Here at CG, part of our job is to disseminate press materials you might not stumble across on your own. Case in point, a release from comparison-shopping search engine PriceRunner.com that just popped into my Inbox. Truthfully, I’m not familiar with the site since I pretty well stick to PriceGrabber and Shopzilla to grab pricing deals. However, the site, via the release, put together an interesting rundown of online prices of tech bargains versus some of the hyped Black Friday, brick-and-mortar deals. Wal-Mart was apparently the only one that delivered, beating online prices of an RCA 5GB MP3 player for only $88.72, or 40 percent lower than the lowest price found online, at $156.57.
Here are a handful of the site’s other findings, though:
— A popular Philips 50PF7320A HP Plasma TV was advertised by Costco for $1,999.99, while the exact same product can be found online for only $1,645.00, an 18% and $355.00 savings.
— Another popular HD Plasma TV – the Panasonic TH-50PX60U – was advertised by CompUSA for $2,499.99, while it could be found online for only $1,845.11 – saving a whopping $655.00!
— Consumers could save over 20% and $180.00 by buying the Canon EOS 400 Rebel XTi digital camera online at $719.00, vs. Best Buy’s advertised price of $899.99.
— Holiday budgets are sure to be stretched if consumers buy their Vizio 50″ P50HDTV10A HD Plasma TV from Circuit City at $1,499.99 rather than online, where the lowest price found was $1,898.00 – a nearly $400 and 21% savings.
What really hoses this comparison for me though is that it didn’t take into account shipping charges or taxes. So you may or may not be getting as good a deal as the site nets you.