I spent the past year creating Price Hipster, a product search engine and price watching website for the OzBargain community!

Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 11:45
Last edited 13/11/2015 - 12:45

Update 13/11/15: Thanks everyone for the support and feedback! I realise there are heaps of comments here and no one wants to read through them all. If you have a suggestion, it has probably already been raised. I'm currently working on a big update and I'll be sure to let you all know when I release it. I'll be keen to get further feedback and suggestions then. :-)

Hi fellow OzBargainers!

I've spent the past year creating a powerful tool for you all.

https://www.pricehipster.com.au/

These are the reasons I created Price Hipster:

  1. Searching for products across multiple stores is painful. Sometimes you don't even know which stores to check for a product. Wouldn't it be great to conveniently search all stores from one place?

  2. Even if you want to find a product in one particular store, most store websites are very bad at searching their own products, and they're slow at it.

  3. There is no convenient way to find out the previous prices of products, making it difficult to hold vendors accountable for false claims of discounts. Some products vary wildly in price. Some change price nearly every day. For example:

https://www.pricehipster.com.au/product?id=NJNmxsZ3k5n

I really appreciate those OzBargainers who have taken the time to use internet archives to dig up previous prices, but it's less than ideal, and hopefully will now be a thing of the past!

Price Hipster currently includes 5 websites in its index. That will expand in the near future.

Questions for you all:

  1. Which stores should be added next?

  2. OzBargainers in Western Australia, how is the search latency for you? The search servers are in Sydney. I live in Brisbane and the search is pretty much instantaneous here.

If you find any issues with the website or have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

General Discussion

Related Stores

Price Hipster
Price Hipster

Comments

              • Rodo on 04/06/2019 - 15:16

                @jazoom: Disappointing that Coles is not being nice with their website design. I wish they would make it easier for sites like Price Hipster to search. Will be difficult now buying from Coles.

          • leiiv on 05/06/2019 - 16:17
            +1

            @jazoom: Can you at least keep old data alive for us to check the price history?

            • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 05/06/2019 - 18:30

              @leiiv: I'll think on that. There's currently no way built-in for that.

              • isthisreallife22 on 07/06/2019 - 11:09

                @jazoom: My biggest feature request is that old listings still work even once the retailer has delisted the item!

                Would help me INCREDIBLY with price protection claims

      • bluesky on 23/05/2019 - 21:34

        I have no idea why OzBargain insists on using the word "banned" …

        Not necessarily a bad connotation … OzBargain is also banned.
        Reason given must always be read in conjunction.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/05/2019 - 21:37
          +2

          I know it's not intended that way… yet here we are, with people asking me why Price Hipster is banned.

          • spackbace on 24/05/2019 - 11:17

            @jazoom: Not sure why anyone needs clarification, it's pretty bloody clear on the store page:

            This store is currently BANNED on OzBargain.
            Reason: Price comparison sites cannot be used as the direct link for deals. Expiry: permanent

            • fredblogs on 24/05/2019 - 11:21

              @spackbace: Your link has different wording to this one: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/deals/ozbargain.com.au

              Also it bears repeating that "BANNED" has a negative connotation and people don't always read the fine print.

              • spackbace on 24/05/2019 - 11:23
                -3

                @fredblogs:

                and people don't always read the fine print.

                And we need to allow for the minority?

                What else would you like to happen when a store is banned from posting? What phrase is best used for a store ban? Please enlighten me as to the modern PC way of not offending people or how we can put a more positive spin on the phrasing?

                • nocure on 24/05/2019 - 11:29

                  @spackbace: This store is currently BLOCKED on OzBargain.
                  Reason: Price comparison sites cannot be used as the direct link for deals. Expiry: permanent

                  • spackbace on 24/05/2019 - 11:31

                    @nocure: And that will depend on whether scotty & co can change the formatting

                    • fredblogs on 24/05/2019 - 11:33

                      @spackbace: You mean whether they feel it's worthwhile. I'm sure they "can".

                      Another option:

                      You cannot post deals from this store.
                      Reason: Price comparison sites cannot be used as the direct link for deals. Expiry: permanent

  • RickoWest on 25/05/2019 - 13:11

    Firstly want to say you're website is awesome. Many a discount I've received thanks to you! Just wanted to add it appears Bunnings isn't working currently? Looks like they have slightly modified their website / new platform? Could that be the culprit?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 25/05/2019 - 13:19
      +3

      Thanks for the kind words.

      Yeah it hasn't been crawling properly for a few days. I haven't gotten to it because I ran a marathon this morning. Hopefully I'll have some time to look into it tomorrow.

      • isthisreallife22 on 27/05/2019 - 17:57
        +2

        I haven't gotten to it because I ran a marathon this morning.

        Of all the lazy excuses…

        Just kidding, pricehipster is my favourite, if you need a hand i might have skills that can help ease the load from time to time

        • sintro on 29/05/2019 - 14:53

          Also looks like Coles isn't showing up in the list anymore.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 29/05/2019 - 15:27
            +1

            @sintro: Check the comment above this parent comment 😉

  • GeneralKeen on 03/06/2019 - 22:24

    Hey man, I've been using PriceHipster for a while and I love your work, I'm quite interested to know the back end technology. Is there a thread created merely discussing the technical side of the site?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 04/06/2019 - 19:07
      +1

      There isn't a thread, probably because it's not all that interesting. I've used pretty standard technologies to build everything out over a number of years. I have no idea how many lines of code I've written but it must at least be in the hundreds of thousands. It's all custom-built.

      • fredblogs on 04/06/2019 - 19:36

        Can you quit your day job yet?

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 04/06/2019 - 20:00

          Haha. If I could it certainly wouldn't be because of Price Hipster.

          • thydzik on 05/06/2019 - 12:27

            @jazoom: currently or plans to monetize the site?

            • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 05/06/2019 - 14:45
              +2

              @thydzik: It's monetized enough such that it's no longer costing me money directly. I'm still not even close to being reimbursed for my time working on it.

              • fredblogs on 18/06/2019 - 19:33

                @jazoom: That's a shame, means you're not incentivized to keep improving it. Hope you can monetize it more.

  • leiiv on 18/06/2019 - 10:23

    Hi Jazoom,
    Can you add a feature to get all price history (not limited to last 6 months) for each particular product?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 18/06/2019 - 13:46

      Hey leiiv, you should see 2 years of history where it's available.

  • JuryWheel on 24/06/2019 - 11:38

    Any word on whether Uniqlo will be added at some point? Thanks

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 24/06/2019 - 19:02

      Not at present

  • sintro on 11/07/2019 - 12:59
    +1

    Coles is back?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 12/07/2019 - 21:17

      🤓

  • Zazer on 01/08/2019 - 22:27

    Nice to meet you mate! Just found your site and was pointed here as the source. Just want to say thank you! Love the site, will definitely be using it in the future :)

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 04/08/2019 - 19:10

      Hi Zazer! You're welcome.

  • outlander on 02/08/2019 - 17:45

    Hello again Mr Manager

    I noticed when searching for Philadelphia products, the woolworths links aren't coming up. Is there a problem?

    Things like this are on the woolworths website, but nowhere to be found on pricehipster
    https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/213014/phi…

  • Pentanol on 10/08/2019 - 15:39

    Hi jazoom,
    Just wondering whether you can do it for Officeworks products?

    • treeman on 13/08/2019 - 12:08

      Officeworks used to be on pricehipster.
      I think they decided to stop providing the coding or however they do it.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 13/08/2019 - 20:50

      True what treeman said. Officeworks used to be on Price Hipster early on in the story. I axed them many years ago because their website was an incredible mess of spaghetti code and excessive network requests. It may be worth revisiting at some point.

  • AncientWisdom on 12/08/2019 - 12:18

    Hey jazoom,
    Been using Price Hipster from the very start, it's super cool.
    Wanted to let you know that when shopping in SurfStitch today:
    1. The Chrome notification wasn't coming up
    2. When going to the Price Hipster website it seemed the search was very hit and miss for the items I was looking for (can give examples if required).

    Cheers mate
    Keep up the great work!

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 13/08/2019 - 20:52

      Hey Ancient, could you give me those examples please?

  • RubenM on 19/08/2019 - 08:12

    It's pretty awesome, thank you.
    A couple of things:
    Maybe remove stores that add fake discounts (Catch, House and Kogan)
    It'd be great if similar to the comments on this site, there could be a "new" flag next to listings that are new since your last visit, and as a bonus point, if you could filter for those.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 19/08/2019 - 17:15

      Thanks for the feedback, spludgey :-)

      Maybe remove stores that add fake discounts (Catch, House and Kogan)

      I haven't gotten any feedback about those stores in particular. Do you have some examples for me?

      It'd be great if similar to the comments on this site, there could be a "new" flag next to listings that are new since your last visit, and as a bonus point, if you could filter for those.

      You can filter for price changes within the last day, for example. There are tens of millions of products on Price Hipster so I don't think there's much practical benefit in scrolling through new products. They wouldn't even necessarily be new products, but may just be new to the store. And even then, it's possible they won't be new to the store, but just newly seen by Price Hipster's crawler for some reason.

      • RubenM on 19/08/2019 - 19:10

        This is my standard filter, you can see that Kogan is playing silly buggers. That book was never really $700+.

        https://pricehipster.com/?daysSincePriceChange=3&daysSincePr…

        As for the "new" products, I think you may have misunderstood me. I don't mean products new to the store, but products with a new price change since the last search. This would allow multiple meaningful searches per day, for example.
        I know that you'd have to use cookies for this and/or people need to be logged in. So maybe it would take to much data keeping track of this for you, and I don't know how many people would use it, but I certainly would!

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 19/08/2019 - 19:53
          +1

          This is my standard filter, you can see that Kogan is playing silly buggers. That book was never really $700+.

          Actually, it's selling for over $700 right now: https://www.kogan.com/au/buy/atlas-for-stereotaxy-of-the-hum…

          And it's $625.01 at Amazon, so $700 seems in line with the actual price of the book. $25.35 was a (very short) bargain, I guess.

          As for the "new" products, I think you may have misunderstood me. I don't mean products new to the store, but products with a new price change since the last search. This would allow multiple meaningful searches per day, for example.
          I know that you'd have to use cookies for this and/or people need to be logged in. So maybe it would take to much data keeping track of this for you, and I don't know how many people would use it, but I certainly would!

          I see what you mean now. It's an interesting idea. I'll have a ponder on it.

  • Neoika on 19/08/2019 - 19:15

    Not any results for washing machines at JB HiFi.

  • wazza23 on 25/09/2019 - 10:15

    The philips hue products were discounted on amazon but nothing on price hipster?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 25/09/2019 - 10:55

      Price Hipster currently doesn't have all Amazon products on it. May be a project for me to address that next year and get them all on there.

  • tee123 on 08/10/2019 - 15:59

    I am slightly late to the thread but it night be worthwhile adding a paypal link or something on the site for people to donate what they feel like to show appreciation of your hard work. Even if its a couple dollars here and there.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 08/10/2019 - 22:07
      +4

      I appreciate that people want to show appreciation. I'd personally prefer not to ask for donations, though. I like providing this service and I don't want anyone to feel like they owe me anything. Those who wish to show appreciation can share Price Hipster with their friends, because more people using it is better than me having a few extra dollars in my pocket.

  • Olokun on 29/10/2019 - 22:06

    Appears jb hifi isn’t working at the moment.. can select the store but shows no results.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 30/10/2019 - 00:03

      Thanks for the info. I'll have a look into it tomorrow.

      • [Deactivated] on 02/11/2019 - 09:06

        Also seeing the same thing searching Bunnings since yesterday

        • Neoika on 02/11/2019 - 09:13

          The drone price error cost Bunning ten of millions. I am sure the post was inspired by PH.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 02/11/2019 - 10:35
          +1

          Fixed it for now. We'll see how it goes. Thanks for the info.

          • [Deactivated] on 13/11/2019 - 11:11

            @jazoom: Looks like Bunnings is cactus again.

            • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 17/11/2019 - 14:26
              +2

              @[Deactivated]: Thanks again. I believe it should be working now.

              If you're being blocked when trying to access Bunnings' website after you've followed a link via Price Hipster, that's a different issue. Bunnings (via Cloudflare) is blocking a whole bunch of their customers (including me) from accessing their website. I don't know why they're doing that. Incompetence is the most obvious explanation. I can't imagine they'd be stupid enough to block traffic to their own website on purpose.

  • follow on 01/12/2019 - 08:15

    is there a way to set price alert for item on all stores instead of just one store?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/12/2019 - 21:24
      +1

      Not presently. That's not as easy to do as you might think.

  • tryagain on 10/12/2019 - 13:40

    Bunnings seems to be having an issue when you try to click through to their site.

    Sorry, you have been blocked
    You are unable to access bunnings.com.au
    Why have I been blocked?

    This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

    What can I do to resolve this?
    You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/12/2019 - 07:41

      You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked.

      The site owner is Bunnings. They're the ones blocking their customers. I have no control over their website.

      • tryagain on 11/12/2019 - 08:52

        When I refresh it it works, but will email them, thought it might be a pricehipster issue, but actually reading what the error is just now can see it's a setting on their end.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/12/2019 - 10:29

          I don't know why they're doing that. I can only imagine it's an automated thing they don't realise is happening. No company in their right mind would block their own customers from accessing their website.

  • O O on 12/12/2019 - 14:10
    Just to let you know, there's a bug in your recent update. My email notification greating is shown in vanilla form,

    {{address.name}}, great news!

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 12/12/2019 - 14:18

      Oh thanks. I made a change to another email provider yesterday. I was waiting to see which bugs might appear. Thank you for alerting me to this.

  • Bad Wolf on 16/12/2019 - 15:54

    Cotton on seems to have no inventory

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 16/12/2019 - 17:52
      +1

      Thanks Bad Wolf. I'm looking into it.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 17/12/2019 - 07:51

      The problem turns out to be for quite a few stores - all of the ones we're connected to through a particular affiliate network. Their FTP server is currently broken.

  • Neoika on 30/12/2019 - 08:57

    Coles gone again!

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 30/12/2019 - 10:56
      +1

      Yup. Thanks for letting me know.

      It's been a very busy year this year since I decided to finish off my medical specialty training. I have a lot of improvements to make to Price Hipster in 2020 and I should be able to keep on top of website changes a bit quicker.

      I'll get Coles back ASAP.

  • Neoika on 12/06/2020 - 19:34

    Kogan.com products all gone.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 12/06/2020 - 19:38
      +1

      Thanks for the heads-up. I've got a few things to sort out this weekend, it seems.

  • Riczter on 27/06/2020 - 03:46

    Just discovered Price Hipster today, thank you Jazoom for creating it, you are an asset to the ozbargain community :)
    One thing I noticed when browsing items from PLE Computers, it doesn't appear to show out of stock items, meaning I cant add price alerts until they are back in stock. Not the end of the world but was wondering if this was intentional or easy to fix?

    Another query, i don't know if you are still taking requests for more stores, i haven't read through the entire thread, but if so I would love to see the Dell store, Lenovo Store, Apple Store, and MSY on Price Hipster.

    Having notifications on price drops is going to be a game changer.
    Thanks again.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 27/06/2020 - 08:08
      +2

      Thanks, Riczter.

      You cannot currently browse out-of-stock items. Generally, Price Hipster doesn't know if these products will ever return, and in some cases neither will the retailer. This is why they just disappear and maybe come back. It's not perfect, and it is something I'm planning to address at some point.

      Getting more stores on Price Hipster is best done by pressuring the stores themselves, by their customers. Generally, I require the store to provide me with a product feed.

  • Davo1111 on 29/06/2020 - 22:30
    +1

    looks like amazon has been removed :(

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 30/06/2020 - 05:33

      I removed them until I can deal with the bogus changing prices some of their sellers do.

      • Davo1111 on 30/06/2020 - 06:27
        +1

        ahhh ok, thanks for replying :)

  • [Deactivated] on 05/07/2020 - 09:17
    +2

    Are you able to split Bunnings into 2 separate stores since they decided to list their 'marketplace' garbage online?

    It would be good to have one for Bunnings (non marketplace items only) and one for Bunnings Marketplace which only shows their marketplace stock (clearly labelled on each item page so should be easy enough to get your script to check for those tags).

    Really frustrating trying to check for bargains at a hardware store and seeing candles and blankets etc littering most of the sorted results.

    • tin tin on 05/07/2020 - 10:53

      Hit the nail on the head Kevsta, the marketplace listings are so annoying, splitting it would be ideal, or would anyone cry if marketplace listings were removed altogether?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 05/07/2020 - 11:09

      What's the actual problem? Just noisy search results?

      • [Deactivated] on 06/07/2020 - 08:46
        +1

        Yeah pretty much. I search for Bunnings products because I'm interested in price drops on hardware, but since they have started showing 'marketplace' products on their website the results show all the junk products that you cant even buy from Bunnings (they sell and ship direct from the 'marketplace' supplier). Example can be seen here - all the yellow highlighted products are junk sold by other stores

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 06/07/2020 - 20:15

          Interesting perspective. Is it similar to looking around Bunnings' own website, or do they somehow segregate these "market" items in a way that doesn't distract you?

          • [Deactivated] on 06/07/2020 - 21:07

            @jazoom: Generally when I use the Bunnings website directly I know what I'm looking for and search directly for it which bypasses all the useless non-hardware store type items.

            Where a product is from another seller there is a purple chain link icon indicating so on the search result.

            When I use your website I'm searching for the store and ordering by price drop $ or % and unfortunately the majority of products that show since the Bunnings change are not related to Bunnings at all besides the fact they are listing the product on their website on behalf of another store.

            I really feel that those items sold on behalf of other stores should be a separate store listing on Price Hipster.

            • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 07/07/2020 - 20:27
              +1

              @[Deactivated]: You're probably right. I'll have to look into this. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

  • wazza23 on 30/07/2020 - 00:05

    Adairs gone?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 30/07/2020 - 07:18

      They had a problem with their feed so I delisted them. Looks like feed is back so I'll try them again. They should be back by this afternoon.

      • wazza23 on 30/07/2020 - 21:36

        Thanks mate!

  • GreenGuava on 06/08/2020 - 00:20

    Firstly thanks jazoom for the work and effort you've put into creating and maintaining Price Hipster. It's an incredibly useful website! Keep up the great work!

    Secondly, I noticed this evening that Coles has dropped off both on search results and also my price alerts.

    I was wondering if this was an intentional change, or whether it was a continuation/extension of the 'hostile' website design you've previously touched on here?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 06/08/2020 - 20:36
      +2

      Thanks for the kind words. :-)

      Yes, it appears Coles is being hostile yet again. Perhaps this is another opportunity to support their competitors some more, since only Coles seems to behave like this.

  • wazza23 on 31/08/2020 - 21:27

    Hi - I've got a bookmark where I've got about 8 stores only that I include in my search. The problem is - sometimes I need to remove 1 or 2 of them but if they are later in the alphabet they do not come up. It just says "and 2 more" but in order to see those 2 more you have to remove 1 or 2 others. Hope that makes sense but you either need to make the font smaller so more stores fit in that 'included' box or a scroll box so you can see all your included stores thus allowing to remove some.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/09/2020 - 07:32

      That's kind of an extreme case but I can see why it would be frustrating. There are UI issues with allowing the box to get huge. Scroll might work. The long-term solution would be allowing to select a favourite group of stores in the dashboard. That's on my to-do list.

      In the meantime, the easiest solution is probably just to edit the URL yourself. It looks like this: https://pricehipster.com/?stores=HJA-haTp,SyeYXdQKM

      Just delete the store ID you don't want. They are separated by commas.

      If you need to find the store ID you can just add the store in another tab.

  • eitai2001 on 01/09/2020 - 17:27

    Hey jazoom. I've just discovered this, and having a poke around. Looks to be a really useful tool :)
    I had two suggestions based on my first immediate use of the tool (the most critical time in terms of UX), specific obviously to how I used the tool.
    1. Is the "was" price shown (on the products on the homepage), the stores indicated "was" price, or a previous historic actual price of the product? And if it is historic, how is it determined? Is it the second most recent price? The very first price? Or the most expensive price? The answer to this should be included in a tooltip question mark next to the was price so people understand it.
    2. When sorting by greatest discount, are you able to filter out the incorrect / unrealistic ones. I.e. There are a few with a "was" price of $999999. Or a 56k modem with a "was" price of $10,948 and now only $54 :P. I don't know if there is a clever way to filter these out though. Looking into your history graphs, it seems the price is purposefully set higher, in some cases for a few days, and then dropped. I'm assuming to get discount algorithms to pick them up.

    • eitai2001 on 01/09/2020 - 17:31
      -1

      Oh, and 1 more. Are you able to add an out of stock alert to products? I'm not sure how often your caching is, but if it's once a day or more, this would work well I think :)

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 02/09/2020 - 07:47
      +1

      Hey thanks for the feedback.

      1. There actually is a tooltip, but in the product details page (just click one of the tiles). It would be busy and redundant having the tooltip on each product tile. It's more correctly referred to as "normal" price on the details page. The tooltip will answer your question. It's none of the options you suggested, but is the price the product seems to be most of the time recently.

      2. Sometimes stores do this to game the system, for which I ban them. Sometimes stores do this for stupid reasons, like making a ridiculous price instead of simply marking the product as out of stock. I'll also ban them for repeatedly doing this. For the occasional product I'll simply remove/reset the product. You can report these incidences from the product details page if you are signed in.

      3. Out of stock alerts is something that won't work as well as you would imagine. Stores seem to have a difficult time keeping their systems in line with what's actually in or out of stock. I think it would cause more headaches than benefit. Also, I cannot even imagine why you'd want an "out of stock" alert. I'd think a "back in stock" alert would be much more desirable.

      • eitai2001 on 02/09/2020 - 14:50

        Sorry "alert" probably wasn't the right word. More so on the site, when the price is displayed, and indicator whether if it is shown as out of stock. I clicked on a few great looking deals, but they all showed out of stock. So it would be good to know that before I click.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 02/09/2020 - 14:57
          +1

          Those products currently shouldn't show up at all. Feel free to use the reporting feature to report them as being out of stock.

          Unfortunately there is some lag between crawls, and stores often incorrectly tell Price Hipster their products are in stock, when they are not. This will always be imperfect.

  • wazza23 on 05/09/2020 - 11:43

    Hi, I have had a list bookmarked of my included stores but the last two days it is only loading up one store, no matter what stores I add to my included list?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 05/09/2020 - 15:41

      Hey thanks for the bug report. I just fixed it for you :-)

  • tryagain on 16/10/2020 - 01:48

    Is Bunnings not working at the moment?

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