Bot News
ShopAMEX

By Brian Proffitt

If you really don't want to leave home with your American Express, a new shopping comparison site offers you advantages to shopping with the popular credit card on the Internet. But non-cardholders may want to take a pass on this one.

When American Express contacted me about looking at this site, I sauntered over and took a peek to see what sorts of interesting things this shopping comparison site would have.

In two words: not much.

On most comparison sites, the bots will gather information from commerce sites on a regular basis, updating their own internal databases with new product names and descriptions. When a customer searches for a given product, the theory holds, they should be able to locate that product faster because of the the bots' update processes.

In this case, that does not seem to be happening. ShopAMEX's database is woefully behind in its updates. I found three instances of books in the database that were out of date, mistitled, or just plain could not be found.

The search feature of ShopAMEX is on the slow side, a fact that is made even more painful by the fact that the layout of the products by category is small and difficult to read--thus forcing you to use the search to locate anything.

The only advantage I found to using ShopAMEX for any user is the universal shopping cart feature. As you pick out items to purchase, they are placed in ShopAMEX's shopping cart. You never actually have to leave the ShopAMEX site.

You can use any credit card on the ShopAMEX site, but clearly you will get the most benefit from this site is you have an American Express card, since you will receive membership awards and other bonuses, such as periodically free shipping and handling, with the AmEx card.

If you have an AmEx card, you might want to endure the sluggish interface and pick up some bargains here and there. But unitl this site improves its accuracy and speed, I'd give this one a big miss.