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Comment by fishbone | Hacker News Reader

I almost ordered two pvc plumbing fittings from Amazon last week for $13.99. Thanks to some Hackernews skepticism I cancelled my shopping cart. I found the same fittings at my local hardware store for $8.99.

My question is, how dynamic are Amazon’s prices? Do all users see the same prices or is it more like google search where results are “personalized”? It seems like they could dynamically change prices based on user data pretty easily.

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No, prices (aside from "Amazon Business" pricing which was a large internal project to achieve what you're describing but only for differentiation between business and personal purchases) are all the same for every user.

I believe most of the rationale was not wanting upset customers annoyed with getting different prices than others first and foremost, but also technically pricing system is already extremely complex and dynamic per user would add an order of magnitude to scaling challenges and viewed as not worth it.. Business pricing itself required many changes to internal system.

Source: worked in Amazon Business / B2B

I heard that prices arw different for the webpage and the app in some cases. And even for Android or Apple users. Any truth to that or is it just office talk? Seriously wondering...

Amazon vendor here: pricing is not discrimated across platforms, BUT most vendors of a certain scale use repricing tools that dynamically change prices over time depending on inventory availability etc. (Think Uber "surge pricing" for products.)

Thanks for the feed-back! Never had any insight into pricing, so I again learned something!

You were likely buying from a 3rd party seller.

I know of some people who do this. Basically, list tons of items on Amazon from local speciality stores, Costco, etc. They markup prices, of course. Then once a day, on their way back home, they pickup stuff that was bought, pack it at night, and then ship it in the morning. You are basically paying for someone else to shop.

I was introduced to this side-hustle by my friend and did this for a few months, but it was too much of hassle for very little return. Very hard to scale.

Even better are the drop shippers, who just scrape retailers online and create marked up listings on Amazon. When a user orders from their Amazon shop, they just place the order immediately on the boutique shop with the buyer's delivery information. Get a lot of these scripts running, and you can make a good bit of money.

At least, that's what the paid online "run your own dropship business" courses would have us believe...

Pretty sure users all see the same price, because otherwise reddit would be up in flames on things like r/mechkeyboarddeals, r/buildapc, r/ultralight, etc.

Camelcamelcamel (price history checker) scrapes or pulls data from an external API, its going to be the same for all users

I also use camelcamelcamel to sanity check my recurring purchases.

For example, the range for my preferred elderberry syrup is from $20 to $45.

https://camelcamelcamel.com/Dr-Dünner-Sambu-Elderberry-Elder...

I waited the price to drop back down and then restocked.

YMMV

Out of curiosity, what use do you make of elderberry syrup?

Doctor's orders. I'm immune compromised. Dr says it's as effective as tamiflu. From my reading, elderberry doesn't prevent infections, but it does minimize the symptoms, which matches my experience.

https://nccih.nih.gov/health/euroelder

>Although some preliminary research indicates that elderberry may relieve flu symptoms, the evidence is not strong enough to support its use for this purpose.

You may want to find a new doctor.

That's true for almost all herbs. There are few studies because you cannot stick a copyright on herbs so there's no almost incentives for big companies to push for such researches.

There seem to be some conclusive studies on elderberry helping for influenza.

Ex: "In conclusion, the proprietary elderberry extract used here is effective in controlling influenza symptoms and is complementary to current anti‐viral agents. The safety and ease of administration warrant further investigation of its clinical efficacy in children, elderly and other high‐risk patients of the proprietary elderberry extracts." - http://www.omicron-pharma.com/pdfs/ElderberryClinicalOJPK_Pu...

And of course, even if it did absolutely nothing, it would still be useful as a placebo.

...which matches my experience.

Don't ever tell a patient to disregard personal experience. Someone who has suffered a chronic condition, and learned enough about it and her body to find an effective non-pharmacological treatment for it, knows more than a room full of physicians about how that condition is best treated in her body. Besides, don't we know by now that most studies (especially non-replicated ones on unpopular subjects) are worthless?

Source: personal experience.

> Someone who has suffered a chronic condition, and learned enough about it and her body to find an effective non-pharmacological treatment for it, knows more than a room full of physicians about how that condition is best treated in her body.

I'm sorry but this is terrible advice, and is precisely how people like Steve Jobs die for no reason.

Don't apologize to me, just don't be rude to patients. Finding some half-assed study that might apply is no excuse. Do you really consider whatever treatment Jobs got to have been "effective"?

>just don't be rude to patients

I wasn't.

> Finding some half-assed study that might apply is no excuse.

You're clearly not worth arguing with if you can't even be bothered to read the things you're commenting on. The only thing half-assed here are your arguments.

Some other part of the plant might cause nausea and vomiting? Looks pretty half-assed to me. As if there's no way to harvest one part of a plant separately from the rest of the plant. As if the patient wouldn't notice nausea and vomiting. As if these aren't very common side effects for any number of pharmaceuticals. As if a physician wouldn't be qualified to weigh such side effects against the benefits of the treatment. As if a patient wouldn't be qualified to weigh such side effects against the benefits of the treatment.

But sure, tell a patient to find a new doctor, when you know absolutely nothing about the situation. If I seem somewhat inflexible on this issue, it's because I (and friends of mine) have been pressured to avoid nonpharmaceutical treatments that experience has shown to be effective. On this topic I am not indifferent.

"Well it may work for you but this study suggests that it might not work for everyone so you're an idiot and you should stop taking it"

I upvoted you. I had tried to reply, but was throttled.

The trouble with facts is they keep changing.

It takes a lot time for the latest clinical results to become mainstream. My doctor is OCD about staying current. Think Dr Rhonda Patrick meets Dr Terry Wahls meets Tim Ferriss meets Dr Atul Gawanda.

I'm still alive because of research, experimental treatments (seattlecca.org, fredhutch.org). I try a lot of things that others shouldn't. With mixed results.

The upside is future patients benefit from my experiences.

Thanks for the link. I'll consult my doctor.

Totally understand. I realize my original statement comes off a bit pithy, but I meant it when I said "may".

If they were personalised it would be hard for sites like camelcamelcamel.com to exist, right? I would speculate that they don't personalise. Offering price discrimination as a service to third party sellers sounds like a minefield too.

Now that I think about it, price manipulation is probably illegal in most countries.

The price you see in the buy box is not always the lowest price. Anyone can click through and view all the sellers for an item. Sites like that track all the items for sale.

> My question is, how dynamic are Amazon’s prices?

Camelcamelcamel charts the price history of any item on Amazon https://camelcamelcamel.com/

I heard once that Mac users see slightly higher prices, but I've never been able to personally confirm that.

I thought that was for airplane tickets?

I've never heard it about airplane tickets. However, I will definitely look for that the next time I need to travel.

Ugh. Do you have any source / evidence for that?

Orbitz did it a couple of years ago, showing more expensive hotels to Mac users for example.

http://business.time.com/2012/06/26/orbitz-shows-higher-pric...

it's easily verifiable, spoof your h/w,s/w and connection and visit a webpage you just viewed. the prices will be different. there are even use cases of buying return tickets from the destination country being cheaper than buying it from where you are. it's such common knowledge that even popular youtubers are making videos about it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utsnt6GFrKo (linus tech tips-6 minute watch) VPNs are quickly becoming compulsory tools to save mucho dinero

You could try the browser addon "Keepa" which show some historical price data -- very useful.

I'm not sure how it happened, but at one point I had two of the same product in my cart -- not Quantity of 2, but it was listed two times. Both of the same Amazon product ID. And each at different prices. And, over time, as they sat in my cart, their prices changed, differently.

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