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October 3, 2007 3:07 PM PDT

Tjoos: Somewhat smarter shopping

by Rafe Needleman

Today I heard about Tjoos (no relation to Tjoon), a new price-comparison engine that adds a wrinkle to the standard model: It scans for quantity and coupon discounts.

That's the whole story, but it's a smart one. On standard shopping engines, like NexTag, PriceGrabber, and MySimon, you're given prices for single products (or boxes of products). Many consumer items are bought in multiples, though, and Tjoos' crawler deciphers the quantity discounts in the sites it covers.

Tjoos looks for quantity and coupon pricing, something other shopping engines don't. Too bad the only thing you can buy on the site now is contact lenses.

(Credit: CNET)

Even for items that aren't usually sold in quantity (digital cameras, for example), the addition of store-specific discount codes to the pricing engine can make a fundamental difference for users. Other shopping engines don't pick up coupon discounts.

Tjoos reminds me a bit of Farecast (more), as it gives buyers a better overall picture of the market they're in. Tjoos doesn't show the quantities where the discounts kick in, though, which would make shopping for the best value a bit easier. It's still a neat idea.

In this early release, Tjoos only scans for prices on contact lenses. More product categories will be added later.

Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.
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Add a Comment (Log in or register) (3 Comments)
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Nothing new here
by jeff.r October 16, 2007 11:19 PM PDT
They are scraping/stealing their coupons from retailmenot.com. I wonder how long until they get sued?
Reply to this comment
by dealsalo August 14, 2009 9:29 PM PDT
i dont think they will get sued. because retailmenot just scraped from other coupon site too. lol
www.alodeals.com
by atraub1 July 20, 2009 12:08 PM PDT
Hey guys make sure to visit http://www.dealtherapy.com/. They have tons of new coupons that are updated daily. They save you tons of money. They make that empty wallet go from empty to full with just a few purchases. They saved me tons of money and i suggest to anyone who wants to save money to visit them before your next online purchase.
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