The Story

 

When we moved into our little condo apartment down in Clearwater, FL in 2004, my wife and I did a lot of remodeling ourselves, but when it came to repainting the bath tab, we knew we hit our DIY limits. Back then finding the right man for the job meant opening up the Yellow Pages and calling company after company and explaining what we needed them to do.

After being turned down few times, we finally found one that agreed to do the job, but they insisted on first sending a salesman to estimate.

– Salesman!? Estimate!? I replied with a bewildered voice
– What is there to estimate? It is a standard size bath tab, and if you have done the job before, then you definitely can tell me the ballpark, right?
– Sorry Sir, but this is a standard practice.
– Alright…

So, the next day I excused myself from work and stayed home to wait for the sales guy, who, after spending less than a minute, told me that it would cost $3,000! This was ridiculously high for me to even consider it and so we continued our search and finally found someone who did it for $160.

While we continued our phone quest, I remember thinking to myself – “There’s gotta be someone out there who ordered the same service”. After all, armed with that knowledge not only I could better plan my budget but also had the negotiating power when ordering my next service.

Whether negotiating my next car lease or just buying a pack of strawberries at the local grocery I always thought “Am I getting the best deal? Is there a better price at the next store down the street?”

As I kept coming back to these thoughts over and over again, the idea of creating an  application which would allow people to share prices started shaping up and, finally, back in March, 2012 I promised myself that I would sit down and start putting my thoughts into code.

Four years and 5 versions later (desktop web app, hybrid mobile, 3 native mobile versions) I finally arrived at the first version that I am ready to release to the public. I hope that I have created something useful, something that we all can benefit from.

Let’s help each other to better manage our budgets by sharing prices.

Let’s share the knowledge which will give us that negotiating power when we need it the most.

Let’s be price aware!

 

Aram Ovanesian Founder and Creator Trupenni @aram208 @trupenni