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This is happening because people now assume Amazon's prices are the best - always. But, that is not the case. There are times where people are knowingly listing
by thisisit 9y ago
This is happening because people now assume Amazon's prices are the best - always. But, that is not the case. There are times where people are knowingly listing a product about market prices to catch people who are caught unaware.
Once upon a time, I bought two boxes of Ener-G. It was only later I found out I have paid 100% markup on those boxes. I felt stupid that I hadn't verified the prices on the manufacturer's site.
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoPeople also do this with drop shipping. They'll scrape products from X and list them on Y for cost+markup then drop ship. Even if they use thin margins coupon codes and promotions from a customer rewards program do a lot of offset the occasional return that you can't pass up the line or order that happens after a price hike but before your scraping software can catch up. If you have a discount you can use that to undercut your competition and appear high up when people sort by price. You get a X% coupon code for some product from Y then scrape Y's online store and relist it on Z for retail less X plus your margin and costs. Fraudulently purchased gift cards can also be monetized through web scraping and drop shipping. When the cost difference is negligible I prefer to buy from drop shippers rather than have my payment info and PII sitting around in yet another database waiting to be stolen.