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Show HN: Automated Discounts on Amazon

43 points by FriedPickles 13y ago

thebiglebrewski 13y ago
So I'm confused here, you're saying that the products are still ordered through Amazon? Where are the promo codes from?
- FriedPickles 13y ago
  Yes, our API (more info at zinc.io) places the order on the user's behalf, applying any promo codes, using the best rewards offers, etc. We guarantee the savings.
  - fatbat 13y ago
    Does Zinc simply kickback some affiliate revenue earned?
    - FriedPickles 13y ago
      We do not use Amazon Associates (the affiliate program) in any manner. Sometimes the API finds savings beyond what we've guaranteed, which is how we make money.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- balbaugh 13y ago
  "We use a number of strategies to maximize savings, including discount codes, optimized credit card rewards, and strategic order timing. You can expect to save between $1 and $5 on most orders, and even more for large orders!" [1] [1] https://www.zincsave.com/faq https://www.zincsave.com/faq
kookiekrak 13y ago
so you're like a combination of honey + intercepting and storing my order information on your servers to wrap around canceling and returning?
- FriedPickles 13y ago
  That's fairly accurate. We're adding support for more retailers rapidly, and the ability to see and manage orders from across the internet from a unified place (the Zinc Save dashboard) is part of our value proposition. If you place an order with a retailer we support, you don't need to dig around their website to figure out how to cancel it. We provide a consistent interface.
- delluminatus 13y ago
  Actually it seems they place the order for you, i.e. not using your Amazon account at all. In other words it's a proxy service, except instead of paying a fee for the proxy, you actually pay less, and they make up the difference through optimized ordering habits. Very interesting.
GuiA 13y ago
Heavy Amazon user here (for 99% of my non-fresh food purchases, I order it on Amazon). This looks neat at first glance, because I order things on Amazon all the time, and I like saving money. A few things that prevent me from using it right now: - Trust. Is this service legal? Will Amazon get upset at me for using it? Maybe I'm worrying for nothing, but addressing those questions directly on your website would be worthy. - Order history. Using Zinc means orders won't show up in my Amazon order history, right? I like having all my Amazon orders tied to my Amazon account. - No one click purchase integration. I haven't used Amazon's "shopping cart" flow in forever.
- FriedPickles 13y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! We're hoping to make the extension work for one-click users soon. Establishing trust is a big challenge for us. The best we know to do is provide an amazing experience for each order we get, and hope that trust in our service spreads through word of mouth.
  - rdudek 13y ago
    What if I need to make a return on an item? How does that work?
    - FriedPickles 13y ago
      We provide a consistent interface for returns through our order dashboard. You simply request a return, and we provide you with a prepaid mailing label to return the item to the retailer. When the item has been delivered, we refund your card with a full refund.
  - phreanix 13y ago
    Mind if I drop you an email? I have a couple of questions re: the extension.
- jsonau 13y ago
  Based on their FAQ, they act as a proxy, in which you pay them to order goods from Amazon. And you will use this proxy because they will do the heavy work of finding the lowest price for you. If anything, Amazon will punish Zinc rather than the receiver of the goods.
hayksaakian 13y ago
You could increase your potential user base by 50% by adding firefox support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers seems to indicate firefox has about half the usage of chrome.
- patd 13y ago
  From the numbers of my extension, Chrome users are more keen to install extensions. I believe that it's mainly because the Chrome Webstore makes it easier to find extension than Mozilla's.
  - hayksaakian 13y ago
    You know your own numbers better than I do. I just want FF to get some love.
ultimatedelman 13y ago
I... can't see how this is legal. If I were Amazon and I heard about this, you'd have a cease and desist order at your doorstep the next day... If this is legal, though, please do explain.
- NathanKP 13y ago
  Would it be illegal if you wanted to buy something and instead of ordering it directly by yourself you asked a friend who is an experienced shopper to order it for you? This friend just happens to have "The Price Is Right" style knowledge of the price of items, and he knows all the best coupon codes and deals that can be applied for a particular product so that you spend the least amount of money. Zinc Save is a browser extension that acts like that friend. From what I see it isn't doing anything that a real human can't do by themselves (comparing prices on different websites and looking up coupon codes) but it just automates the process to make it easier for you.
  - ultimatedelman 13y ago
    Actually, it is doing something illegal. It's injecting a button on Amazon.com's webpage (without their consent) trying to swoop your business from them by offering a slightly lower price. The more equivalent analogy is, you're shopping at a store and right as you're in the checkout line, a guy runs in the store from outside and steps in front of the cashier with an ipad and a Square credit card scanner and says he'll go get the exact same items from somewhere else and bring them right to your car for less than what you're about to pay for all the things in your cart. Don't you think the store would get a little pissed about that?
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      A browser user agent is not a promise to view a page in a certain way. The user is consenting to the button when they install the add on.
    - dangrossman 13y ago
      It's non-obvious how injecting a button through a browser plugin would be illegal. I've never heard of a plugin author being sued for doing something like that, and there are thousands of plugins that inject content into or change the content of commercial sites you're viewing.
codegeek 13y ago
Interesting. I swear I recently had an idea of creating a chrome extension which will give me an alert every time I am on a checkout page of some site/product and tell me if I could save more due to coupons etc. that I am not aware of for that particular item. So before I click on "Purchase", I will get a small popup that says "You are paying x for this item but you can only pay x-y if you use this abc coupon". This seems similar even though it goes the extra step of ordering on your behalf.
- agilebyte 13y ago
  Well if you are in UK you can use Quidco and their extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quidco-cashback-reminder/elfdpdgmnodokhbiabbcjabmhpdajcog https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quidco-cashback-re... Which tells you if the site you are visiting offers a cashback through them (supposedly, the reviews are not very positive).
- joshschreuder 13y ago
  There's a Chrome extension called Honey (I believe one of the devs posts here occasionally) which does this (well, you click a button and it tries a bunch of codes for you, it doesn't tell you upfront you can save).
calbear81 13y ago
Is the user making a purchase from ZincSave (are you becoming the merchant?) or do you passthrough the user's credit card information to order on Amazon? Interesting model given how often Amazon marks up/down prices to arbitrage if you believe you can buy at a lower price within a reasonable amount of time. Case in point, I had added a carbon steel frying pan to my cart for $26.97 on sale and then a day later, it jumped back to $38 and I didn't want to buy it anymore.
jordn 13y ago
As you only offer discounts on Amazon and Walmart can your chrome extension please just request data from those domains and not ‘all websites’? I'm very conscious of extension over-access.
- mkx 13y ago
  We request permission for all websites since we are rapidly adding support for more retailers. We don't want to have to ask the user for new permissions every time we add a retailer.
crazygringo 13y ago
Wait, so what kinds of savings are actually available on Amazon in the first place? I mean, I order tons of stuff. How exactly is Zinc saving me money? The books I order don't seem to vary in price, ever, and I've never seen promo codes for them either. I don't want them picking a third-party seller instead of Amazon, due to quality issues I've had in the past. They say they're not applying the affiliates discount to their own orders. So what exactly are all these mysterious discounts? (Also, if the orders are actually being placed through their own account, how is tracking handled? Returns? Customer service in general?)
- smiro2000 13y ago
  Also what I am wondering. Can't seem to find anything on the splash page...
- wavesounds 13y ago
  I know my Discover card sometimes gives me 5% off from online purchases during a certain quarter or bigger discounts on particular things from Amazon if I go through their "Discover store". Maybe they have a bunch of these types of credit cards? I'm not sure how returns would work in that situation though, I guess you have to return it through Zinc.
- davidjhall 13y ago
  I noticed (coincidentally) that the savings was close to the taxes -- I wonder if they are shipping to tax-free places and rerouting them somehow with a deal with a shipping company?
- FriedPickles 13y ago
  Even if the price of the item doesn't vary and there are no coupons, we can still save money using the most advantageous credit card rewards program. If the original user sourced from a 3p vendor, we will sometimes source from an equal or higher rated vendor with an item in equal or better condition. One thing that most Amazon users miss is that the location of the Amazon vendor relative to their shipping address can affect their final pricing due to sales tax. There are cases where we cannot save as much as we promised, in which case we take the loss.
SatvikBeri 13y ago
This saved me 10% on a few books I just bought, so it clearly seems to work. I'd definitely like to know how though.
- xur17 13y ago
  Do the orders show up in your amazon history? If not, is there some way to access them? Their website is a bit sparse on details. I'm guessing they have some way to provide discounts on all orders (credit card savings or something), and are able to sometimes get an additional discount using coupons.
sapmittal 13y ago
dont not work for me. I tried amazon am walmart
joshschreuder 13y ago
Interesting idea, how does this work for international orders? Do I get the product price discounted, and then pay whatever Amazon lists for shipping? This isn't immediately clear due to Amazon's price conversion. Here's what I see when I head to checkout: http://i.imgur.com/2ruNHfr.png http://i.imgur.com/2ruNHfr.png Which matches up with product price + shipping if I swap back to USD: http://i.imgur.com/ekeMX0y.png http://i.imgur.com/ekeMX0y.png But I'm still unclear how Zinc works with international shipping as the discounted price includes both product price and shipping.
lazyjones 13y ago
This possibly refunds buyers part of the Amazon affiliate fees they get for intercepting the order. I don't think Amazon will appreciate that... There are other "cashback" type services like this though, e.g. http://www.quidco.com/ http://www.quidco.com/ which actually has contracts with many merchants (who appreciate it).
- NathanKP 13y ago
  According to "FriedPickles" farther down the comment thread: We do not use Amazon Associates (the affiliate program) in any manner. Sometimes the API finds savings beyond what we've guaranteed, which is how we make money.
arh68 13y ago
I use Amazon. I found Zinc here yesterday. I rolled the dice, ordered ~$100. My CC gives 5% cashback on amazon, 1% normally. The Zinc advantage over the 4% difference was slim, but I'd rather someone else use my points than me. In fact I'd rather take the cash benefit right now, before I even spend the money. Anyhow, I'm posting now because I just got half the order, sitting at my door when I got off work. It was delivered in probably 16~20 hours. I don't have Prime. This is amazing. It's about Zappos-level impressive from a customer standpoint.

43 points by FriedPickles 13y ago

thebiglebrewski 13y ago

So I'm confused here, you're saying that the products are still ordered through Amazon? Where are the promo codes from?

FriedPickles 13y ago
Yes, our API (more info at zinc.io) places the order on the user's behalf, applying any promo codes, using the best rewards offers, etc. We guarantee the savings.
- fatbat 13y ago
  Does Zinc simply kickback some affiliate revenue earned?
  - FriedPickles 13y ago
    We do not use Amazon Associates (the affiliate program) in any manner. Sometimes the API finds savings beyond what we've guaranteed, which is how we make money.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
balbaugh 13y ago
"We use a number of strategies to maximize savings, including discount codes, optimized credit card rewards, and strategic order timing. You can expect to save between $1 and $5 on most orders, and even more for large orders!" [1] [1] https://www.zincsave.com/faq https://www.zincsave.com/faq

kookiekrak 13y ago

so you're like a combination of honey + intercepting and storing my order information on your servers to wrap around canceling and returning?

FriedPickles 13y ago
That's fairly accurate. We're adding support for more retailers rapidly, and the ability to see and manage orders from across the internet from a unified place (the Zinc Save dashboard) is part of our value proposition. If you place an order with a retailer we support, you don't need to dig around their website to figure out how to cancel it. We provide a consistent interface.
delluminatus 13y ago
Actually it seems they place the order for you, i.e. not using your Amazon account at all. In other words it's a proxy service, except instead of paying a fee for the proxy, you actually pay less, and they make up the difference through optimized ordering habits. Very interesting.

GuiA 13y ago

Heavy Amazon user here (for 99% of my non-fresh food purchases, I order it on Amazon). This looks neat at first glance, because I order things on Amazon all the time, and I like saving money. A few things that prevent me from using it right now: - Trust. Is this service legal? Will Amazon get upset at me for using it? Maybe I'm worrying for nothing, but addressing those questions directly on your website would be worthy. - Order history. Using Zinc means orders won't show up in my Amazon order history, right? I like having all my Amazon orders tied to my Amazon account. - No one click purchase integration. I haven't used Amazon's "shopping cart" flow in forever.

FriedPickles 13y ago
Thanks for the feedback! We're hoping to make the extension work for one-click users soon. Establishing trust is a big challenge for us. The best we know to do is provide an amazing experience for each order we get, and hope that trust in our service spreads through word of mouth.
- rdudek 13y ago
  What if I need to make a return on an item? How does that work?
  - FriedPickles 13y ago
    We provide a consistent interface for returns through our order dashboard. You simply request a return, and we provide you with a prepaid mailing label to return the item to the retailer. When the item has been delivered, we refund your card with a full refund.
- phreanix 13y ago
  Mind if I drop you an email? I have a couple of questions re: the extension.
jsonau 13y ago
Based on their FAQ, they act as a proxy, in which you pay them to order goods from Amazon. And you will use this proxy because they will do the heavy work of finding the lowest price for you. If anything, Amazon will punish Zinc rather than the receiver of the goods.

hayksaakian 13y ago

You could increase your potential user base by 50% by adding firefox support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers seems to indicate firefox has about half the usage of chrome.

patd 13y ago
From the numbers of my extension, Chrome users are more keen to install extensions. I believe that it's mainly because the Chrome Webstore makes it easier to find extension than Mozilla's.
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  You know your own numbers better than I do. I just want FF to get some love.

ultimatedelman 13y ago

I... can't see how this is legal. If I were Amazon and I heard about this, you'd have a cease and desist order at your doorstep the next day... If this is legal, though, please do explain.

NathanKP 13y ago
Would it be illegal if you wanted to buy something and instead of ordering it directly by yourself you asked a friend who is an experienced shopper to order it for you? This friend just happens to have "The Price Is Right" style knowledge of the price of items, and he knows all the best coupon codes and deals that can be applied for a particular product so that you spend the least amount of money. Zinc Save is a browser extension that acts like that friend. From what I see it isn't doing anything that a real human can't do by themselves (comparing prices on different websites and looking up coupon codes) but it just automates the process to make it easier for you.
- ultimatedelman 13y ago
  Actually, it is doing something illegal. It's injecting a button on Amazon.com's webpage (without their consent) trying to swoop your business from them by offering a slightly lower price. The more equivalent analogy is, you're shopping at a store and right as you're in the checkout line, a guy runs in the store from outside and steps in front of the cashier with an ipad and a Square credit card scanner and says he'll go get the exact same items from somewhere else and bring them right to your car for less than what you're about to pay for all the things in your cart. Don't you think the store would get a little pissed about that?
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    A browser user agent is not a promise to view a page in a certain way. The user is consenting to the button when they install the add on.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    It's non-obvious how injecting a button through a browser plugin would be illegal. I've never heard of a plugin author being sued for doing something like that, and there are thousands of plugins that inject content into or change the content of commercial sites you're viewing.

codegeek 13y ago

Interesting. I swear I recently had an idea of creating a chrome extension which will give me an alert every time I am on a checkout page of some site/product and tell me if I could save more due to coupons etc. that I am not aware of for that particular item. So before I click on "Purchase", I will get a small popup that says "You are paying x for this item but you can only pay x-y if you use this abc coupon". This seems similar even though it goes the extra step of ordering on your behalf.

agilebyte 13y ago
Well if you are in UK you can use Quidco and their extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quidco-cashback-reminder/elfdpdgmnodokhbiabbcjabmhpdajcog https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quidco-cashback-re... Which tells you if the site you are visiting offers a cashback through them (supposedly, the reviews are not very positive).
joshschreuder 13y ago
There's a Chrome extension called Honey (I believe one of the devs posts here occasionally) which does this (well, you click a button and it tries a bunch of codes for you, it doesn't tell you upfront you can save).

calbear81 13y ago

Is the user making a purchase from ZincSave (are you becoming the merchant?) or do you passthrough the user's credit card information to order on Amazon? Interesting model given how often Amazon marks up/down prices to arbitrage if you believe you can buy at a lower price within a reasonable amount of time. Case in point, I had added a carbon steel frying pan to my cart for $26.97 on sale and then a day later, it jumped back to $38 and I didn't want to buy it anymore.

jordn 13y ago

As you only offer discounts on Amazon and Walmart can your chrome extension please just request data from those domains and not ‘all websites’? I'm very conscious of extension over-access.

mkx 13y ago
We request permission for all websites since we are rapidly adding support for more retailers. We don't want to have to ask the user for new permissions every time we add a retailer.

crazygringo 13y ago

Wait, so what kinds of savings are actually available on Amazon in the first place? I mean, I order tons of stuff. How exactly is Zinc saving me money? The books I order don't seem to vary in price, ever, and I've never seen promo codes for them either. I don't want them picking a third-party seller instead of Amazon, due to quality issues I've had in the past. They say they're not applying the affiliates discount to their own orders. So what exactly are all these mysterious discounts? (Also, if the orders are actually being placed through their own account, how is tracking handled? Returns? Customer service in general?)

smiro2000 13y ago
Also what I am wondering. Can't seem to find anything on the splash page...
wavesounds 13y ago
I know my Discover card sometimes gives me 5% off from online purchases during a certain quarter or bigger discounts on particular things from Amazon if I go through their "Discover store". Maybe they have a bunch of these types of credit cards? I'm not sure how returns would work in that situation though, I guess you have to return it through Zinc.
davidjhall 13y ago
I noticed (coincidentally) that the savings was close to the taxes -- I wonder if they are shipping to tax-free places and rerouting them somehow with a deal with a shipping company?
FriedPickles 13y ago
Even if the price of the item doesn't vary and there are no coupons, we can still save money using the most advantageous credit card rewards program. If the original user sourced from a 3p vendor, we will sometimes source from an equal or higher rated vendor with an item in equal or better condition. One thing that most Amazon users miss is that the location of the Amazon vendor relative to their shipping address can affect their final pricing due to sales tax. There are cases where we cannot save as much as we promised, in which case we take the loss.

SatvikBeri 13y ago

This saved me 10% on a few books I just bought, so it clearly seems to work. I'd definitely like to know how though.

xur17 13y ago
Do the orders show up in your amazon history? If not, is there some way to access them? Their website is a bit sparse on details. I'm guessing they have some way to provide discounts on all orders (credit card savings or something), and are able to sometimes get an additional discount using coupons.

sapmittal 13y ago

dont not work for me. I tried amazon am walmart

joshschreuder 13y ago

Interesting idea, how does this work for international orders? Do I get the product price discounted, and then pay whatever Amazon lists for shipping? This isn't immediately clear due to Amazon's price conversion. Here's what I see when I head to checkout: http://i.imgur.com/2ruNHfr.png http://i.imgur.com/2ruNHfr.png Which matches up with product price + shipping if I swap back to USD: http://i.imgur.com/ekeMX0y.png http://i.imgur.com/ekeMX0y.png But I'm still unclear how Zinc works with international shipping as the discounted price includes both product price and shipping.

lazyjones 13y ago

This possibly refunds buyers part of the Amazon affiliate fees they get for intercepting the order. I don't think Amazon will appreciate that... There are other "cashback" type services like this though, e.g. http://www.quidco.com/ http://www.quidco.com/ which actually has contracts with many merchants (who appreciate it).

NathanKP 13y ago
According to "FriedPickles" farther down the comment thread: We do not use Amazon Associates (the affiliate program) in any manner. Sometimes the API finds savings beyond what we've guaranteed, which is how we make money.

arh68 13y ago

I use Amazon. I found Zinc here yesterday. I rolled the dice, ordered ~$100. My CC gives 5% cashback on amazon, 1% normally. The Zinc advantage over the 4% difference was slim, but I'd rather someone else use my points than me. In fact I'd rather take the cash benefit right now, before I even spend the money. Anyhow, I'm posting now because I just got half the order, sitting at my door when I got off work. It was delivered in probably 16~20 hours. I don't have Prime. This is amazing. It's about Zappos-level impressive from a customer standpoint.