ComparisonShopping

When is a bargain not a bargain? When the hidden costs of finding it outweigh the lower price. Costs like shipping, or gas, or your extra time. NetPlenish aims to solve all that for the real best deal, and eliminate the biggest hassle of online shopping, too: the annoying checkout process.

2012 may not be the year you strike it rich, but you can make it the year you start making smarter financial decisions using the technology at your fingertips. Start with these three small moves that can save you some serious money.

On Dec. 10, Amazon offered a special deal to shoppers who used its smartphone app in brick-and-mortar stores: Scan certain items, and the Web retailer would give them an extra 5% off. Critics cried foul. In one tactless move, has Amazon cast itself as the new mom-and-pop business killer?

The retailer's latest quarter was another disaster. Revenue rose by less than 2% to $12.1 billion. Earnings, adjusted for a one-time restructuring charge, fell to $0.47 a share, well below both last year's figure and analysts' target. Here's why Best Buy's future isn't going to be any easier than its recent past.

There's a surprising new finding that says women get lousier mortgage rates than men, but not because of gender discrimination. It's because instead of shopping around, they rely on friends' recommendations.

Bargain hunting just got a little easier for Walmart customers who are also Apple customers. The world's largest retailer has launched a new app for the iPad and updated its app for the iPhone to keep in step with its shoppers' growing use of the popular Apple products.

Here's the scoop on the holiday shopping season: Fewer people will camp out in front of stores before Black Friday this year in hopes of scoring hot deals on the "it" gifts. Instead, they'll use smart phones and tablets to comparison shop for the best prices, according to Accenture's latest survey.

It's happened to all of us. You head into the drugstore to grab some aspirin or toothpaste and you walk out carrying a bag stuffed with impulse items -- even groceries. Those impulse buys will cost you -- a lot: A new report from finds drugstore prices average more than 36% higher than supermarket prices.

When it comes to buying textbooks, the options have been slim: Pay high prices at the campus bookstore, or search hither and yon to track down used books. Now, a new startup called SwoopThat is changing that with a robust comparison shopping tool that does for textbooks what sites like Kayak.com have done for air travel.

While car buyers have been able to comparison shop online for years, drivers who want to lease their cars mainly have had to do their own legwork -- until now. LeaseTrader.com this week launched a new service to help them comparison shop for leases.