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Amazon’s $23M book about flies (2011)
- bryanrasmussen 11y agoFrom the linked page - 502 Bad Gateway. if there had been more money spent on hosting than on books we might have avoided this situation.
- tomtoise 11y agoLink seems to have been hugged to death. Can anyone mirror/plaintext? Cheers.
- ilya-pi 11y agohere you go — http://www.peeep.us/48bfb370 http://www.peeep.us/48bfb370
- tomtoise 11y agoAppreciate it. That seems like a useful site - bookmarked :)
- ilya-pi 11y agothank you! :-)
- vvvv 11y agodo you know why peeep needs access to my google account?
- ilya-pi 11y agoyep (spoiler alert, I'm one of the developers behind it) we've added google authentication to prevent people from hosting nasty stuff. the amount of moderation requests was simply overwhelming :(
- randyrand 11y agoMicrosoft Azure has some Machine Learned APIs to detect NSFW content. Could be an easy solution?
- snorrah 11y agoGoogle cached link in case you also get 502: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/%3Fp=358&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-gb&client=safari http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
- ilya-pi 11y agoCopy of this — http://www.peeep.us/48bfb370 http://www.peeep.us/48bfb370
- sspiff 11y agoPerhaps include in the title that this is from 2011. I haven't seen these kind of things recently, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
- dingaling 11y agoNot to that extreme price but very frequently long-tail books jump from mid-teens to low-thousands and then back down. I noticed one today on Amazon UK,"Der Alpha Jet" jumped from £16 to £1964.73 as sold by Amazon itself.
- mrighele 11y agoSometimes I have fun searching for generic stuff (like 'book') in Amazon and then ordering by descending price. Right know for example you can get "Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Applications (with MyEducationLab) Value Package (includes SPSS 16.0 Student Version for Windows)" [1] for a mere $11,259,120.28. Please notice that it is the value package :-). [1] http://www.amazon.com/Educational-Research-Competencies-Applications-MyEducationLab/dp/0135069149/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1443479094&sr=1-1&keywords=book http://www.amazon.com/Educational-Research-Competencies-Appl...
- acqq 11y agoFrom the comments on the Amazon page: "What a steal! By John Taylor Kesler on April 25, 2011, Format: Paperback I was fortunate enough to buy this at the bargain price of $19,087,354 there must have been a sale because the next day it was listed at $23M. I was very pleased to find upon arrival that the book contained very useful information, however to be honest I was expecting a few more pictures for the price paid. I highly recommend this to all my associates, I have many acquaintances with children in only the best private schools who will be buying several copies. If the price has you worried, ask yourself the American question: "can you really put a price on good education?""
- anc84 11y agoI really wish Amazon reviews were useful and not a mixture of a) angry rants, b) bought reviews and c) jokes.
- ajuc 11y agoIt's the next level of captcha. People will understand the joke, future bots won't.
- puredemo 11y agoAll of those things are useful in the right context.
- EStudley 11y agoYoutube comments have the same atmosphere. Comments on these sites should have hidden "like/dislike" counters akin to Hacker News.
- rsuelzer 11y agoMy friend and I built a proof of concept to post books for sale that were not available on Amazon.com but were available on Half.com for a markup. When someone orders on Amazon.com, place an order on Half.com and change the shipping address.
- misiti3780 11y agowere you able to make money using it ?
- zeeshanm 11y agoI personally know someone who successfully arbitraged Amazon and Half.com. There is so much potential out there.
- misiti3780 11y agocan you explain more about how the arbitrage works ? I am confused how it is possible. for instance, I buy a lot of used books from amazon.com (well, third party sellers). when i one-buy click, the purchase goes through immediately, and the sellar already has the book listed, so i am confused how it would even be done.
- 55555 11y agoThis is very easy and actually quite common between Amazon and Ebay. You would list the title as Merchant Fulfilled on Amazon and when someone orders it you would place the order yourself on Half.com using their shipping address and pocketing the difference.
- zeeshanm 11y agoTo add to this, you can use Amazon Listing API to add/remove items that are available on Half.com.
- 11y ago
- throwaway13337 11y agotl;dr: Price adjustment program feedback loop causes predictably ridiculous prices.
- yitchelle 11y agoThough not as expensive, but Amazon has an Apple keyboard for just under $1000. http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B005DQ0DFI?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_sfl_title_1&smid=ALPJ49DNEL3HT http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B005DQ0DFI?psc=1&redirect=tr...
- smcl 11y agoMaybe someone from Amazon is reading HN - that's showing as €61 for me
- tgb 11y agoThe exchange rate is getting crazy these days!
- RaSoJo 11y agoWith the link shared by @yitchelle - I get EUR 61 as well. But after removing all the additional parameters, I get EUR57 http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B005DQ0DFI http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B005DQ0DFI
- yitchelle 11y agoBloody hell, this algorithm method of setting pricing is crazy. Now it is 61€. I swear it was about 1K€ just before I posted it on HN. Damm HN effect.
- fwdbureau 11y agoAh, I wish i could edit the link, and point to the google cache instead, but seems that it's too late.. Feeling sorry now, must feel like a DDoS attack for the person who wrote this, and I believe it won't stop until the article goes away from the frontpage :/
- rtpg 11y agoIs it even possible to purchase $23 million on a credit card?
- martin-adams 11y agoYes. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8152278.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8152278.stm
- kennydude 11y ago> It also waived the usual $15 overdraft fee. That was nice of them
- RaSoJo 11y agoWhat would have happened - if the person had just decided to abscond without enquiring or paying this bill?
- mikeash 11y agoYou know the old saying. If you owe the bank a hundred dollars, that's your problem; if you owe the bank twenty-three quadrillion dollars, that's the bank's problem.
- tgb 11y agoThe article says "credit card", but I didn't think credit cards could have fees for negative balances - of course your credit card has a negative balance, that's the whole point. I think this must have been a debit card, or maybe one of those combo credit/debit cards. They also show an ATM withdrawal which suggests it's a debit card anyway.
- mseebach 11y agoThat was obviously a fluke, and very unlikely that the transaction was actually cleared through the credit card network, it was probably an error at the bank's end of things. A payment that (if the rumour is true) actually cleared through: > Rumor has it that tech millionaire Victor Shvetsky purchased a business jet for $52 million on this card [American Express Centurion] http://www.bjtonline.com/business-jet-news/supercharged-credit-cards-deliver-vip-benefits http://www.bjtonline.com/business-jet-news/supercharged-cred...
- JacobAldridge 11y agoThe original 2011 discussion - well worth a repost, and a re-read of the comments too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2475854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2475854
- DanielBMarkham 11y agoNote: it could also be artificial price collusion.
- yc1010 11y agoEveryone is missing the point, this is an example of money laundering 1. Get dirty cash from drug sales, prostitution, etc and buy amazon.com giftcards in shops in US 2. Input the codes into various amazon buyer account(s) 3. Buy the book(s) from these account(s) 4. Amazon takes a cut and pays clean money into authors bank account.
- martin-adams 11y agoI like this. You would have to use gift cards in store to dispose of the cash, and even at $100 gift cards, you'd be looking at 236,987 cards to purchase before you can buy the book. I used to have Play.com vouchers through my credit card and wanted to buy a new camera, only the listings were from dodgy sellers and £100 more than Amazon. I did think about listing an item, then buying it myself to convert it to cash.
- yc1010 11y agoWell 23 million is a bit of an overkill and I am sure Amazon would raise flags at some stage! but if you look on amazon for products in the 500-1000 range such as electronics (where amazon only takes 6-8% commission) there are plenty of examples of 3rd parties SOMEHOW selling new electronics below amazon itself! These guys are willing to lose 6-8% on lets say a hard drive and another few % to undercut Amazon from whom they would buy in first place
- paulcole 11y agoIf someone is paying less than Amazon, they can easily undercut. Additionally, what if they'd been selling the product and then Amazon comes along and wins the buy box. A 3p seller might be willing to take a loss to just sell out remaining product to reinvest in a new item that Amazon isn't selling yet. There are a few other situations I can think of too where someone would undercut Amazon, even if it meant losing money. There's really no way to understand someone's business model by only looking at their price.
- bluedevil2k 11y ago
- llimllib 11y agoI used to write software to do this; this comment from the previous time this article was posted is spot on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478096 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478096 The company I worked for did this, if not before anybody else did, than at least very nearly so: > Then came the "phantom listers" - agencies with software that spiders through the listings of legitimate on line book dealers looking for titles with few (or no) copies listed in Amazon. They then list them at inflated prices.
- CamperBob2 11y agoWith any luck, your former employer patented the general concept and then sold the IP to Nathan Myhrvold, who will now sue everybody in the business for eleventy billion dollars.
- codeulike 11y agoThe other day we wanted a copy of the children's book 'Vincent the Vain', a short picture book about a gorilla. 'Daily Deal' are selling a copy for £999.11. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0747584990 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0747584990 But they're the only people selling a new copy, so its not a feedback loop as in OP. So whats going on there?
- paulcole 11y agoIt might be a case of the seller using that price as a placeholder until they get the book back in stock. Amazon prefers that vendors keep items in stock, so this is one way to do that, even if you're currently sold out. I used to work for a company making software for Amazon vendors and don't think Amazon cares that much, but lots of vendors believe it is true.
- paulcole 11y agoAt my last job, I wrote a bit about this: https://sellerengine.com/top-5-myths-about-amazon-repricing-software/ https://sellerengine.com/top-5-myths-about-amazon-repricing-... It's a funny situation to be sure, but remember that somebody was trying to sell that book, and their software screwed up in a way that just shouldn't happen, preventing them from making that sale.
- Apofis 11y agoIt's very simple, if you use an Amazon Repricer that's retarded and you don't set a max price, this happens.
- BashiBazouk 11y agoAlgorithmic pricing is the main reason I rarely buy anything on Amazon anymore. On the realistic end, I've had too many situations that I was thinking of buying something, finally decide to pull the trigger only to find the price had gone significantly up. Not just a 3rd party running out of inventory and the lowest price moving to the next cheapest seller but items sold by Amazon. Once I realized I had to use a site like camelcamelcamel.com to track the price, Amazon was no longer the easy, trusted low price retailer. Make me think about a purchase, I will. On the high end, most products you look at have an insane high price, even on price fixed items that I can walk to a store and buy anytime for MSRP. This article has an extreme example but most items I look at have at least one offer that is 10 - 100x everyone else. That this is not monitored and dealt with from amazon gives the whole site an aurora of sleaze...
- timdierks 11y agoIn extremely illiquid markets, you'll see failures of the ability of the markets to converge on clearing prices. Doesn't mean anything in particular.