Ask HN: How to find if a product is "really" on sale? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to find if a product is "really" on sale?

As I have noticed that article from bbc.com on fake Black Friday sale, the questions comes down to how the user would know if the prices have really dropped or it is just a price manipulation game by the platforms like Amazon.

On searching around a bit, I stumbled upon https://pricehistory.in/ which has a kind of price audit of products on different Indian platforms which is kind of cool and I will try this out. But are there other such platforms which solve this problem? Does someone here use some useful tips/tricks to buy a product at optimal price?

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camelcamelcamel for Amazon price history

I don’t understand why people care about this. The only relevant price is the one you have to pay now, and the only question for you is if the thing is worth that price to you now.

Perhaps if you’re buying something as an investment, and are trying to predict the future price—but even then, the price in the past doesn’t tell you much.

There is plenty of deception in e-commerce.

Personally I’m offended by false availability and delivery dates. For example, that time when Amazon said it would be here tomorrow and it was really a week and a half. That’s the difference between getting it online or going to Target.

On one level you want to know you are not being lied to as a function of the relationship.

No, what's relevant is not just the current price but expected future price and the "convenience yield" -- the value of having the product now rather than later.

That’s a good point. But taking that into account would require you to be able to predict the future price, with some level of certainty. What I’m thinking, and I may be wrong, is that past prices, or whether an item is truly “on sale”, don’t really help you to do that. If they could, then technical analysis in stock trading would be something other than superstition, which it is not.

Stock prices and consumer goods prices follow completely different principles.

I will explain my case why I care about that. Broadly speaking, there are two categories I shop for :

- Essentials: Things that are necessary to get irrespective of price variation at that moment.

- Luxury: This category could have something which might improve quality of life or something I might have fancied after seeing some marketing about it or reading some reviews about it.

It is for the Luxury category I care about the best price. These things I might not need immediately but investing in them at best price might improve my quality of life with not hitting my pocket hard.

My recent such shopping was getting an Apple Watch for my wife as a birthday present (still a surprise for her). To get that I found that I evaluated that I do not need to pay for Apple Watch 6 or 7 but an SE version would be a good one at cheaper price with all valuable features needed. Now there was a deal which allowed me get the watch for 391 SGD which is 460 SGD even with a Black Friday sale today. I think it was a good bargain and over a period these bargains might add to good saving.

> I don’t understand why people care about this. The only relevant price is the one you have to pay now

If Product A cost $500 at manufacture suggested retail price, was currently on sale for $450 but was sold at $360 a week before that, wouldn't you want that information to make a better informed decision?

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