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If the financial crisis and economic downturn have you pinching pennies this holiday season, we're here to help you find gifts for everyone on your list -- at bargain prices.
Keeping your holiday spending under control is easy thanks to an array of Web sites with the sole purpose of helping you find bargains. There are sites that post the latest deals on everything from clothes to electronics, sites that give you cash back when you shop, sites that provide coupon codes and sites that help you compare prices. You need to act quick, though, because December 18 is the last free-shipping day by which most online retailers can guarantee delivery by Christmas. (If you're willing to pay for delivery, you have a few more days.)
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Even if you don't end up buying online, it never hurts to find the best deals on the Web before you brave crowded stores. Then you can comparison shop and make better choices.
We've tested and picked 18 Web sites we think are easy to use and will help you save money this holiday season. Take a look:
Find the lowest price
If you really want to score a great buy, use a price-comparison site. PriceGrabber.com (side-by-side product comparison, merchant coupons and rebates) Shopping.com and mySimon.com all are great options because they give you a lot of results for your searches with the range of prices listed, product descriptions, side-by-side product comparison, and store and product ratings. The sites also are good places to go if you are looking for gift ideas.
Pronto.com fetches prices on 70 million products from 65,000 merchants, a larger retail search than rival sites offer. The site is geared heavily toward products users like most. That is, when you click on a category, you'll get a list of the top 100 liked products. You also can get gift-buying tips from community members.
If you know exactly what you want and need just a bare-bones price comparison site, try Google's shopping search engine, Froogle. What you'll get are lots of results for your search, product reviews, seller ratings and a "local shopping" option to help you find products at stores near you. What you won't see is a home page full of hot products, shopping guides, product categories and colorful images you'll find on sites such as PriceGrabber and Shopping.com.
Another site worth checking out is Dealio.com, which shows eBay prices along with prices from traditional retailers. What we really like about this site, though, are the downloadable tools that help you find the lowest prices online.
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