Sounds like a great app, thanks for the tip!

There's been apps like that Amazon Flow thing since smart phones have been around. I have a bar code scanner for my Android phone that does price comparison with various online stores. To call it close to stealing is a bit hyperbolic but that's par for the course for Paul Constant.

Dude, are you fucking kidding me? Stealing? This is putting bricks-and-mortar retailers on notice that they can't get away with ridiculous markups anymore.

For example, I wanted a new/spare battery for my phone (Motorola Droid). This thought occurred to me at Best Buy, where I could have a new battery for only $40. That sounded reasonable to me, as modern batteries have more computing power than computers did 20 years ago. Still, I didn't want to put money down unless I was sure I could get a good deal. I didn't have the app that cat & beard mentioned in #5, so I went home and checked Amazon, to find that the exact battery, with Motorola branding and the same model number, sold for under $6 online.

Another time, I was visiting a local music retailer and discovered a CD I was interested in purchasing. I thought it was a little steep for a used CD (around $10), so I held off. When I got home, I found it NEW on Amazon for $4.

Why does a local business have a moral right to my money? I understand that it costs more money to run a store than it does to run a warehouse, and volume discounts can be significant, so things are going to be more expensive at a local store. But to tell me that I'm wrong because I don't want to overpay on every single fucking thing I buy?

There's a tradeoff between getting something immediately at a store for more money, and waiting a couple days for less. Making it easier for someone to understand that tradeoff is not stealing.

According to you, as a consumer I should be willing to pay higher prices to local business to support the local economy. Well, that's fine. But exactly how much of a premium should I be willing to pay?

You are suggesting that I pay that subsidy to a local business blindly. With this app, I get more information: exactly how much of a premium is it? How is giving consumers more information even remotely "douchish"?

+1 C&b and rth

Public library.

I KNOW THAT WHENEVER I CHECK PRICES FOR USED VIDEO GAMES AT 'CD GAME EXCHANGE' THEY'RE PRETTY MUCH WITH THE MARKET AVERAGE ON AMAZON. ALL THIS IS DOING IS LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD.

THE ONLY PLACE THAT BRICK AND MORTARS CAN COMPETE IS WITH CUSTOMER SERVICE AND KNOWLEDABLE STAFF. THERE'S A REASON WHY HARDWARE STORES AREN'T GOING OUT OF BUSINESS.

There are other areas where brick-and-mortars have an advantage over Amazon etc.: being able to browse. You can't really browse at Amazon. Anyone who thinks those things on Amazon that say "people who looked at this also looked at that" are anything more than slanted product-placement is sorely mistaken.
So what's a dick move is (habitually) browsing at a local bookstore, making note of titles to buy, and then going home and buying from the cheapest e-tailer with low overhead, who treat their warehouse staff like shit, as Amazon does. This accelerates the race to the bottom and avoids compensating local businesses for their expense in putting things on display for people to browse.
It's not that local businesses have a "moral right to our money" exactly. But do we really want to keep giving virtually every single advantage to the big e-tailers so that there are fewer and fewer local shops to browse in that sell books and other important things to look at?
And shopping locally doesn't mean overpaying for "every single fucking thing [you] buy" (?!?)
Of course, if there's a big difference, I understand that people would hesitate to just buy locally willy-nilly, but often things are the same price locally as online. Fortunately there are still some folks who drop a little cash without making sure the local business is the absolute lowest price nationwide for item x. That's a pretty high bar to clear most of the time.

What geyser said. If we were to apply the maximum efficiency model to everything, few of us would have jobs. There are high prices, low prices and fair prices.

How is someone going to know if they can buy it for the same price if they don't know the online price? If I saw a book I wanted at the bookstore for $20, I might buy it, or I might not. If I know for a fact that I couldn't get it online for less than $15, I would probably be more likely to buy it.

Don't act like I'm the one being extreme. I'm not the one who said that Amazon is stealing by having lower prices and allowing people to know about it. (If Amazon is stealing, then what does that make me?)

6,116 IP violations from the same user Amazon.com. This will set a president that Amazon does not have to pay publishers. The dude needs that copyright lawyer that McGraw Hill uses for the Torrents.

I would contact ICE and have their domain seized.

I have a bar code scanner app that I use quite a bit during the holiday shopping season when prices are dramatically different everywhere online *and* in various brick & mortar stores.

Let's say I'm at Toys R Us and I scan a lego set that retails for $89. My app brings up that it's going for $50 at Target across the parking lot and $60+ shipping online from Amazon.

What is the problem if I save $39 by walking across the parking lot for the item? There are other items I want at Toys R Us that are great prices and I buy those items there. If I'm already buying from a Big Box Store, does it matter which one?

I think calling people out as douchey is pretty douchey.