Mysupermarket closing - alternatives?

poppellerant

I came here after just finding out tonight that MySuipermarket has closed - very unexpected and I used it regularly.  Sad news indeed.

Even sadder is that there is no real alternative to MySupermarket other than Comparasaurus, which really isn't as good.  If wants to benefit from MySupermarket's unfortunate demise, they should improve the app to allow users to select a product and then show prices from other stores on the product page.

Those saying that Comparasaurus does not show results.  At first I saw the same message, but if you wait for a couple of seconds your results will show.  Like others, I was a little impatient at first.

Anyway, let's see if Comparasaurus steps up to the plate.  If not, I hope an alternative for MySupermarket appears.  It's 2020 - it's seems a little draconian that there was only one decent site to compare prices of supermarkets.  I'm not awfully keen on having to install an app to compare prices - I'd sooner use my computer.

Hawley_Gryphon

I agree, I can't believe the something so well used and useful has just been pulled like that. I'd have at least thought they would have tried to monetise it with adverts before abandoning it considering how popular and unique it was. Has anyone found an alternative yet? I've been having to have multiple supermarket webpages open at the same to do a manual side by side comparison of shopping items as I go.

GaryG

I have used www.MySuperMarket.co.uk for years to compare grocery shopping prices. Now the company who run the website have chosen to discontinue the website, in favour of "other" aspects of their business; whatever that means!

Does anyone know of any similar grocery shopping prices comparison websites? There are a lot of other comparison website dealing with tech and utilities etc, but I cannot find any which focus on grocery shopping prices.

poppellerant

There is a thread with suggestions here: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6108602/mysupermarket-to-close

janet278

gyorokpeter said:

I have been thinking about this as I'm a developer. I can make a price comparison app that runs on my machine. The problems start to come when it comes to making it available to others. Not sure what MSM was using to get their data, but the T&C's of the respective stores' websites generally prohibit distribution of their data for non-personal use. So either the methods of data collection were not entirely in the clear or they had some backdoor agreement with the stores to get the data, which I imagine would cost money.

And then there are costs associated with hosting a website, the database, and also the data protection issues if you want features like price drop notifications.

So I'm not seeing any problems on the technical side, only on the legal side, and the fact that it costs money to run to host it while it's clearly not something you would want to ask money from users to use it.

Unfortunately I can’t help with any of the problems you are having but I just wanted to say I was glad someone was working on an alternative site! Thank you @gyorokpeter. 

janet278

poppellerant said:

Those saying that Comparasaurus does not show results.  At first I saw the same message, but if you wait for a couple of seconds your results will show.  Like others, I was a little impatient at first.

You are right - they do show up eventually but I cannot see prices as they are typed over the product descriptions! It could be just me - with my phone set on large font, I don’t know. 

Bacman

What about those of us who don't use apps? (yes, we exist), websites?

I'm wondering if Asda and Tesco were the main payers for Mysupermarket and now they aren't using them for giving price comparisons money backs, if that is why Mysupermarket closed?

GaryG

Comparasaurus is rubbish in comparison to MySupermarket. With Comparasaurus you can only search for a single item. With MySupermarket, they gave the top 100 special offers across all major supermarkets, so people could build up a shopping list based on special offers, not just spend all day and night trying to guess which individual items they should compare prices with.

Unless somebody somewhere finds a real alternative to MySupermarket, then this is a catastrophic disaster for savvy shoppers.

Rosa_Damascena

GaryG said:

Comparasaurus is rubbish in comparison to MySupermarket. With Comparasaurus you can only search for a single item. With MySupermarket, they gave the top 100 special offers across all major supermarkets, so people could build up a shopping list based on special offers, not just spend all day and night trying to guess which individual items they should compare prices with.

Unless somebody somewhere finds a real alternative to MySupermarket, then this is a catastrophic disaster for savvy shoppers.

Let's not exaggerate! We survived beforehand, and we'll survive this too. We may even buy less, now that really would be a win for the savvy shopper 

GaryG

Rosa_Damascena said:

GaryG said:

Comparasaurus is rubbish in comparison to MySupermarket. With Comparasaurus you can only search for a single item. With MySupermarket, they gave the top 100 special offers across all major supermarkets, so people could build up a shopping list based on special offers, not just spend all day and night trying to guess which individual items they should compare prices with.

Unless somebody somewhere finds a real alternative to MySupermarket, then this is a catastrophic disaster for savvy shoppers.

Let's not exaggerate! We survived beforehand, and we'll survive this too. We may even buy less, now that really would be a win for the savvy shopper 

Save by not spending? Well I guess that could work!