As a Canadian that hates that all my all my online shopping is dominated by US ads, reviews and prices I really want to like this. It has some great features, especially the price history tracker, but lacks usability.
I have no idea what the fu number is. Your FAQ says "which indicates how good is a particular price offer" but what is good, how is it measured?
A much harder problem is the issue of the same device given different names at different resellers to avoid price matching. For the few laptops and TVs I tested there were multiple listings on your site for the same model and for all but one the manufacture website had a lower price than the lowest you listed.
Think of the "fu number" as a "DealRank"-type metric. Its full definition is rather complex and unpalatable for the average user, and I doubt that it would add much intuition besides the fact that greater value is better, which is very similar to how users think of PageRank.
I agree that the questions of whether the "price-fu" metric is the most relevant possible, or uses the most relevant inputs, or weights them appropriately, etc. are still open, and the current answer is "probably no", but is work in progress.
Regarding resellers trying to avoid price matching by using alternative product names/models, I must say that I haven't seen evidence of that yet. I might be naive, but I am more inclined to attribute this to the general low quality of the product data out there.
Nevertheless, you are right that the problem of determining whether product A and product B are comparable is hard, especially considering the great diversity in how manufacturers label their products. An additional problem is that many China-made gadgets don't even have a consistent naming scheme, or even a model number, making comparisons even harder.
Regarding finding lower prices on manufacturer's site, are you sure you did not compare USD and CAD prices? Many users seem to be confused by this.
I have no idea what the fu number is. Your FAQ says "which indicates how good is a particular price offer" but what is good, how is it measured?
A much harder problem is the issue of the same device given different names at different resellers to avoid price matching. For the few laptops and TVs I tested there were multiple listings on your site for the same model and for all but one the manufacture website had a lower price than the lowest you listed.