Honey: The Promo Code Finding Google Chrome Extension
Hat tip to reader Robin CJ in the comments over here for pointing out the reddit thread on this.
This thing’s been making some news lately. Extensions are a little like apps for your browser. And it turns out that there’s one for Google Chrome that will search out promo codes for you while online shopping. After installation, a “find savings” button will show up during checkout on a bunch of web retailers. Click that button and Honey searches out and applies any codes that might work on your order.
Or at least it’s supposed to… More on that in a second.
First you have to install it. Pretty simple. You can either go to their website, or, go directly to the Google Chrome store (it’s free). A few clicks and your Chrome browser has it. But… and this is a big but for some, you have to grant it access to your browsing activity:
Assuming you’re okay with that (many will pull the ejection handles at this point), you click “add” and that’s it. From there you go shopping, and look for honey’s “find savings” button at checkout. Here’s what happened when honey was taken for a test drive yesterday, while Banana Republic was running a 30% off code BR30LIST:
Step 1: Put something in the cart. Went with a wool-blend crewneck I’ve had my eye on. Already on sale, so that extra 30% off will be nice. And who knows, maybe this honey extension will find a better code.
Step 2: Put in all the shipping/billing info, and get to the checkout screen. Magically, (and impressively) the honey button is right there. Click it, and honey goes to work…
Step 3: Let honey go to work. It does’t take more than a few seconds, and you can see something happening in the background on the page. Once it wraps up, you get a notification on whether or not it found any codes…
And the result: Well damn. Despite there being a clearly noticeable 30% off code on Banana Republic’s website, honey couldn’t find it. Tried it a few times, and each time honey came up empty. Just to be sure that this sweater wasn’t excluded from the sale, the old-fashioned way was tried:
And indeed… the code worked when manually applied. To be fair, honey was working just fine on Macys.com at the exact same time. But it stumbled at Banana Republic, and the button never showed up on JCrew.com.
They seem to be awfully new, so there’s going to be some kinks that’ll need to be worked out. And it’s a hell of an idea. But would you use it? Have you had success with it already? Leave it all below.
“Honey, please! Just let me get that for you”
I’m not comfortable granting access to personal information to a third party’s application that clearly didn’t work the way that it’s supposed to right out of the gate. Besides, I can get all of the promo codes I could possibly need right here!
I agree with both of Marshall’s points!
Why do I need Honey when I have you, Joe?
Ive been using PriceBlink since Black Friday and its awesome…compares prices with other stores, finds coupons, and reviews all in one toolbar as you shop (not just at checkouts)
I haven’t used the extension in a year or two but I used to use retailmenot. Here are some reviews from lifehacker: http://lifehacker.com/5697421/
I still go the website to look for promo codes and I usually find something I can use.
Interesting concept, but I think I’ll stick with Retailmenot.
Joe – thanks for trying out Honey (I’m one of the guys that built it). I took a look to see if I can figure out what happened here. Over the weekend we have been working to upgrade our server infrastructure to accomodate the surprisingly huge response we’ve received since launching a month ago.
It looks like other people have been successfully getting and using BR30LIST so I am not sure what caused the hiccup for you. We’re changing how we get the codes to you to be as reliable as possible. We’re also implementing a testing program to monitor and make sure there aren’t site changes that make the button not appear like you saw at jcrew.
We’re committed to making Honey live up to the promise and that means getting better every day. Feedback like this pushes us to work harder. Thanks for giving it a spin!
Thanks for stopping by Ryan. Love the idea, and I hope the world of the interwebs (and the impatience that can follow) doesn’t get you guys down. Good luck and all the best!
Aw, well thanks David. Meanwhile, don’t flatter… codes get missed all the time. Props to you guys in the comments for being on it when there’s a better one out there.
The response has been great so far so we’re enjoying the ride so far. We thought we’d have a bit more time to make it perfect before we went so mainstream, but can’t say we’re complaining – just racing to catch up. We were actually accidentally launched on reddit by a bug tester we hired to help find things like this!
Reminds me of a joke. Three men out to dinner with their wives. One man says, “pass the honey, honey.” Another says, “pass the sugar, sugar.” The last man says, “pass the pork, pig.”
Ryan i dont want to dampen your mood. But there is simply no way in the world your parsing and scraping engine will work or last…..for starters your breaking terms and conditions of the coupon websites your going to, Second your DB query cant provide real time enough info for this to be worthwhile……i can go on and on we built a model on this a year ago and stopped midway. Not to mention the retailers not wanting coupons to be found they are gonna block the plug in
…..This will actually turn out to be worse than searching manually because its misleading as the above example shows. Take the money and run…