Hi, I’m Chris from PriceMe. The other guys here have finally let me loose on the site’s blog/news page, so if I don’t stuff up on this first post, they might let me contribute on a regular basis !

One thing I’m very excited about at the moment is the 320,000 user and expert product reviews on PriceMe . This is a brilliant content partnership with alaTest (alatest.co.nz), as our users (and me!) can get a deeper level of information on a product than was previously supplied by a retailer in their brief product description/specifications.

I travelled to China recently and for the first time, I checked hotel reviews posted on TripAdvisor prior to booking. This helped give me an unbiased insight into each hotel I searched, with travellers offering their good and bad experiences and commenting on facilities, service and location etc. Without these user reviews, I could have booked a dodgy hotel with all the hassle that might have involved. In other words, I was able to book a hotel with a degree of confidence based on the recommendation of other user’s experience.

Similarly, if you were buying a new flat-screen TV or digital camera and you don’t know much about it,  an expert or user review can save you a load of time and disappointment (as well as money!). It will help you can identify which product is going to be best for you and for the function you intend to use it for and whether it’s the best value in its class.

Okay, so how do you find product reviews on www.priceme.co.nz ? Just go to any product page and if there is an expert review for the product you’re looking at, it will have a link directly underneath the product description. There is also a tab labelled Expert Reviews, which will take you to a page with one or multiple reviews. At the top of this page is a Review Summary containing a verdict and summary of the product. There’s also a rating/score card, where the experts have rated the product out of a possible 5 stars.

There you have it – all the heavy lifting has been done for you ! We hope this new addition to our content enables our users to shop with a greater degree of confidence, and that it reduces or eliminates some of the risk of not choosing the best or appropriate product when you are shopping or searching online.

Happy shopping !

Great news. alaTest, the world’s leading review aggregator, has launched its Kiwi site alatest.co.nz.

NZ consumers will benefit by this new addition to the local online shopping  landscape by having easy access to a vast amount of expert and user reviews from both local and international review sites. Some of the local review sites that alaTest co-operate with are Geekzone, Getfrank, PC World, ReviewIt NZ etc.

PriceMe has been selected as the exclusive provider of pricing information to alaTest in New Zealand.  This means that PriceMe retailers are now listed on alaTest as well - a new high-quality channel for our partner retailers!

PriceMe will incude alaTest’s review snippets including review score, verdict, pros and cons shortly. We’re planning to add the alaTest reviews under a new ‘Expert review’ tab, which will make the site more interesting and shopping more convenient since reviews and shopping information are bundled together. Please stay tuned.

PriceMe is community driven shopping site where consumers rate products and retailers. PriceMe would like to show its appreciation of the enthusiasm and contribution of our users by rewarding the best review $100 in cash. 

The rules are simple:

• The review must be your own words.
• You must have hands on experience of the product you’re reviewing.
• Your review must be submitted before April 21st 2008.

That’s it! The winner will be announced in April’s community newsletter (sent out a month from now).  Don’t miss out on this opportunity to contribute to the community while  at the same time earning some cash.