Everyone’s on a budget these days and ZingSale hopes to harness that need and create a budget-minded shopping portal. It’s not a store or even an affiliate-link, but rather a sort of RSS feeder for online shopping. Basically, users put in what they’re looking for (say “Gucci Wallet”) and the site alerts them whenever that product is on sale or at a discount somewhere.
Sounds great, except that everything is “on sale” or “at a discount” somewhere. The definition of these is ambiguous and I found no way to define them on the site. As a search tool for products without the alerts, however, ZingSale is still a good solution for finding lower-cost items. The results appear to be unbiased and the site loads quickly with an easy interface.
Browsing through categories makes things even easier, especially if you can’t remember the name of a specific product. A search for “Sony” in TV, for instance, can quickly be narrowed to plasma-only and then you’re likely to find the model you were after.
The site has little information on ownership and an over-simplified privacy policy that leaves a little to be desired. Their promise to never sell, rent, etc. your information is straight forward, but finding out how to contact them isn’t easy. An email link is provided as well as a PO box in Encinitas, California. That’s about it. No ownership or corporate information is available.
I personally get worried when sites don’t list this kind of information, though I know that smaller startups are probably dubious about throwing all their info out there right off the bat. It’s a best practice, however, to build user trust by showing them all the information about you that you’re expecting them to give to you about themselves.
At any rate, to search products and prices, you don’t need a login, so this can be done without giving up anything personal. As a shopping portal for discount items, it’s a good spot and one that you’ll probably find useful.
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