Fucking AnazonBasics pulled this shit with something I bought. Not quite as bad; it was still technically on sale, but only by $2 instead of the $7 they would have you believe.
Yea, I don’t assume anything is on sale until I’ve looked at camelcamelcamel.com. Even then, it doesn’t get lightning deals, and some other random promotions, so it can be difficult to tell what an actual good price is.
Camelcamelcamel is good, but Keepa has a browser extension that shows the price graph directly on the Amazon page, so you don’t have to go anywhere or click anything to see it.
Yeah, I use Keepa for the same thing. I checked before I bought the item, but it surprised me to see Amazon’s brand pulling that stunt.
Really? It surprised you? It surprises me that surprised you. I would’ve been surprised if Amazon didn’t pull something like that
deleted by creator
Also they stole the product from a former 3rd party seller
In Europe there’s a law that forces stores (online but also physical) to post also the lowest minimum price in the last month.
So it would be
€199€64 (lowest price in the last 30 days: €39)Amazon US doesn’t do that, but they do show a “lowest price in 30 days” badge that is actually truthful (appears when the item is on sale and the sale price is the lowest in the last 30 days). Of course, there’s some sellers that game it by increasing their prices over 30 days before Prime Day.
I dont think it includes procong due to coupons though.
If a product had a minor coupon (e.g <5$) and the product was discounted to that price without coupon, it would still advertise lowest price despite it not really changing.
I’m in Europe and have never seen this in my life, what I have seen is advice price which is another scam in itself.
It’s the omnibus directive from 2019, maybe your country didn’t ratify it yet. For example my country is slow & lazy and ratified it only a few months ago
Thank you!
Here you have an example:
I don’t know if it’s a law here too in Canada, but Amazon.ca works the same. What sellers do to get around this just make a new listing for products at inflated rates so they can then discount them for “sales”, while simultaneously setting the regular listing to unavailable until the “sale” is over.
Using a browser addon that tracks price history, we found a bunch of “deals” on Amazon US that had raised the price 30 days ago and are now flagged “Lowest price in 30 days!”. The “deal” price was almost always the exact same price it was 31 days prior.
Do you know a good extension for iOS?
The browser add-on is called honey, and it seems to be available for other OS. Can Google it and see if they have anything that will work in your environment.
On Germany’s site it was rampant with crap like that that had it’s price raised literally 3 days before the prime day
In the U.S. that’s a big “fuck you buddy, Ima get mine,” from congress.
There is a law for that? never seen that. where can you see this information on amazon for example?
Ingoe a good chuckle this morning when checking my Amazon cart and getting notifications of multiple items having lower prices and none had it increased.
Common Amazon deception. Mark up a product’s base cost artificially, then take a “percentage off” to bring it back down to near the base price it always is. Maybe slightly more expensive or cheaper, but usually just a smidge away from the normal cost. It’s for the illusion of “being on sale.”
Use an Amazon price tracker site (like camel camel camel for example) so that you can always call out Amazon and make sure that you’re getting their actual lowest prices when you have to buy from them.
Classic Kohl’s strategy, not sure if they did it first, but its the first place I saw it used in early 2000s.
A handful of years back, JC Penney made a huge deal about stopping this practice in their stores, where everything is on “sale” all the time. Sales plummeted even though the actual product prices stayed the same. They immediately reversed course.
Hard to blame them. Human brains are weird.
As a marketing guy, I have this story in my back pocket to illustrate how hopelessly self-destructive we are.
Penneys also stopped accepting coupons and it turned out that most of the older ladies who made up the lion’s share of the clientele loved coupons (who would have thought?). They also hired a retail exec from Apple (Ron Johnson) and he embarked on disasterous changes to stores and other things that regular customers hated. This is a great article that is titled “The J.C. penney Disaster Timeline” from 2012: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-jcpenney-disaster-timeline-how-ex-apple-guru-ron-johnson-is-destroying-the-company-2012-6
Furniture stores are infamous for that. They make a big deal of closing down for a day and marking every item in the store with a big discount, but what they don’t tell you is they jack the price way up first before applying the discount.
I called out best buy for this exact same practice years ago. I refuse to participate in mass sales now as a result. It’s all just a giant scam. Either blantant lies on pricing, or they use inferior parts for the sale items.
Prime Day is just Black Friday in July. Amazon is trying to get rid of old stock.
If you have an idea of what you want before the sale starts and know how much the standard price is you can still be lucky and get a good deal. You just have to be careful not to get sucked in to a non deal.
For example, I was looking out for an Apple Watch. There is a good sale on them but they only have a limited set of body and strap combinations. I don’t want any of the straps on offer so it negates almost all of the discount as I’d be paying £50 for a strap that I wouldn’t use.
Aren’t there some website that track this?
camelcamelcamel.com is the big one, I believe.
I use the Keepa browser extension
I have no idea where the name came from, but there’s CamelCamelCamel.
The creator did an AMA on [redacted] and said that the site was initially just a side project, so the name didn’t matter. However, it started to get some traction. Then people knew it by that name, so it felt too late to change it. Now it’s way too late, so that’s the name
https://camelcamelcamel.com/ is the one I used
This entire comment is the perfect explanation for my issue with people getting excited over Black Friday/Prime Day. I see so many people every year excitedly saying (or at times bragging), oh I got this, I got that, and it was so cheap. But unless you were already looking at that thing you haven’t saved money. You’ve actually spent more than you would have if it wasn’t on sale.
Even the percentage claimed is just complete garbage. Zero proof of how many are actually sold, the counter could start at 70% sold for all we know. Even if there was proof, it’s still clearly just a “other people bought this so you aren’t stupid for buying it too”.
Really good manipulation there tbh. Someone probably got a raise for that
Yeah in this one, the discount is 40% down from $119, but the regular price below says it’s $89
I was looking at a QNAP NAS box. When I added it to watch it was $589. Yesterday before prime day it was $573. This morning it was $582. Mid day it was back to $589.
Not a big difference and it wasn’t a prime day deal. But it’s more expensive than yesterday?
Amusingly enough, I bought an small appliance yesterday, amazon had worse deals than a big box store. They had cheaper prices on no name junk that was gonna take a week to get to me. Prime day is total shit.
IME Amazon has worse prices on a lot of stuff lately. It’s mostly just convenience at this point.
Exactly, amazon is a thing because we all don’t have time to run to the store for that one thing that isn’t an emergency. I see it as another way that the " " system " " has boxed us more into the “CONSUME” driven American existence. Like, even if a store is 5 minutes away and you’re getting “one thing” it’s still going to take at least 30 minute commitment especially if that store is say “walmart”. If the store is 15 mins away, you’re basically at an hour commitment.
We don’t have time to do stuff like that anymore! I am trying to weigh that thought and the idea we are all just brainwashed into the immediacy of needing everything now.
I don’t know it’s a lot to think about… lol
For me, it’s not even time that pisses me off the most.
The in-store retail experience has gone to complete and utter garbage. You take the time to get to the store, then wander around dirty aisles that are picked-over, only to find that the thing you needed or wanted isn’t even in stock (even though the website says it is). Having worked retail, I know there’s usually not “one in the back,” so even if I could find an employee (doubtful) it’s not worth the pain in the ass to do it. If you’re lucky there’s something good enough for purpose, so you take that to the front, where there’s one overworked cashier for the entire store and 3 more employees standing around talking next to the self checkouts, which don’t work.
If I order the same thing on Amazon, sure, I might have to spend a couple dollars more. What I don’t have to do is deal with all the hassle that comes with brick-and-mortar retail. Plus, if something’s not right Amazon makes returns and exchanges pretty damn easy.
I look for stores that have pickup available for some things, them all I have to do is drive there and get it. No needing to look or wait. If it isn’t in stock, the order gets cancelled and I don’t have to look for it.
If you’re into amazon electronics, that’s the only time to buy because it’s the only thing on sale. lol.
The only advice I can give is buy base on what you feel an item is worth to you.
I’m perfectly fine to keep searching for something for months before I finally make a purchase cause its the right price, color and model for me.
Your screen shots don’t show the item being sold in the first one or the price in the second one. I fully believe Amazon is doing Amazon things but did you even look at your own pictures before making your post?
I screenshotted it from my phone, and I could only get so much in a screenshot. They are all the same items. Here’s a desktop screenshot. Looks like the item has been 90+ claimed since morning. Another scam.
So that’s the same price that was visible in the first one. Still no actual price shown from before Prime day.
May be my screenshots are confusing, because I didn’t screenshot the product page when I purchased. Look at my order details. The price is the same $89. But on line 3 there is a $45 promotion applied. That was because there was a 50% off coupon available on the page that I clipped. After the coupon, the price came down to $45. Now on Prime day, they brought down the price to $65, but they also dropped the coupon to 10%, so the effective price now is $59, which is a lot more than what I paid last week. Does that make sense?
Oddly enough, I managed to find some really cheap gum. Usually $4.50 on sale at the shops but I got 6x bottles / packs of it for 12 bucks. Pretty happy finding little bargains like that!
We need better tools and ability to track this stuff. Pretty amazing we can have a super powered chatbot that can answer any question but I can’t find an excel sheet that tracks historical prices of goods in a meaningful way.
Also I bet it would be illegal to create that excel sheet in some way.
Not only is such a thing not illegal, I found half a dozen in 2 seconds on Google.
ChatGPT could be used a trojan horse to get webscrapping made illegal. Companies will fight tooth and nail if people had a good ability to see their price history. There are apps to do it. But it requires a lot of time and the data isn’t always reliable or not available
There is actually a browser extension that tracks prices. Damn I forgot which one it is.
Is there one for iOS?
yeah if you clicked the link it shows there is an iOS app.
In my opinion the best of this kind. you can browse amazon as usual and there is an extra window in if you scroll a little that shows the price history. No need to copie the link to another page to check the history.
CamelCamelCamel does this. I don’t remember if they have a browser extension though.
Camel Camel Camel is helpful when its statistics are available
There are many such apps. Search for price trackers.
I’ve been using Keepa for this for years in Firefox.
Not illegal. Check out CamelCamelCamel.com
Not fully legal either though. We’ll see much more pressure to make it illegal in the next few years
That’s just not true.
This article describes the grey area pretty well and it also links to a legal case.
https://www.scraperapi.com/blog/is-web-scraping-legal/
I believe we’re now entering a new era online. AI has now made scrapping a much more lucrative business. I think we will see a greater effort to build walls so company’s have to pay for this information. We’re dealing with people who get their way strictly through the court system. Reddit and twitter won’t be the last company to make these changes.
This next decade will be all about hording information online. Its like the modern day version of arguing whose cows were eating what on whose land. Lawyers are salivating at the next decade and the losers will be all of us.
Idk why anyone is surprised Amazon is deceitful lmao
Prime Day a scam? What? Impossible!
INCONCEIVABLE!
