You wrote the bots, and I wrote the code that (tries) to keep them from messing with Amazon (as an intern). People on Amazon don't just buy the lowest priced i

You wrote the bots, and I wrote the code that (tries) to keep them from messing with Amazon (as an intern). People on Amazon don't just buy the lowest priced item: They buy from whoever won the "buy box": The big "add to cart"/"buy now 1 clock" buttons. You seem to be talking about selling used books, where the market is a little different than "new" items. Price is obviously the biggest determination of who wins, but you can be disqualified because you don't have a high enough ranking, and other factors related to customer satisfaction. So an established merchant may win the buy box even if they're 50 cents higher. And that's exactly where this scheme comes into play, as soon as you've got two of these bots playing off each other and no other sellers qualified to win the buy box.