As the Weather Warms so Do Online Deals...

PETERBOROUGH, N.H., April 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Consumers reaped the benefits of increased discounts offered by online retailers over the past week reported FreePriceAlerts.com.

According to FreePriceAlerts.com CEO Robert Wilkins, online shopping during the last week of March increased 12 percent over the previous eight weeks, most likely driven by deeper discounting across a wide variety of products.

Consumer savings through FreePriceAlerts.com was at nearly 21 percent per item last week, up from 14 percent in February and early March. The number of new consumers using FreePriceAlerts.com increased by 20 percent during the last week of March.

The additional savings were across the board with no specific sector driving the increased discounts. In March the top online sales categories were:

• Health & Personal Care
• Health & Personal Care Appliances
• Kitchen & Housewares
• Sports & Outdoors

"The higher sales figures for last week are likely being fueled by greater online discounting across the board to bolster retailer's Q1 revenues," Wilkins said.

To date, FreePriceAlerts.com has saved consumers an average of $26 per online purchase, totaling nearly $27m -- $17m of that since November alone.

New Hampshire-based FreePriceAlerts.com is an automatic price search engine designed to instantly notify online shoppers -- via PC, smartphone, or tablet -- of the lowest price for the products they're shopping for.

The free service is extremely easy to use and also serves as a tool that can measure purchasing and pricing trends. People are using it to find better pricing on everything from diapers to DVD players.

Unlike anything else available, the FreePriceAlerts.com app downloads to any browser and when shopping online it automatically searches and confirms when the lowest price has been found.

FreePriceAlerts.com utilizes a proprietary, patent pending IP that is constantly being tuned to get better matches and improve the accuracy of the results. FreePriceAlerts.com gets smarter as consumers use it.

There are additional ways to save money through FreePriceAlerts.com, including saving searches, setting price alerts, and letting shoppers know when it's available at their price. There's also a FreePriceAlerts.com mobile app for iPhones (Android and Blackberry coming soon).

"FreePriceAlerts.com does for consumer products what travel sites have done for plane tickets," Wilkins said. "There's simply no excuse to pay high prices anymore."

Kiplinger and Yahoo Finance recently reported estimates that the average shopper can save $200 a year, based on $2,000 in online purchases, by using FreePriceAlerts.com. But, depending on what a person is shopping for, this number could be much higher. For example, one Kiplinger staff member reported that she saved $110 using FreePriceAlerts.com when purchasing a new crib.

The New York Times calls FreePriceAlerts.com "a new secret weapon for electronic shoppers." Today's consumer can easily obtain the lowest price information on cars from websites like Consumer Reports, but it's not so easy when buying a camera or smartphone due to the "jumble of information (that) makes any buying decision more confusing and anxiety producing." FreePriceAlerts.com eliminates this anxiety -- you'll know if you've found the lowest price online.

FreePriceAlerts.com demonstration video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=V0DtCc6K4vA

FreePriceAlerts.com logo:
http://www.ereleases.com/pic/FreePriceAlerts-Logo.png

Background:

FreePriceAlerts.com is a consumer shopping price engine owned and operated by myVBO. Founded in 2008, myVBO is a cloud-based solution for business that combines business reports, purchasing functionality and social media in one unified interface. FreePriceAlerts.com was born out of the technology used to power myVBO's purchasing engine. More information is available online at http://myVBO.com.

Robert Wilkins has started five companies during his career and also spent 11 years as executive vice president of PC Connection. Much of his industry experience has involved the reseller industry and technology, which are both key components of FreePriceAlerts.com. Because of its uniqueness, unobtrusiveness, ease of use, and ability to instantly save money for consumers, he decided to roll out FreePriceAlerts.com as a stand-alone product.

Media Contact
Christopher M. Williams
Vice President, Strategic Communications
Cookson Stephens Corporation
[email protected]
(o) 603-782-8192
(c) 603-630-1259

This press release was issued through eReleases(R).  For more information, visit eReleases Press Release Distribution at http://www.ereleases.com.

SOURCE FreePriceAlerts.com