8 ms·
I tracked Amazon's Prime Day prices. We've been played
- foofoo12 1y agohttps://archive.is/Wo8Z3 https://archive.is/Wo8Z3
- A_D_E_P_T 1y agohttps://archive.ph/Wo8Z3 https://archive.ph/Wo8Z3
- DDerTyp 1y agoObvious comment to various Amazon price trackers like https://keepa.com/ https://keepa.com/
- fragmede 1y agohttps://camelcamelcamel.com/ https://camelcamelcamel.com/
- alias_neo 1y agoIs it accurate these days? I recall there was some point where Amazon locked them out of deal prices etc, and I guess it also doesn't account for vouchers that apply at checkout? I was looking at one of the GMKTek Ryzen AI Max boxes and it's overpriced by ~£1000 with a ~£1000 voucher to apply at checkout; or is this part of some other "scheme"?
- goobatrooba 1y agoI use these for various European Amazon (often cheaper to buy from the Amazon next door - and shipping is still free) and it's astonishing how bad they are. It's the new Amazon systems of vouchers (in € or %), temporary offers etc that these sites can't keep up with. I saw some products before prime day with a 20% voucher that were more expensive on prime day (10% reduced but no more voucher) but the price trackers showed them as cheapest ever. Honestly at this point I compare rather with bol, idealo, guenstiger and tweakers and am then usually better off not buying from amazon.
- alias_neo 1y agoI wonder what the scheme is here though; Why overprice something by ~50% and add a voucher for the same amount off; is it some sort of anti-deal tracking thing? It always puts me off from buying something expensive because I wonder if somehow I could end up worse off (in terms of returns, or warranty or something) because I bought something that was X but only paid Y due to the voucher. Realistically, I probably wouldn't buy a high-end computing product from Amazon anyway, unless is was notably cheaper than the specialists I'd normally buy from. Something like a £2000+ mini PC isn't the sort of thing the typical UK PC retailers I buy from would stock.
- hypercube33 1y agoIt's for the dopamine hit of "saving money" or feeling like one has, even if you haven't
- nucleardog 1y agoI think some of the "coupons" are only usable once, so could be a way to price more fairly when there's limited inventory or something? Like you can buy one at regular price, but 2nd and beyond get marked up 100%?
- alias_neo 1y agoAh that would make sense. I suppose if there's limited stock of them in the Amazon warehouse, it prevents people buying up lots of them and not leaving any for other people.
- fragmede 1y ago> Why overprice something by ~50% and add a voucher for the same amount off Preying on human psychology and the non-rational consumer. People are emotional impulsive creatures, and the marketing department knows this. If you think you're winning in some secret way only available to you (you're so special!), for a limited time only (so don't miss out!), it taps into something primal that turns off the rational part of our brains, and suddenly we're buying something we don't need at a price higher than we'd ideally pay.
- foofoo12 1y agoI think they were locked out during Covid. Something something stock level. A lot of dodgy shit happened during Covid. Like Google and iOS rolling out the largest tracking network in human history. Your phone sends a Bluetooth beacon every 30 seconds and any phone in the vicinity will pick it up and vice versa. Because of Covid. Track and trace. Guess what, it's still happening. They said only government health institutes would get access to it. Right. Right?
- shellfishgene 1y agoWhy not those that track many different stores? For many things Amazon never has the best price.
- Larrikin 1y agoCan you name anything? One of the biggest complaints I've read about Amazon from the seller side is that they can be punished if they offer a better price somewhere other than Amazon. The only items that seem to skirt this is repackaged items/junk from AliExpress, but they are or are pretending to be different companies.
- shellfishgene 1y agoI doubt that's legal here in Germany. Well known sites are https://www.idealo.de/ https://www.idealo.de/ and https://geizhals.de/ https://geizhals.de/. But https://www.google.com/shopping https://www.google.com/shopping should work anywhere no?
- zurfer 1y ago[flagged]
- pjc50 1y agoI was surprised to see that. I wonder how long it'll stay up.
- ahoka 1y ago[flagged]
- integralid 1y agoThat's pretty rude to the journalist who wrote this article and made this analysis? What makes you think they're a clown or criticize the system "in a controlled way"?
- verisimi 1y agoI think you will have been through a pretty thorough vetting process to get to work there (private schooling, university, connections in the industry, etc)? Or do you think they are there on the merit of their writing?
- rokkamokka 1y agoThis is illegal in the EU, they still pulled the same shit here. Let's hope they're fined for it.
- PinguTS 1y agoYes and no. The prices are increased about 1 month in advance. With that the average price of the last 4 weeks is increased and then you have your rebate, which is legal.
- hk__2 1y ago> With that the average price of the last 4 weeks is increased and then you have your rebate, which is legal. It’s the lowest that count, not the average. Otherwise you could just put all items at $100k for one hour every night to put the average very high.
- supermatt 1y ago> that the average price of the last 4 weeks The discount must be referenced on the LOWEST price 30 days prior to a sale, not the average.
- integralid 1y agoThis still works if prices are increased a month before, right?
- jmward01 1y agoThe best way to save money on prime is to not buy stuff. Seriously.
- wvh 1y agoThe whole concept of buying something because it is cheap is weird. I have a small list of items I think I will need in the near future; if it's not on that list, I'm not buying it, from anywhere, at any price. Maybe I'm a bit more ascetic than the average person, but I find it hard to imagine people just browsing lists of "cheap" stuff for hours to just buy stuff they don't need. And then being happy that they won because they paid less than some imaginary "full price".
- stratocumulus0 1y agoI know people who behave as if they had to spend money as quickly as possible every time they receive a paycheck. Their wish lists are just "ideas to spend money".
- bombcar 1y agoIt’s a psychological response based on a history of inconsistency in food supply. If you may or may not have food tomorrow, but there is a lot today, you stock up and eat. This works great in the savanna, not so much when a trillion dollar company is using it to exploit you.
- newsclues 1y agoOnly buy stuff on sale that you’d pay full price for.
- amelius 1y agoThen why have a "prime" subscription?
- lm28469 1y agoThe best way to use prime is to have 10 free accounts and wait for the "hey it's been a while do you want a free prime month?" emails
- glimshe 1y agoI don't have prime and only buy from Amazon occasionally. I have nothing against them, I simply don't see the value.
- altacc 1y agoA few years ago I moved to a country that didn't have Amazon. At first it was frustrating as I didn't know where to shop but now I see it as a benefit with some downsides. Before trips back home I'll look on Amazon for some stuff I can't get here and I'm flooded with Aliexpress junk and sponsored placements for Aliexpress junk. Amazon is hideous in so many ways.
- bombcar 1y agoMemory is a tremendous thing. Most people (including me) perceive Amazon based on their 20-year history with it; same day delivery for free, exceptional delivery and service, good prices, etc. But that is the past; the current reality is boring or expensive prices, crappy shipping and service tending toward shitty, and better deals to be found elsewhere; either target or Walmart on the “high” end or Temu or Aliexpress on the cheap Chinese shit end. The most important thing for me to break the bonds was to cancel prime. Every time they try to coerce me back in strengthens my resolve to check everywhere else first.
- sauwan 1y agoHah, I quit Prime and they just gave it back to me. No charge. I can't cancel it. I can't figure it out, but perhaps they realized that their margin on me before I canceled was well over the cost of Prime? I'm not sure, but I still only use it a fraction of what I used to...
- boobsbr 1y agoEverybody does the same on Black Friday sales.
- Simulacra 1y agoI remember reading the first serious book about Sam Walton and Walmart. Walton had this thing where he would put two bins of identical flip-flops side-by-side. One would be marked a dollar up, one would be marked a dollar down. People would always bought the cheaper, and then Walton would just shovel the flip-flops from the expensive bin to the cheaper bin. Walmart, Amazon, and just about every other retail has been playing us forever. But Amazon takes it to an art form.
- tomsmeding 1y agoI don't doubt there are interesting things in that book, but this particular one feels just so unsurprising: people are likely to notice that the flip-flops in the two bins are remarkably similar, and see that one is cheaper. They don't see a reason to buy the more expensive one so they choose the cheaper one. It would have been more interesting had people chosen the more expensive one. There is a folk theory that you can get people to do this if you add an even more expensive option -- the "middle" option is the most attractive.
- m000 1y ago> There is a folk theory that you can get people to do this if you add an even more expensive option -- the "middle" option is the most attractive. I don't think it's a folk theory at all. This trick is used a lot in restaurant menus/wine lists.
- robocat 1y ago> restaurant menus/wine lists I wonder how much of that is due to the abnormal social pressure situation where your buying is public and you don't want to be seen as cheap. A similar dynamic might occur with a bunch of people shopping together, for clothes maybe? I'm a guy that doesn't shop with others so I don't have experience here. One bar in an upmarket area in my own town had a house wine on the menu much cheaper (I think 7 when the cheapest labeled wine might have been 14 or so). Seemed smart to me. Although there is also some internal pressure, to not feel cheap to yourself. For gifts the dynamics change completely since the recipient might not know the price.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- thefz 1y agoBy using camelcamelcamel or keepa it's easy to spot the fake deals, who get a bump in price the day before only to get a "discount" for the promotion day. Aside, keep a list of things you need and don't buy anything just because it's on sale.
- alias_neo 1y agoI don't buy stuff on Amazon just because it's on sale, but I do have a few things in my Wish List that I want to buy but only when they're at a price I'm happy with; many of them have been there for years. Whenever I see a price change, and I'm not ready to buy, I add a note in the wish list notes with the current price, essentially tracking every price I see it at "by hand". During sales I check back, and for ~90% of items in my list, they're higher not just than the lowest price I've recorded, but also many of the previously higher prices. At this point I'm not even bothered about really ever buying much of this stuff on there, but it's fun to track the data even at a small scale like this.
- echelon_musk 1y agoWhy don't you use https://camelcamelcamel.com https://camelcamelcamel.com ?
- alias_neo 1y agoI do, but I read some while ago that there was some "deal" with Amazon that prevented them from tracking real sale prices, and it also can't account for voucher codes that apply at checkout. I'm not sure if the former still stands, but on the whole, I've found CCC doesn't always have the actual best price I've recorded.
- jasode 1y agoI also use that 3 humps website regularly but they actually don't closely track fast changing prices day-by-day for all items. Therefore, I also track price changes manually myself. E.g. this ant insecticide was recently on sale for $15.99 during Oct 7 & 8 and yet that lower price was invisible to camelcamelcamel: https://camelcamelcamel.com/Miller-8150120-24-Ounce-Discontinued-Manufacturer/product/B000QDEQ7E?tp=1m https://camelcamelcamel.com/Miller-8150120-24-Ounce-Disconti... Those blind spots happen for many items and my reverse-engineering guess is that they simply don't have the compute infrastructure to track/scrape all the millions of ASINs. Therefore, many price changes are completely missed. I'm sure they're doing the best they can but it seems like the only 100% accurate way to track price change history is for Amazon.com itself to offer it. Amazon likes to say they're "customer-oriented" and providing an official price history dashboard would help shoppers.
- toofy 1y agoive said it before and at the risk of sounding repetitive: ive almost entirely stopped shopping online. it was rough at first, particularly since i kind of fell out of the loop on which stores carry what, but once i mostly figured that out its honestly so much nicer. almost all of my christmas gifts were done at actual stores. and just everyday shit like random car lights to clothes to picture frames to bookshelves to random little gifts to journal notebooks, etc... its been such an improvement. i kept finding myself sending back ridiculous amounts of stuff because the pictures and descriptions were either outright misleading, outright lying, or i just wouldnt read close enough. its pretty rad to hold the item in your hand, know exactly the size, the weight, feeling, color, material, etc... and just know you're getting exactly what you want right now in the exact moment. and the thing that surprised me the most? how much i actually enjoy people. i know it sounds entirely ridiculous but even just being helped by someone or checked out by a person felt right. ive never been an anti-social or anxious person, ive always had regular social life with friends and coworkers, but shopping with real people was working a social muscle that i hadn't realized was atrophying so badly. and it gave me an excuse to get out of the house often for something other than work or partying. anyway, of course amazon was going to go this way, we see it over and over and over again. none of us are shocked.
- TheChaplain 1y agoThink what you will about Amazon, but they proved their usefulness to me last week. It was two days before a birthday and I needed a present, which interestingly was as unusual as a spotting scope. I found it on Amazon, paid a tiny amount extra for express delivery, and it arrived the next day at lunch time. Fully functional, no scams or trickery. Before I bought it, I checked with all shops in mine and nearby cities, no luck. I went on PriceRunner, where the cheapest option was 30% more expensive and everyone had (at best) 3-5 days delivery. Then as a last check, I went on Amazon. I don't love Amazon, there seem to be a lot of things that doesn't seem right. Plus they easily push out small shops everywhere. But they do deliver.
- philipallstar 1y agoIndeed. I don't really see all the problems people have with it. It's not perfect but it's extremely reliable on average.
- lopis 1y agoHuman rights violations and unfair business practices. But other than that they are great.
- _DeadFred_ 1y agoDon't forget the allowing of unsafe products such as fake fuses.
- pedrogpimenta 1y agoI agree. I would just like that they didn't have to exploit workers. It seems something that could be done. Have more people taking smaller or less frenetic shifts and pay them the same or more. It can be doable, seeing the amount of money Bezos amasses, right? I love the service but despise how the workers are treated. And nothing compares, there's no real competition.
- olelele 1y ago
- theshrike79 1y agoPsychological tip (and maybe an idea for a browser extension?): - Never look at the sale percentage, just look at the price. Yes, it might be "75% off!!", but is it still worth 200€ to you? It takes some mental trickery and fortitude to drag your mind away from the "OMG IT WAS 800€ and now it's only 200!!" and only look at the current price vs features.
- cloudexpat 1y agoThis. A few days ago I was pleasantly surprised to see cereals 50% off, then I realized that I was looking at $6 cereals thinking it's a bargain.
- b3lvedere 1y agoI taught my children how to interpret some discounts. "Dad! It says here the 2nd item is 50% off! That's a bargain!" "So, what are you actually paying in total compared to the original price in total? And do you really need that 2nd item?"
- refactor_master 1y agoIn relation to this, I really hate the South Korean convenience stores’ aggressive 2-for-1 on many of the most basic things, because you know you’re essentially being forced into buying the second item you didn’t need.
- rightbyte 1y agoI would extend that to packs of sausages and whatever. The price of a sausage varies wildly with how well package size and amount of dinner guests matches ...
- jmlim00 1y agoI’ve heard that if you use the convenience store’s app, you can just take one and“save” the extra item for free pickup at a later time. Never verified it myself though.
- jimnotgym 1y agoI feel like my move to Amazon over the last 25 years has been little to do with price and more a symptom of my lack of free time when shops are open. I simply can't get to most physical stores during the week. And my weekends are rammed with all the things I didn't get to do during the week... Then there is the issue of what physical stores have done to become more competitive. In many cases they have reduced their range. So now I'm worried that they simply won't have what I need.
- steveBK123 1y agoYes a lot of urban retail seems to be in a death loop. Between online competition, wages, rent and shoplifting you see fewer locations, with a less convenient shopping experience, less staff and shorter hours. Which only leads to more Amazon usage.
- ryandrake 1y agoYea, I want to "do the right thing" and shop locally more, but boy, they do their best to make it difficult. It's as if "Local Shopping" is a group that gets together for meetings to figure out the most effective ways to drive me to shop at Amazon instead.
- rkomorn 1y agoWhat kind of things are "local shopping" doing to drive you away? And how many of those are related to not having the same economies of scale (and other competitive advantages) that Amazon has?
- ryandrake 1y agoA random combination of inconvenient hours, skeleton-level staffing, rude and/or apathetic staffing, inflated prices[1], terrible handle on their own inventory (often can't tell me over the phone or online whether something is in stock), poor/lengthy product-returns experience, general condition/smell/cleanliness of stores. Not all local stores have all of these--but they always have some mix of them. 1: I get it that they'll never be able to meet or beat online pricing due to economies of scale, fine. But I've seen 2X+ markups depending on the store/product.
- ChildOfChaos 1y agoIt's about convivence. It's not been about big ticket items for me on such days lately, but more to stock up on essentials, prime day is a day I can assure they are usually all on 'offer' at the same time so it makes it easy to do a large order of everything and stock up. Sure, might not be the absolute best price of the year, but it's a decent price for everything all at the same time, with the odd bigger ticket stuff if a real deal exists. This year I bought a lot of household items, toiletries and even a few food cupboard items, all of which according to price tracker plugins are about the lowest they get to, even if they go that price sometimes throughout the year, it's a great time to do one big shop and not have to deal with the pain of receiving so many deliveries. I don't see it as an issue, what amazon does is what everyone else does on their sales, you just need to do your research and stay aware, like with anything.
- kotaKat 1y agoThese events are just so tiring and exhausting in the public eye. First it was Prime Day. Now it’s Prime Big Deal Days. Then all the other retailers have to jump on “deal week” and “deal day” campaigns and equally make a bunch of loud, useless noise for sales that have little to no actual discount. Anyone else up for some sales fatigue?
- TrianguloY 1y agoI've always wondered what would happen with a shop that never has sales. A shop where the prices are always the same, although they may occasionally increase them due to inflation, etc. Such a shop will not get the surge of "oh look a discount, let me buy it" consumers, but people will probably realize that this way when you need something you can buy it on the spot, and it will always have the best price no matter when. Does a shop like this exist, or existed?
- barney54 1y agoI don’t know of a shop that doesn’t have some sales at some time. Sales are just such powerful selling tools. Factorio is a counter example. Factorio never goes on sale, which is kind of nice because when you buy it you know you couldn’t have gotten a better price, but without sales you aren’t as motivated to buy it for a lower price than usual.
- jasode 1y ago>I've always wondered what would happen with a shop that never has sales. A shop where the prices are always the same, [...] Does a shop like this exist, or existed? An ex-Apple executive who ran the Apple retail stores tried that strategy with JC Penney and it didn't work: https://www.google.com/search?q=jc+penny+everyday+low+price+failed https://www.google.com/search?q=jc+penny+everyday+low+price+...
- Dylan16807 1y agoIt's a useful case study, but without a memory erasing device changing strategy like that is different from being a shop that truly never has sales.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 1y agoIt actually was beginning to work. Corners of the internet where people discuss clothing and fashion trends were starting to buzz about JC Penny randomly starting to have trendier higher quality stuff for reasonable prices, etc. I think they would've needed a another year or two of runway though to turn the ship around and court an entirely new (non-overlapping) customer base, and the investors simply weren't willing to give them that much time.
- IshKebab 1y agoNo shit. Honestly if you aren't using one of those price tracking extensions on Amazon you're doing it wrong. I use Keepa. It's amazing how many product prices are now a square wave. Look at this for example and feel sorry for the people that paid £100. https://keepa.com/#!product/2-B0DNG35BVM https://keepa.com/#!product/2-B0DNG35BVM Often they are even more predictable and switch between the high and low price every two weeks. I have no idea why. Here's an example: https://keepa.com/#!product/2-B08W241HPW https://keepa.com/#!product/2-B08W241HPW Anyway if you browse with one of these extensions on Prime day it's very obvious how much of a lie their deals are. They're usually the lowest price that something has been available, but also usually they've been at that price before in the last few months.
- rightbyte 1y ago> Often they are even more predictable and switch between the high and low price every two weeks. I have no idea why. Here's an example: Maybe they raise prices as stock almost depletes before next delivery? Or to calibrate the price by noting sales at different prices?
- IshKebab 1y agoThat explains why the price changes but it doesn't explain why it is a perfect square wave.
- gorbachev 1y agoThis is why I never buy anything from Amazon unless I track prices in one of two ways: 1. camelcamelcamel.com 2. Add the product in my shopping cart and follow the price movement until I see the price drop down enough
- Havoc 1y agoJust copy the link into camelcamelcamel and look at the price history
- antonvs 1y ago“We”? I suppose the author is one of today’s lucky 10,000.
- The-Old-Hacker 1y agoAmazon Prime is a capitalist's wet dream. You give a company money every month whether you buy something from them or not. And because you now have a sunk cost, you are motivated to buy from Amazon even if their prices aren't the best value.
- skywhopper 1y agoI love that we get these articles every year exposing how Amazon manipulates pricing to make Prime Day seem like a sale when it rarely is, but no one (at least no reporters) ever seem to remember.
- 20after4 1y agoOr to point out that every retailer is doing the same thing and that every sale is just a price marked up so they can mark it down again and pretend you are getting a deal.
- fooqux 1y agoI first found out it was prime day when I went to check out and was notified that 4 out of 5 things placed in the cart over the week had suddenly jumped in price overnight. So, "can confirm".
- yhtdyt 1y ago[dead]
- red-iron-pine 1y agoI mean of course you have, capitalism isn't interested in actually making things cheaper for people, just extracting value. lower prices are just a consequence of competitive entities in a marketplace jockeying for advantage. the second they don't need to do that they will raise prices and screw the average consumer and we've seen it again and again.
- maxglute 1y agoBest sale around prime day warehouse are sales from returns after. I feel like whoever is grading the returns quality slip due to all volume and chance of scoring basically new items for steep discounts is up.
- speedylight 1y agoShopping on Amazon is a nightmare because it’s filled with Chinese crap and untrustworthy reviews, I almost always have to put several search filters just to see semi-reputable brands.
- switchers 1y agoThe camelcamelcamel site is always my go to for "is this actually a deal" on Amazon. There's also an extension called keepa that will draw the graph on the Amazon website for you.
- duxup 1y agoYou can also make a list on Amazon, then share that list with camelcamelcamel and set your prices and get an email and in the email see if it is a good deal or not. Very handy.
- coryfklein 1y agoI'd heard that Amazon is getting around price trackers like this using the coupons. 1. List item for $100 with a $20 off coupon 2. On Prime Day, drop the price to $80 and remove the coupon When you look at said item in CamelCamelCamel, I'm pretty sure it shows the price dropping from $100 -> $80.
- nickthegreek 1y agoterramaster d8 hybrid shows as ~$299 on camel before prime day. but it had a $45 off coupon for at least a month that never got tracked.
- duxup 1y agoI just use camelcamelcamel and if I get a legit alert yay ... often I do not.
- daerogami 1y agoHow is this news, seems more like an ad for a price tracker? Sales from online ecommerce to Black Friday in stores have been facades for well over a decade. Amazon has been marked-up AliExpress garbage for a long time as well.