Acombien, from a 2012 price comparison site to today's buying guide
Acombien asks a simple question, the one every shopper in Tunisia asks: how much? Here is where the site comes from, what it has become and how we work.
2012–2015: a price comparison site for Tunisia
Acombien.com was launched in 2012 by Looka e-business, a public limited company based in Les Berges du Lac, Tunis. Its description at the time, preserved by the Internet Archive, presented a portal designed to save Tunisian consumers time: search for a product across different retailers, find the shops that stocked it, read reviews and tests, and get an email alert when the price of a tracked product fell below a set budget. Its motto was "stay connected, stay informed".
The site grew quickly. It showed 4,418 offers in March 2012 and more than 20,000 in September 2014, published by nearly fifty shops. It also had a "What to choose?" section for product news, a calendar of trade fairs such as a furniture show at the Sousse International Fair and the Craft Creation Fair at the Tunis exhibition park and international trade centre, and reader polls. Activity seems to have stopped in 2015: later captures show only redirects and empty pages.
Today: an independent buying guide
The current edition of acombien.com is independent of the company that used to run it. It takes up the site's founding idea, helping people know the right price before they buy, in a form that does not go out of date: method guides rather than a price catalogue that would need updating every day. We have not put the tens of thousands of product pages from that period back online. Their prices no longer mean anything, and showing them as if they were current would mislead readers.
We have kept what is useful in those archives: the promotions actually listed between 2013 and 2015, dated and sourced, and the list of retailers that published their prices on the site. This data provides concrete examples in our guides.
Our editorial standards
No affiliate links, no sales
Acombien sells no products and earns no commission on what its readers buy. None of the links on this site are affiliate links. No manufacturer or retailer reviews our writing before publication.
Every price is dated
Every price quoted on the site comes with its date and its source. An undated price is worthless to a shopper: it may have changed ten times since.
Sources you can check
When we cite a law, we give its number, its date and the article concerned, with a link to the published text. When we cite our archive, we give the period of the capture used.
We correct our mistakes
If you spot an error, a price copied incorrectly or information that is out of date, let us know. We correct it and update the modification date of the page concerned.
Who writes the site
The site's pages are written and edited by the Acombien editorial team. Every page is checked by a person before it goes live, and the date of the last update appears at the top of each article.