Another software can also display train ticket information. Qin Yi took the photo.
If you want to know the price, you should take a picture of the barcode with your mobile phone first. Liu Liu took the photo.
When you buy things in the supermarket, do you carefully compare prices? It was learned that a kind of "price comparison software" installed on smartphones and available for free download has become popular and is highly favored: after users download the software, they just need to take a picture of the product barcode with their mobile phone, and the screen will show the price of the same product in different stores.
The reporter experienced yesterday and found that although this price comparison software has shortcomings such as incomplete data accuracy and delayed updates, it has become a powerful assistant for comparing price differences, allowing people to "compare three shops" without running all over the city -
Reporter Experience
Three seconds to display prices from three supermarkets
After querying online, the reporter found that there are now many mobile price comparison software such as "I check check" and "Quick shot". These softwares are all free to download and support multiple clients including iPhone and Android versions.
Yesterday, after downloading the "I check check" software on Android for trial use, the reporter found that not all commodity prices can be compared. The main products that can be compared are branded and quantitatively packaged food and cleaning supplies, while clothing and other products with strong differentiation are not within the scope of price comparison.
In a supermarket on Ru Jin Road, the reporter used the mobile phone to activate the software towards a Maxwell House Extra Strong Coffee priced at 38 yuan. After touching the screen and clicking on the barcode scanning command, the mobile phone entered the shooting state. After aiming at the barcode, within three seconds, the screen magically showed the price comparison results: Auchan 31.50 yuan, Jin Run Fa Shopping Plaza 37.30 yuan, Lotte Mart 42 yuan.
However, the reporter also noticed that some commodity information in the price comparison software is still different from the actual selling price. For a 500ml bottle of Lee Kum Kee Select Soy Sauce, the price in the supermarket where the reporter was located was 5.8 yuan, but the price displayed on the price comparison software was 5.5 yuan; later, the reporter learned that the price of this product in the supermarket was indeed marked as 5.8 yuan last week, and the price was just adjusted on Sunday night.
Subsequently, the reporter queried various consumer goods in the supermarket such as books, newspapers, and medicines, and found that this magical comparison software could display prices, with an accuracy rate of more than 80%.
Price comparison software is also installed on counterfeit phones
Nowadays, young people mostly use smart phones, and do elderly people who like to calculate carefully have to buy a smart phone to enjoy the convenience brought by price comparison software? Yesterday, when the reporter interviewed in the mobile phone market on Dan Feng Street, it was surprisingly found that some counterfeit phones also had a special "price comparison" function.
In the mobile phone market of Shuang Long Alley on Dan Feng Street, when the seller learned that the reporter wanted to buy a simple mobile phone for the elderly, they took out a phone priced at 500 yuan. When recommending this phone, the salesperson clearly stated that the phone was equipped with a camera that could scan barcodes. With the cooperation of the onboard software, as long as the barcode is scanned, the price of the product can be known, making it particularly suitable for elderly people to use.
Zheng Wenjun, the person in charge of the "I check check" software company, also confirmed this, saying that the principle of scanning barcodes is not difficult, mainly requiring the installation of a camera with a ticket scanning function.
However, the reporter learned that although the software is free, since it needs to be connected to the price information database, it is best to customize the monthly traffic before use. In general, the cost of going online will not exceed 10 yuan.
Many people are asking
1 Where do so many prices come from?
Reminder: In Nanjing, it's mainly about secretly copying, updated once a week, so it can only be used as a reference
With so many supermarkets and countless goods, how are prices controlled? Yesterday, after much effort, the reporter contacted Zheng Wenjun, vice president of the "I check check" software design company. "In foreign countries, many supermarkets willingly provide commercial information to software companies, but it's different here," said Zheng Wenjun. At the beginning, they sent people to talk to supermarkets about information collection, but many supermarkets did not understand and directly expelled them as "business spies" -- at that time, the salespeople could only secretly take pictures of prices and then return to register them; after a while, the supermarkets recognized them, and the company had to change people, swapping the price collectors of one supermarket with another, barely gathering tens of thousands of product information items. But now, starting from Shanghai, then Beijing, and later Guangzhou, some large supermarkets finally recognized them.
However, the biggest weakness of this price comparison software which completely relies on manual collection for information is the error rate in prices. Not only is the product catalog limited, but the update speed of some product prices cannot keep up with the changes in supermarket price adjustments.
But Zheng Wenjun also admitted that with the rapid changes in prices now, their current update frequency is once a week, far from reaching the level of real-time updates for some price comparison software abroad -- and to achieve this step, what is most needed is for some merchants to actively provide their own price databases.
2 Will they collude with supermarkets to report false low prices?
Answer: No, currently aiming to attract users, planning to make money through online shopping in the future
Some consumers are somewhat uneasy about how the operating company ensures the fairness of prices? Zheng Wenjun said that all prices in Nanjing are copied by information officers themselves, and they absolutely guarantee the authenticity and reliability of the product prices.
Then, how does the company make money? Zheng Wenjun was straightforward, stating that after accumulating a certain number of users, the company can attract consumers to shop at the cheapest online stores through e-commerce methods via mobile price comparison software. Simultaneously, merchant advertisements can offset the costs of collecting information.
However, he also frankly admitted that some price information updates need improvement, because supermarkets often have promotional activities, leading to delays or omissions. On the other hand, the types of products that can be compared are relatively limited. Currently, the main products that can be queried and compared are beverages, whole-packaged foods, and daily necessities.
3 Can you get a refund for the price difference based on price comparison software?
Reminder: No, because the software cannot guarantee 100% accurate information
During the interview, the reporter noticed that some supermarkets in Nanjing, such as Carrefour and Lotte Mart, have publicly committed to ensuring the lowest prices within a certain range and promise to refund the price difference. Then, if consumers bring the information provided by the price comparison software, because another store offers a lower price, can they go to the supermarket to claim compensation?
In response, a staff member of a supermarket in Nanjing clearly stated "no", because prices change in real time, and price comparison software is ultimately a product unilaterally launched by relevant companies. Whether it can ensure 100% true information, they cannot be sure.
And Zheng Wenjun said that currently in China, merchants only refund the price difference when consumers present the receipt of a lower-priced product from another supermarket. Therefore, this software currently only helps them find better shopping channels.
By Chen Yu, Nanjing Evening News