Amazon Prime Day deals 'not what they seem' | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Prime Day deals 'not what they seem'

bbc.co.uk

193 pointsjohn58118 comments

I recommend consulting CamelCamelCamel before making any purchases on Amazon today to verify that there wasn't a price hike before the drop. CCC lets you see the pricing history on any of the items on Amazon.

It even has a Chrome extension.[1]

[0]https://camelcamelcamel.com/

[1]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-camelizer/ghno...

link for the lazy chromist https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/the-camelizer/ghno...

Is this better than honey Chrome extension?

just tried it, honey is about coupon/deals while camel is about price charts (my 1min summary)

thanks! will give it a try! honey also has a price chart thing (only shows when you go to an Amazon item specifically and then the Chrome extension injects it in) but I've found it only shows it when there have been recent deals so it's not always useful

I see, my minute sample wasn't enough to see that

Honey has the same basic features of camelcamelcamel, but they present it more as a warning of recent price changes than the drill down chart of ccc. I use both

Thanks, I added it to my original post.

I also recommend this tool for anyone looking to buy expensive items. I saved ~$900 on an OLED TV from a very brief price drop in late May due to camel. It had been on my list for months however.

Keepa [1] shows a graph at every item. It works great on Chrome and Firefox.

[1] https://keepa.com

Will this (or is there any extension) make items with multiple choices easier to browse? For example if I want to go look at a pair of shorts, the item page might offer them in 15 different colors, and they are all different prices (and even different prices by size). I'd like an extension that makes it easier to view the prices and ideally sort by cheapest first.

Good question.

I just tested that with Keepa on this phone [1] [2] [3] [4]. The charts are different for all 4 colours but personally I like it that way. Usually I have a preference for colours. However, sometimes I don't, and if I'd buy for someone else who knows? Its gonna depend. I checked the settings and was able to compare different Amazon versions (per country) but not merge colours of the same item.

With The Camelizer it shows the wrong price (I take it it grabs Amazon US price but I'm not sure).

I don't have an account on Keepa or CamelCamelCamel. Perhaps having an account gives further benefits.

[1] https://www.amazon.de/Nokia-3310-Single-Sim-Mobiltelefon-Gra...

[2] https://www.amazon.de/Nokia-3310-Single-Sim-Mobiltelefon-Gra...

[3] https://www.amazon.de/Nokia-3310-Single-Sim-Mobiltelefon-Gra...

[4] https://www.amazon.de/Nokia-3310-Single-Sim-Mobiltelefon-Gra...

There's also keepa.com which has an extension that puts the price history inline in Amazon. Extremely useful.

Wonder how that service works. Amazon explicitly forbids keeping track of their pricing history. I knew a few guys who tried it and got a C&D warning at some time. Does ccc have a special agreement or something equivalent? Beats me.

Anyone can send a cease and desist. How would that be enforceable though? The information is available publicly to anonymous browsers.

Well-funded Amazon legal dept vs individual = not a fun time, regardless if it's found frivolous or thrown out.

It didn't really matter who's right and who's wrong. If a fortune 500 sues you, you lose even if you win.

The risk is not that the results will be impossible to gather and publish, but that they will be unprofitable.

CamelCamelCamel makes money off users clicking Amazon affiliate URLs to go to Amazon from their site. It's easy for Amazon (or anyone else, really) to determine from these URLs the Amazon account which is tied to these links and 'enforce' the C&D by canceling/refusing to pay that account's affilate link revenue.

The creator did an AMA on Reddit last year. Basically the site originally showed price history of other sites like Newegg but Amazon told the author they'd let him continue to get pricing info only if he removed the other sites and made it exclusively for Amazon, and he did.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5xuniu/im_the_founder...

I can't tell, but I think that's actually shittier than just trying to shut down his extension.

Also, Amazon's retail teams rely on CCC because it's more accurate than their own tools.

You would think with internal data that internal tools would be better, but time and time again they're not.

Can anyone elaborate on this? I assume Amazon could trivially build an internal CCC, and I'm at a loss how their internal tools would be less accurate than a 3rd-party scraper...

Anyone who could elaborate is NDA'd.

In general, though, Amazon is always kind of starved for engineering resources. It sucks so much to work at in so many of its teams that it has a colossal retention problem and, one would expect, the corresponding level of technical debt.

Maybe if they made being an engineer there a winning proposition...

They could start with the vesting schedule for one.

Maybe have competitive salaries with FB & Google?

I genuinely do not understand why they don't do this. Bezos either has some sort of master plan relating to a high-turnover staff model or is delusional about the true culture underneath him. I don't know which.

Trump's using the same model fwiw.

So that's why I can no longer use Camelegg.

I understand why the author would cave to Amazon, but not why that would fail to cause competitor dedicated only to Newegg to pop up.

camelegg was shut down by newegg, not by amazon.

Wonder how that flies with regulatory authorities? Some places have rules around pricing behaviour and Amazon seems to be sailing close to the wind. http://www.comcom.govt.nz/fair-trading/fair-trading-act-fact...

It flies just fine if they're asleep at the wheel -- which they most definitely are.

> to verify that there wasn't a price hike before the drop.

I think it would be more useful to have an extension that just hid all the bogus discount claims.

I would like an extension to hide this and all other click bait.

Thanks for the recommendation!

If you are in Canada, you can use https://ca.camelcamelcamel.com/

Germany as well at https://de.camelcamelcamel.com/

I don't really have that much in the pipeline that I need.

Whenever I browse these Prime Day "sales" I just end up scrolling through a list of products I don't really intend to buy, nor am that really interested in. Most of it is junk I'd probably use once anyway, and I never buy clothing off Amazon.

Amazon have nailed the transaction experience when you know exactly what you want, it's very slick from purchase to delivery.

But the 'window shopping' experience is so poor, the interface doesn't seem to have changed that much for years, it's the same layout, the same endless ream of products.

> Amazon have nailed the transaction experience when you know exactly what you want, it's very slick from purchase to delivery.

> But the 'window shopping' experience is so poor, the interface doesn't seem to have changed that much for years, it's the same layout, the same endless ream of products.

Exactly my opinion. Even when you need a product from a certain product category and have a general idea of you want, I consider Amazon useless. Research and exploration is just abysmal with Amazon and the amount of subpar products doesn't help at all. I consider it a huge mistake to open the amazon marketplace anything and enyone, including third party sellers. If I that kind of shopping experience I'd browse eBay.

From Amazon I expect at least some degree of curation and the intention to sell only decent to exceptional products. Amazon should feature all the advantages of a specialized niche store with the difference that it's able to serve all of those niches.

Amazons 'tactics' are no different than any retailer of consumer goods. You see the deceptive practices applied especially in clothing where items are marketed at inflated prices and then suddenly dropped 50% or more for a 'sale'.

True, but I believe that so far Amazon has a glow of trust (maybe people think online retailer of that size don't need to resort to tricks). Not sure how long it will shine.

I trusted Amazon in this regard that they weren't so stupid that they wouldn't get caught given how much they know about technology (in The Netherlands there's been a pricewatch website on Tweakers which is for tech related comparisons though localised for NL. Its been online for almost two decennia). Turns out, I was wrong.

sad isn't it ?

ps: when it comes to selling, there's no forbidden strategy unless it's illegal

That's a bit of a tautology, isn't it?

let me explain, you can always do something, unless you cannot do said thing.

>You see the deceptive practices applied especially in clothing where items are marketed at inflated prices and then suddenly dropped 50% or more for a 'sale'.

JCPenny's discovered that the consumer demands this behavior.

>JCPenny's discovered that the consumer demands this behavior.

Which really disappointed me. I was thrilled when they announced the no sales model and switched all my clothes buying to them - it’s so much less stressful. Several people I know were similar.

Unfortunately “all of my clothes buying” was like two pairs of pants, while the people I know who love finding a “deal” go shopping every weekend...

With Penney's in particular, you can pretty much just always assume a sale is going on. I go about twice a year, and in the past ~6 years, there's only been one day where the stuff I was buying (dress shirts and slacks, mainly) weren't at least "50% off". If you get unlucky and show up on the one day of the season where stuff is (I think this is how it works) legally required to be at regular price so they can mark it down, just come back the next weekend.

If I'm not mistaken, the then-CEO said it would take something like 6 years to cast off the old customers who are looking for sales and acquire their new, younger, less sale-seeking customers. The board agreed, then sacked him much earlier than the time he said it would take.

This is pretty much Kohl's business model. The list price is a joke and typically your "savings" will be 2-3x what you spent on any particular transaction. It's a dumb and obvious scheme, but it seems to work.

Kohl’s is a puzzling place to me. Bizarre coupons, a weird mix of products and wacky pricing. People actually go with their coupon to get another coupon, valid two weeks in the future when the prices are higher.

It's crazy, but true.

I shop there and they're all "You saved $111!" But I spent $35... and there's no way I'd spend $140+ on just this ever... this makes no sense...

Obviously. Critical thinking skills are in short supply.

If sales really saved people money all those fancy stores would have gone bankrupt long ago. "Oh yes Sir these shoes are €149 but for you I will go down to €99"

"You see the deceptive practices applied especially in clothing where items are marketed at inflated prices and then suddenly dropped 50% or more for a 'sale'."

I've tried to explain this multiple times to my mom, but she just doesn't get it.

She keeps telling me that I shouldn't shop online but rather buy in local stores because they have these "great sales."

Your mom is still right. Clothes are usually easier to get and cheaper in person.

The thing that online wins for is specific items. For me shoes have to be bought online because I wear a 14, which stores do not stock.

You're not kidding. They're offering the Kindle Paperwhite for “$40 off”. It's “only” $79.99 right now.

But I bought mine a month ago at $89.99. They jacked the list price up to $119.99 just to fake the savings.

> But I bought mine a month ago at $89.99. They jacked the list price up to $119.99 just to fake the savings.

Was that the list price when you bought it, or was it on sale when you bought it as well?

It must've been on sale. The list price is actually 119.99, they just seem to like to discount it to $99.99 quite often and $89.99 occasionally.

https://camelcamelcamel.com/Amazon-Kindle-Paperwhite-6-Inch-...

Too late to edit my comment. Turns out I got it on a different sale. The $119.99 appears to be a legitimate normal price.

This is is regulated here in New Zealand, and is in breach of the law. http://www.comcom.govt.nz/fair-trading/fair-trading-act-fact...

It's illegal in most of Yurop iirc, at least here in Finland.

In Japan too.

Lest you think this is a new tactic, this was Wal-Mart's MO.

They are also experts in selling one microwave at cost or a slight loss. That's the one that goes on the end-cap and gets advertised in the flyers. The rest of them are the same price (or higher!) than other local retailers.

The important part is building consumer perception that they always have the lowest price. Everyone who buys a slightly better microwave pays $5-$10 more than if they bought it elsewhere but thinks they got the best price.

As always, use something like camelcamelcamel to do price history comparisons for you before buying anything on Prime Day or Cyber Monday (or any other time for that matter).

Shameless plug, but relevant:

My startup is a price tracker for ecommerce in SE Asia, particularly Malaysia, and we did a write-up about this "great sale": https://sarahshopper.com/my/what-to-expect-on-singles-day-11...

(TL;DR: just like you said, use a price tracker)

Depending on jurisdiction, raising the regular price to create the appearance of a sale price isn't legal.

e.g. from Canada's Competition Act:

> They prohibit the making, or the permitting of the making, of any materially false or misleading representation, to the public, as to the ordinary selling price of a product, in any form whatever.

http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/00...

Hey in the land of the free it's completely A-OK :)

This has been done for a while and it's extremely effective.

This is not completely accurate, the FTC has rules against deceptive pricing practices [1]. I'm not sure how often these rules are enforced and what the penalties are though. They specifically give an example where raising a price before a sale is not allowed:

> The following is an example of a price comparison based on a fictitious former price. John Doe is a retailer of Brand X fountain pens, which cost him $5 each. His usual markup is 50 percent over cost; that is, his regular retail price is $7.50. In order subsequently to offer an unusual “bargain”, Doe begins offering Brand X at $10 per pen. He realizes that he will be able to sell no, or very few, pens at this inflated price. But he doesn't care, for he maintains that price for only a few days. Then he “cuts” the price to its usual level—$7.50—and advertises: “Terrific Bargain: X Pens, Were $10, Now Only $7.50!” This is obviously a false claim. The advertised “bargain” is not genuine.

[1]: https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=f8c45f090a32596673...

That's pretty interesting I had no idea. Thanks

I lack creativity here, but to me that sounds about as enforceable as banning breathing. I'm curious how they would go about enforcing this.

Well, the enforcement mechanisms are codified by law.

They extracted a million-dollar penalty and concessions to how prices are displayed from Amazon just last year: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/amazon-competition-bureau-p...

I suspect Amazon gets around that by typically having most items "on sale". If an item's MSRP is $100, maybe Amazon normally sells it for $50 and shows it as being "50% off", despite that being the normal price. Then it goes "on sale" on Prime Day for $40, they change that to "60% off". Realistically it's 20% off, not 60% off, but I suspect they'd be clear of regulation against raising the price prior to a sale.

Those things are not as accurate as they seem since sellers can apparently opt out of allowing their price to show on the api used (or possibly Amazon does it automatically). It should work for this kind of thing with prices above normal, but I've seen multiple instances (out of not that many times I've looked) where deeper sales are not reflected in the price trackers (and not shown as missing data either).

Shopping online is easier if you know exactly what you are buying. But when you are browsing (shoes, glasses, clothes etc), the ideal experience is the ability to filter by a hierarchy of attributes specific to that category. This requires tedious data collection and categorization.

Eg. Shoes - there are different kinds of attributes - high level shape, specific stylistic shapes, material, usage, price, brand. This categorization needs to be done cleanly. It can get messy fast. If I start seeing sandals when i searched for leather boots, I will get confused and refuse to trust the results.

My theory is that this is why online retailers focussing on certain verticals are able to get some level success vs amazon (Eg. Zappos), largely due to the level of detail available for the browsing experience, even if their prices are higher. Amazon's UX/UI is too generic and sometimes frustrating.

Sure, just look at buying parts on Newegg vs Amazon. Newegg has amazing search capabilities tailored to what they're selling, while on Amazon it's a crapshoot whether electronics stuff will even be in the right broadest-level category, so even brand new builders still get pointed to Newegg for their shopping.

I would much rather deal with Amazon for returns and replacements though. Their customer service is streets ahead of Newegg's.

> streets ahead

Maybe you used it intentionally but it's mildly fascinating that you subconsciously used a fake expression that a fictional character from a comedy show failed to coin/establish.

One thing I find very disingenuous from Amazon is how they promote older products. I was looking to buy a dash cam for my car and settled on a Rexing V1. It was recommended as Amazon's Choice and on sale for $99.99 (from $149.99!). I was just about to complete the purchase when I read the fine print and saw this model was a few years old. Turns out there is another, newer model (Rexing V1 3rd gen) being sold for $139.99. Somehow the older product has a higher price which makes the sale price look like a better deal, and the older product is promoted in the search results. I felt like Amazon tried to trick me into buying their older inventory.

Counterpoint, there are some times where the older model is actually preferred, either due to being just as good and cheaper, or rarely better than the new model. I don't know how their choice algorithm comes up with those labels, but a cheaper older model isn't always a bad deal.

Unless the $150 base price is what it normally sells at, and the $50 discount was truly a one time deal... In which case idk what is going on there lol.

In fairness to Amazon I'll let you judge for yourself since they still list the prices as 149.99 and 139.99:

- Rexing V1: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X528FNE/ - Rexing V1 3rd gen: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077B25H9K/

Half-way down the page there is a comparison with some other Rexing products, but it's not obvious IMO with the price confusion they create. I've seen it "on sale" for at least the last few months.

Yea I definitely dislike the habit of retailers from showing MSRP as the list price despite the fact that no retailer has sold that product at MSRP for like 3 years. It's no longer a useful comparison for the consumer, and just behaves like a shady anchor point to make it seem like a good deal.

It’s the same thing that’s happened to Steam sales. Start them off really strong then every year after slowly make them not as good but people come back for more anyways.

Speak for yourself, I got 4 games for 17 dollars, I'm really happy about getting Mount and Blade for 7 dollars.

Especially when you compare to anything on the consoles.

I think the developers have gotten smarter and wont give 1 year old games 66% off on top of their already lower price.

EDIT: Also, prime day has always sucked. Not really comparable.

I think I had to wait 2 years instead of my expected 1 year for some games I wanted to play to come out with all their DLC at a good discounted price. Some games also never go below a certain amount no matter how old they are.

The demand for refunds killed the classic Steam sale. They're still good (I got a few games too in the recent one) but feel mediocre to what used to be; they can't do anything fun like they once did like community-voted flash sales where something will be super-duper discounted for an hour while for the rest of the two weeks it'll only be merely super discounted. This last summer sale was a nice improvement though since they added the game giveaways (though I don't know anyone who won one, there weren't that many available).

Agree about Prime Day, it was never good. Usually don't buy anything...

> The demand for refunds killed the classic Steam sale.

how?

>> they can't do anything fun like they once did like community-voted flash sales where something will be super-duper discounted for an hour while for the rest of the two weeks it'll only be merely super discounted.

Flash sales were an important part of the classic deep-discount Steam sale, but it's easy to upset people with them. Put another way, you buy at 60% off, then tomorrow it's 80% off. What do you do? What can you do in some circumstances (e.g. you already started playing for a few hours)? I guess I should clarify that this wasn't the only factor (the increase in alternate distribution and visibility channels is another) but it contributed. A side effect is that because of there being little you could do, wiser gamers would wait until the last day to make sure none of the games they wanted ended up on one of the flash sales, then buy things. Valve makes a lot more money if people are buying throughout the sale -- and they've since added a lot of search, filtering, and discoverability to the platform that flash sales once had a role in that encourage those impulse buys.

Ah, now I get what you mean. The refund case seems solveable: at least once you've downloaded the game to your PC they don't auto-refund, so they could just hold refund requests during the sale, or explicitly block people from rebuying cheaper. But I see how the waiting pattern would be bad for them.

I should double check, but last I knew anything you've put on a wish list shows the % change in price since it was added to the list, so if there are specific items you are interested to see if change/you want to grab if they are on sale, worth putting them in a list to track the price shifts relative to when you added.

While I like to hate on Amazon as much as the next person, I think the case could be made that sales tactics like this are common at nearly all major retailers.

Either the consumer is savvy and spent the requisite time considering their purchase, or they haven't. Retailers will always attempt to capitalize on this.

> Either the consumer is savvy and spent the requisite time considering their purchase, or they haven't. Retailers will always attempt to capitalize on this.

And the news media will always try to educate the unsavvy consumers; especially if it's an easy story to tell, like this one.

A lot of people, formed their impression of Amazon when it pretty much always offered a good deal (and didn't collect sales tax in the US). Many of them are still coasting on that impression, and shopping exclusively at Amazon in many categories under that outdated assumption.

I'm not a natural comparison shopping, so it took me a long time to figure out I can no longer I'm getting a good deal at Amazon anymore. I'm glad the BBC is reminding people to question their outdated decision-making assumptions.

It's not necessarily that "getting a good deal" is the reason that people shop at Amazon. Personally I think their customer service is pretty top-notch compared to most anywhere else and I know I'll be in good hands 99% of the time if I have any problems with a product. That's worth any minuscule price-disadvantage compared to competitors to me.

If you get a fake product they will deny any wrong doing even with photographic evidence of said fake product

FWIW I've never had this experience, and either way it's a non-issue in the UK, because you can return items for any reason.

You can return in the US as well but it's annoying that they won't accept responsibility for failures

> It's not necessarily that "getting a good deal" is the reason that people shop at Amazon. Personally I think their customer service is pretty top-notch compared to most anywhere else and I know I'll be in good hands 99% of the time if I have any problems with a product.

Personally, I've had pretty good product return experiences with Amazon's brick and mortar competitors recently. They know they're competing with Amazon, and they're trying to adjust accordingly.

My main point was that Amazon and the rest of the retail landscape has changed, and if you formed your view that heavily favors Amazon 10+ years ago, it's probably outdated and should be recalibrated.

I shopped almost exclusively on Amazon for a long time. I've been pulling back from it and have been finding that my old, harsh judgements of its competitors are no longer true. They've gone a long way towards catching up, and Amazon has been resting on its laurels or even regressing in the areas I care about.

> That's worth any minuscule price-disadvantage compared to competitors to me.

It's wrong to assume the price-disadvantage is minuscule, especially when you're dealing with marketplace sellers.

> I think the case could be made that sales tactics like this are common at nearly all major retailers

That's why these sorts of tactics need to be made illegal. The US desperately needs better consumer protections, the amount of scams and misinformation flying around is dizzying.

There are laws against this sort of thing in Canada. If you say something is "50% off!" the ordinary price you're comparing against must pass either a volume test or a time test.

http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/00...

I'm not seeing a strong indication that this is a scam, though. Prices vary and some sales are better than others.

What is the harm if a person pays $50 for something, and $50 for something with a 50% off sticker next to it? The latter just releases some chemicals in the purchaser’s brain maybe making them feel better.

Vendors don't put the 50% off sticker on it to make those happy who would have bought the item anyway. They put it on to trick people who would not pay 50$ for the article into doing so.

The fact that they paid $50 for it seems to negate the claim that they wouldn’t pay $50 for it.

Consumers aren't savvy.

Close to a decade ago, JCPenny went to a get rid of coupons/sales and go to a low price all the time model.

It almost bankrupted them.

http://business.time.com/2012/06/01/jcpenney-is-already-goin...

Seemingly customers demand to get screwed over by the "this huge discount feels like a drug" effect.

I remember this

There were also great studies as a result from his case, e.g. what is the optimal "discount" off a list pricet

If I recall correctly 30% discount was the entry point and anything else was bonus on top

The article is not wrong. But it seems to be pointing out something all sales like this do. Black Friday is full of fake deals that encourage you to act fast. Same with Boxing Day.

AFAICT most of the stuff offered on UK's prime day is pretty crap.

I wanted a kindle fire hd 8 anyway, so I've taken advantage of the price drop there. Otherwise the best thing I can find is an SSD that's maybe £10 below market but claims to be reduced by over £150.

>AFAICT most of the stuff offered on UK's prime day is pretty crap.

Their office 365 subs are discounted a fair bit (<50 for the 5 PC install one). Plus there is a buy 80 quid voucher get 10 free thing

Prime Day? More like Same-As-the-Rest-of-the-Time Day. It has always been a highly-hyped disappointment of a store-wide sale, and this is not news to anyone except people who have never before shopped on Amazon's web store.

I have never found anything even close to a good deal on Prime Day, and it has been several years since I even bothered to check prices.

You're better off marking a product you might like to buy, checking its price history on another site, and possibly setting an alert to notify you when the price drops below a threshold on a third site. If that alert happens to go off on Prime Day, you got very, very lucky that it somehow managed to be chosen as a loss leader.

>Prime Day? More like Same-As-the-Rest-of-the-Time Day. It has always been a highly-hyped disappointment of a store-wide sale, and this is not news to anyone except people who have never before shopped on Amazon's web store.

The headline is misleading insofar as the real story is that the site is completely broken right now, and people (me) are unable to order anything. Kinda dumb for an infrastructure company.

Prime Day has always been a couple of publicized deals .... and a lot of garbage.

I checked my camelcamelcamel list ... SQUAT that I want on sale.

But sometimes you find stuff you might want and if the price is good, try out. I bought a robotic vacuum cleaner on black Friday (practically the same thing) last year for $130 and I consider it one of the best purchases I have ever made.

Literally only $50 more than the manual one I bought and it saves me so much time.

I've found Black Friday deals to be far FAR more widespread and higher quality than Prime Day...

> However Amazon said its website was transparent, and consumers could compare price changes over time.

Do Amazon provide this service, or are they referring to CamelCamelCamel?

12 years ago Amazon provided such data. Now a few sites that provide such info.

According to CCC, most of what I want will be on better sale at back to school.

I feel the title could have been more informative.

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