my bundle searches.
And I think comparing against list price is a bit over the top.

By: Sandra

Sandra — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 17:38:37 +0000

I’m a big Amazon.com fan. Love their service! So, when I heard about Amazon alums having come up with this cool service, I gave it a try. I tried two books I am thinking of buying today: ‘Fiasco’ and ‘The Audacity of Hope’.

Ugenie gave me the following prices:
Amazon: $30.70
Overstock: $30.30

That just confirmed what I knew all along – Amazon is THE place to buy books. You can save a penny or two elsewhere if you are into penny pinching.

Based on some of the comments here, regarding there being a spectrum, I thought I’d try some older books which may have better prices elsewhere because they are not hot so Amazon wouldn’t be offering big discounts. I’m a big Agatha Christie fan so I just picked two that I don’t own:

The A.B.C. Murders 042513024X
Nemesis 0451200187

Ugenie came back with Amazon Marketplace for $7.00

I think I love my Amazon on the entire spectrum.

Good luck guys! The site is nice and pleasing to the eyes though.

-Sandra

By: Krishna

Krishna — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 10:04:50 +0000

James – thanks for trying out our website and posting your findings here. We are certainly working on reducing the number of clicks users have to do on the final purchase guide page and are hopeful to have something out in the next few weeks.

As far as comparing Ugenie prices with Amazon goes, we have received feedback ranging from “not much difference” to “wow, I saved 70%”. The value of ugenie to the customers on both sides of the spectrum is that we take the guess work out of answering whether your favorite merchant is cheapest or not. You can use the filter criteria to see exactly how much more expensive that merchant is compared to the cheapest option (use the “All from one merchant” checkbox and exclude merchants you don’t want). You, the user, decide whether the price difference is large enough for you to switch merchants (may be this one time) or not.

We love to hear from our users. Please drop us a line at http://www.ugen...om/feedback.jsp.

By: Nachi

Nachi — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:36:37 +0000

awardtour,

thanks for trying the ugenie. the items for which you were trying to buy the amazon price (with free shipping) from ugenie comes out to be $39.94. thats why ugenie did not come out with amazon as the cheapest for the bundle you were trying. we verified the amazon price to be correct also. we would love to hear from you on how you could get 34.63 from amazon for this items. as harish meant earlier if its something we missed we would definitely fix it.

- nachi

By: James Carter III

James Carter III — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 08:54:55 +0000

I was quite sceptical about Ugenie, but given the great review here and the fact that I needed 5 titles (my daughter is hooked on some children’s books about fairies by Daisy Medows) I thought I would try them. I was surprised they did find me a lower price than amazon by 84c. (Amazon 29.94 and Ugenie 29.06). Unfortunately I have had great service from amazon and so I just stuck to Amazon.

I think going up against amazon on books that are popular is fairly pointless. Even on books like the ones I was looking for, which are not best sellers the difference is not big. So I doubt that Ugenie will something I will remember in the days to come.

But I like rooting for the underdog, however fruitless, so maybe I will come back sometime.

Also guys you need to reduce the number of clicks to buy a bundle. Buying a bundle of 5 involves 5 clicks to create the list, 1 to bundle, 5 to go to the site that was selling the book, 5 add to cart at the site, 5 windows to close and then the checkout. At Amazon I had 5 clicks on one page and then checkout.

By: Harish

Harish — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 02:58:11 +0000

Matt,

Thanks for trying out ugenie and I am glad you liked the UI.

I just ran your two favorite book bundle just to see if we have messed up some how.

http://www.ugen...p?bundleId=4162

I got the ugenie find of 11.54. It is not $11.55 as you reported ( atleast as of now 18:50 PST) and they both are sourced from half.com and not from Amazon and Half . We do real time price checks so it is likely that when you checked the best price was 11.55 and sourcing was as you reported.

Yours is a great point that points out to the dynamic nature of pricing in media products. And since we try to have very fresh prices what we suggest is what you will end up paying – trying to take the guessing out. Also, for some bundles you may not find great savings (as in this case) over other sites but for some you may find a whole lot more. We are just trying to find the best prices available for your pick of items at the time you want them.

-harish