Hacker News Reader

Comment by inerte | Hacker News Reader

Let's say you grab a can of Coke in the grocery store, shelf sticker says 49c. When you pass on the cash register, it clearly shows $5k in the cashier's monitor, and the point of sales screen, so you're charged $5k.

Ooops, says the grocery store: Coca-cola raised the prices, not me.

View on HN

I'm not sure that analogy flies. Technically they did inform him of the price change ahead of time, they just didn't do a very good job. If I were them I'd add "PRICE CHANGE" or similar to the email subject, I feel like that's the least they can do.

Have you used amazon subscribe and save? What you described is basically how it works. You're agreeing to auto-buy at whatever price amazon sets on that day. The only exception when you first set up a subscription, in which case the first delivery's price is locked in.

Amazon will tell you the price 7 days before it auto-renews and then jack the price up 100x three days before it renews?

The price will fluctuate, but this is on another level, and deceptive since they had already stated what the price would be.

>Amazon will tell you the price 7 days before it auto-renews and then jack the price up 100x three days before it renews?

Yeah probably? [edit: no, see below]

You go on amazon 7 days before renewal, check your subscriptions, see it's $10. 7 days later it's no longer sold by amazon and the only other seller selling it is a scalper that charges $30. The only difference the order of magnitude, not whether price changes can happen.

No, that's not what happens. They lock in a price when they alert you to the upcoming delivery round.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...

> The price of the item may decrease or increase between deliveries, but will never be higher than the price shown in your reminder email.

I sometimes get "item available" cancelations for this reason. The items are always available, just not at that price.

Thanks for the correction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com