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This is a good point and your comment below ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37768419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37768419 ) highlights it well.

This is a good point and your comment below ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37768419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37768419 ) highlights it well. What people don't realize is that this is in the interest of the consumer. I used to work at Amazon (although not on any of these teams) so that's probably why I know that "see all buying options" means the price is not competitive. As a consumer I value this. Amazon scours the web to make sure their products are competitively priced. So if a Western Digital external hard drive is $99 on NewEgg, then Amazon wants to sell it for $99 or lower. If it's a 1P product (i.e., Amazon is the seller), they can easily price match in real time. But if it is a 3P (third party seller) product then Amazon cannot take that action unilaterally take that action since it is the seller setting the price. So the best they can do to protect their customer in real time when their crawlers detect a lower price elsewhere is to hide the buy box behind the "see all buying options" button. I'm sure when this feature was rolled out, Amazon's sales must have dropped. They are taking that short term hit in order to protect customer trust in the long term.

lozenge 3y ago
How does an extra click help the customer? Unless the customer used to work at Amazon and specifically knows that "see all buying options" means "scour the internet to find a better price, it should be easy this time".
- jjk166 3y ago
  They aren't hiding the better priced items behind an extra click, they are hiding the worse priced items. If you buy something listed in the "see all buying options" it means that you are spending more than you have to, as you will likely be able to find it for less elsewhere, whereas the normally presented items are the ones Amazon is selling for the same or less than elsewhere.

lozenge 3y ago

How does an extra click help the customer? Unless the customer used to work at Amazon and specifically knows that "see all buying options" means "scour the internet to find a better price, it should be easy this time".

jjk166 3y ago
They aren't hiding the better priced items behind an extra click, they are hiding the worse priced items. If you buy something listed in the "see all buying options" it means that you are spending more than you have to, as you will likely be able to find it for less elsewhere, whereas the normally presented items are the ones Amazon is selling for the same or less than elsewhere.