Shopping apps and Black Friday in Poland

December is upon us again, therefore I have refreshed an article about the black Shopping Apps and the upcoming Black Friday Sales in Poland. End of the year is a time for Christmas, Santa Claus and saying goodbye to the old. As we all know, this is a wonderful time of the year, with the exception of expressing our love and appreciation for giving and receiving gifts. But, this is also a time which creates a tiny black hole in our bank account. Therefore, I would like to introduce few apps, which may help you limit your spending and save you a penny or two in the process.

• Listonic – boosted shopping list
• Stocard – organization of membership cards
• Pepper.pl – real bargains finder
• Price comparison portals
• Black Friday, Back Week etc… Does this exist in Poland?

We will start with regular shopping. Taking into consideration all holidays in Poland, Christmas and a Visit from Santa Claus in December is definitely the most expensive one. I strongly suggest, to prepare in advance a list with the dishes you want to make during the Christmas or Saint Andrew’s Day (Andrzejki – click here to read more). This will help you control the content of your shopping cart during a visit to the supermarket, which means “reduce the percentage of food wasted and money spent”. What if you have a list with the dishes already? What is the best way to make a list of ingredients?

Listonic – shopping list

This is my favorite app, as we talk about daily shopping. This application allows you to create a shopping list of required products, allows you to add an additional description to each single product on the list, as well as the price of it and the quantity. The app is free – you may use it via a browser or mobile phone in most popular languages in the world. The biggest disadvantage here, are the adverts, which appear on the bottom of your screen. Still, this is not a high price for such functionality.

Moreover, Listonic assigns directly the proper category and group to the listed products, this reduces time which you normally need to spend on coming back to the specific department in the grocery shop. You probably noticed that markets and shops are divided into specific category and product. Listonic uses the same general logic to automatically categorize your products as well, so you can use this as a great time saver.

For instance: you start with vegetables and fruits, allowing you to pickup all products from that group, you get to the dairy department and pick up from your list all dairy products. It seems to be much easier as well as a real time saver, better than running with a shopping cart back and forth all the time.

Collaborative list

Collaborative list-making is an additional great feature in this app. You may create a list and share it with your partner. Both of you, can edit the list at the same time. You may also add something to it, while someone else is in the market busy doing shopping. This gives you the possibility to discuss the shopping list content online. There is one condition here: using collaborative list-making, requires both persons to be registered in the app. Registration is for free, but still – it is worth mentioning here, at the end of the day, it’s about gathering your data.

If the list is done and the products are already in your cart, there is one more additional thing related with smart shopping – loyalty programs. Some of them may require a membership, apps or loyalty cards. How to not get crazy with all the cards in your wallet?

Stocard

Very useful application, which allows you to scan and store all your loyalty cards in your phone. Below you will find the list of the most popular brands and programs which are cooperating with Stocard in Poland:

• IKEA
• Rossman
• Empik
• CCC
• Auchan
• Biedronka
• Luxmed
• Multikino
• Orlen
• Shell

And many more. The application allows you to store loyalty and membership cards from all around the globe – not only from Poland. For example: if you come from Italy but you live in Poland, you may use a combination of Italian and Polish cards. At the same time, you get the opportunity to view the promotional newsletters from chosen locations and your favorite shops. Just have a look on my own configuration of Polish, Dutch and Italian 😉

You may finally say “no more” to all cards “stuffing” your wallet which are always lost when you need them the most. There is also no longer a need to visit IKEA or Leroy Merlin, if you want to check their newsletter. You can do it with Stocard as well. But let’s be honest – a simple newsletter may not be enough. Let’s also consider a scenario, in which you need to buy a specific item or a gift, but you are looking for a real bargain. How can we find one?

Pepper – finding bargain before and after Black Friday in Poland

I will use here the quote from Pepper itself, to introduce the application.

Pepper.pl is a community for people looking for real bargains. Find, rate and comment on the best deals and coupons found online and offline.

I am really skeptical if we talk about “real bargains”, so I made a little test here and I checked price of 2x different products in the “hottest” positions. I mean here “Huawei Band 3 Pro Blue” and the Xbox One Game, “Gears 5”. Below my findings:

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As you may see, the bargains on Pepper seems to be real. Ranks from app are talking about real prices and real places, where you can buy it. The app also gives you access to the “hottest” coupons and discounts from specific store brands. I should mention here, that it is hard to find a desired product in a certain price. It works the other way around. Sometimes there is no other option but to take what they have at that moment or simply wait until your desired item will get its own “hot bargain” price.

From a technical point of view, Pepper is available via browser and on mobile devices. It does require you to register, but I have noticed that the “hottest bargains” are visible for logged in users. Smart marketing! Here comes the question: “how can I actually check, if the price which I have in front of me, is a real bargain?” I will show you my way of checking this.

Price comparison portals

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Most popular price comparison portals in Poland are Ceneo and Skąpiec (actually “Skąpiec” in polish means “miser”). There is no rocket science in using them – we just need to type in the item name in the search box and check the best price offers. The portals mentioned above, are not stores. These are only price comparison sites, which allow us to find the best price of the desired item and redirect us to the actual store. You may have noticed already that I used Skąpiec in order to check the price of the Smart band in a previous section of this post. There is one more additional feature here, which allows you to check, if this particular price is a bargain or not. It is called “price history”.

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Price history allows you to check what was the price of this specific product a few months back. On the base of such a diagram, you can establish the trending price, showing the lowest and highest peaks, average price or for example when exactly the price cut started. I really love this feature. It is available in both portals, but Ceneo only gives you this possibility via the mobile app. Price history in Skąpiec is available via browser, but they do not have their own mobile app. The choice is yours, since both portals are using the same or almost the same sources to find the best price comparison for you.

Black Friday in Poland?

There is a pretty common “Black Friday” practice between the fraudsters. Some of the scammers increasing prices just before Black Friday or any other occasion e.g. Christmas, Easter, or Halloween providing a fake bargain for the less discerning customer. In the end “the discounted price” is reduced to the level from before the increase. Since you already know the Skąpiec and Ceneo, you have the tools which will allow you to validate such a “deal” on your own.

So a little challenge here. Did you do any shopping during these Black Weeks already? Or, are you planning to do so? If so, I challenge you to check the history price of your desired items, just to confirm, if you managed to get such an attractive deal, as the retailer was claiming. What was the result? Are you a real bargain hunter or have you become a victim of fraudsters? Share the result in comments below. By the way, be careful – next year in Poland we might expect Black Quarter instead of Black Friday.

Summary of Shopping Apps and Black Friday in Poland

Doing shopping and buying a gift for a people who we love, especially just before specific occasion brings a lot of joy for us as well as for a gifted person. But! Let’s rather use our head and proper tools instead of a heart and emotional impulse to check offers twice and make sure, that we are not overpaying triple for our shopping. Planning in advance will help a lot with regular shopping and with finding gifts for your family members. I hope that this post will help you with making proper choices.

Would you like to read more publications about “Everyday life” on my blog or “Money & Finance“? Just click the highlighted text to find all posts related.

Special thanks to Eamon Gosney, who has helped with proofreading of this article.

skapiec.pl, ceneo.pl, listonic.com, stocardapp.com

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