Documentation

This page provides general help for most parts of this website. If you need more support, please use the contact page. Simple click a tab on the left side of the box to view the help for the specific item you need.

How to use Price Avatar

Price Avatar is the tool located on the home page. In order to use it, type the product name or a general search term in the search bar. Press the "Go!" button or the Enter key. Your results will be loaded into the table below the search box, labeled "Product Listing". At this point, you will get some basic information about each product, including it's name, vendor, price, and reviews (this will be a link for Amazon and for ebay, the percentage is the seller rating).

Currently, Price Avatar searches products from 3 source(s). Price Avatar uses APIs from these sources to search for products. The source(s) are: Walmart, Amazon, and ebay.

You can apply specific restrictions on the products before they are returned to you. Below the search bar, there is a box of different restrictions.

Price Range:Minimum price is the least amount the item should cost, while the maximum is the same but the maximum cost. This price range is inclusive.
Sources:Uncheck boxes to deselect sources. This toggles sources from the 3 sources PriceAvatar currently uses, and gives you access to which sources you would like to purchase from. For the two Walmart entries, Walmart.com means the vendor is walmart.com and Walmart Marketplace are the other vendors Walmart provides a marketplace for. Keep both on for the whole Walmart product set.
Include and exclude terms:This gives you control over keywords in the name of the product. Include means that at least one word in the box MUST be in the title to be accepted. Exclude means that ANY word in the box may not be in the product title. Remember, words and phrases must be separated by newline. These terms are case INsensitive, meaning that comparisons between terms and the product title will be on terms where both are all lowercase, and newlines removed! Note that numbers and their word form are considered different. Keep in mind that these words and phrases are not necessarily separate by whitespace, "pot" is considered in "potting" unless you enter "pot ".

Clicking any links for reviews or images opens the item up in a window. Multiple windows can be opened for comparison. Please note that Amazon only provides links for reviews, which is why Amazon reviews use the windows.

Don't worry if the link don't look quite normal. It is probably because the links we use are affiliate links, meaning that we may earn a small commission for your use of the links!

Once you receive the results, you can right-click a row in the table. A menu will appear with two options: "Store/Retrieve" and "Remove". The Remove option will remove the product out of the table, while the "Store" option will move the product into the Product Storage table. This table allows you to single out products. Moving/removing a product out the main table will load a new product into the main table, as at most 20 products are shown at a time, except for when you move back an item into the main table, at which point the number of items can exceed 20 items. Once in the Product Storage table, the same menu options will be available, but your can "Retrive" the product, bringing it back to the Product Listing table. Please keep in mind that the tables are ephemeral and will not persist through sessions. Once a page is closed, the state of the tables will be forever lost!

How to play 'Guess the Price!'

Warning: Do not keep multiple tabs of this game open. The problem associated to your account will change each time you open a new instance of the game, rendering any attempts on the previous product incorrect. Only have one window of the game open for the game to work properly!

When you load the game page, please wait for the item to load.

Once the page is loaded, you will presented with a product image, the product name, vendor rating, country of origin, and item condition. You must try to guess the price of the item. In order for the price to be considered correct, it must be within $3 of the actual price. You are given 4 attempts, along with feedback each attempt to tell you if you guess is higher or lower than the actual price. Your streak increases each time you get the answer correct, and resets each time you fail to get the price correct after using up your attempts. Top streaks go on the leader board, based on historical (highest streak), not current scores. A link is provided at the bottom after a problem is finished, whether solved correctly or incorrectly to allow you to buy the product if desired.