Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PriceZombie is shutting down

pricezombie.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 219 posts

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#111

Post by uremog »

AznHisoka wrote: post #58
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #41

> Press: If you're interested in running a news story about our situation and why Amazon is afraid of services that comparison shop Amazon's prices with other stores, please contact us at support@pricezombie.com Yeah, that's really going to help your situation. 1) You built your product on top of someone else's service. That's always a rocky road. It is common to read about other companies in your shoes. 2) In the ti…

Definitely not defending them, but sometime's initiating contact can be a tricky thing. Because they may not have paid attention to you, and now you're basically told them "Hi, I exist!". Then later in a meeting, someone in Amazon says "Oh hey.. this site exists. I didn't know that... isn't that a violation of our TOS..??"

Or even: that's not a violation ... well then make it one!

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#112

Post by nathancahill »

great_kraken wrote: post #34
nathancahill wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that very helpful. Otherwise, I feel like I'm gambling when I buy something on Amazon. I could be getting the lowest price, or the highest. Amazon's price games are the worst (I know all stores do that to some extent, but Amazon's price swings are much bigger.. +-75% anecdotally)

Yeah, I guess I'd rather search myself if I'm actually considering buying a product. And most of the time, if I'm participating somewhere, I'm not actually looking for purchase advice myself, just reading, helping out, or discussing.

I guess I'm pretty often looking for purchase advice in a lot of the subreddits I frequent. Helpful to get advice from people with domain knowledge.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#113

Post by dave2000 »

Domenic_S wrote: post #85
dave2000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every business is 100% on other companies. Everyone uses electricity, has to ship product, buy resources, use devices to transform those resources etc. The problem here only really exists in these silly other parasitical web-only businesses. Yes, if you track Amazon's prices and Amazon makes that harder then you'll be on trouble. So probably best to set up 20 or so companies/services in your spare time and not take a…

No, the problem here is that the power company can't unilaterally decide you don't get power anymore and turn it off without warning. Your shipping carrier can't suddenly decide they don't serve you anymore, and by the way we're keeping all the packages you have en route. But Amazon can. They also pay a few months in arrears, so one day you may wake up to a form email that says essentially, "adios, and I'm keeping th…

"But Amazon can..... In fairness, I believe all affiliate programs are like that."

My point is that most other companies are like that, and the difference is just the extent to which these parasitical "internet businesses" are coupled to their host.

They're not `keeping the money`, they're just not paying you stuff that's not covered by the contract, TOS etc.

It's not `without warning` by the same token; unless the warning they were expecting was to hear about other companies who play fast and loose with the rules getting caught first.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#114

Post by kordless »

x0x0 wrote: post #109
kordless wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should, as early as practical, identify an actual human inside the mothership and convince them to like you. This presumes humans will retain abilities to manage such decisions, or can manage them at scale in the future. If a company relies on an API for revenue, the best strategy is to have a backup for that API and then a backup for the backup API. A hope-and-a-prayer email address may or may not help retain…

There is always a human that can make decisions and override policies. If you don't find one of these, get his or her contact, and take them out to dinner as often as possible you're a fool. source: I worked for a company that had / was part of my job to talk to a dedicated adwords account manager. Even google has such a thing. They can ok stuff for you that virtually nobody else gets and, in the event it's later jud…

When you and a Google account manager go out to dinner, who picks up the tab?

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#115

Post by mthoms »

gdulli wrote: post #105
hvo wrote: post #46

Padmapper was forced to shut down too by Craigslist.When are we going to learn that this type of business model is unsustainable? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4149455

Yeah if you're just regurgitating someone else's data you haven't really created anything. You might leech some money off someone else's marketplace for a while but don't expect it to last.

>if you're just regurgitating someone else's data you haven't really created anything

If you're regurgitating in a manner that is beneficial for both parties and the customer then I'd say you've created something extremely valuable. Just ask Google.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#116

Post by ikeboy »

mwexler wrote: post #30

All the comments on "don't rely on 1 customer" are correct, of course, but I'm more interested in how, as far back as the 80s, we all believed in the magic of having something show us the best price for an item. Now, sure, it may often be Amazon, but not always, and they don't carry everything. So, multiple price engines come and go. Why? Because consumers won't pay for them, and so they rely on kickbacks from mercha…

What's wrong with Google shopping? I've found deals using it, it's had greater than zero value for me.

>What kind of service would one have to create that grabs prices but can charge consumers so it's not depending on affiliate vig?

I've got a handful of ideas about this and have been considering a startup along these lines. I think that you need to take control of the actual purchase, so then it's just "Oh, I paid less than I expected, some may have gone to the middleman but I still win" instead of "I paid money to X for the purchase and to Y for finding it for me" and feel somehow losing out for not finding it yourself. If anyone wants to discuss this I added an email to my profile.

This is kind of like what Jet was doing when they first launched, although they've stopped it since, apparently because stores didn't like it.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#117

Post by plugnburn »

heyplanet wrote: post #93

UPDATE: Hey, lot's of downvotes for this post. Would be great if you guys could explain why you downvote. Sorry, but not much sympathy from me. 1) You knowingly violated the terms of service. Therefore you are denied service now. Nothing to complain about. Honestly, if the API of my website would be intentionally abused in a way that I explicitly exclude in my TOS, I would be seriously pissed. I would probably think…

Upvoted just to keep the thread and go against "elitist" hivemind.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#118

Post by x0x0 »

kordless wrote: post #114
x0x0 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is always a human that can make decisions and override policies. If you don't find one of these, get his or her contact, and take them out to dinner as often as possible you're a fool. source: I worked for a company that had / was part of my job to talk to a dedicated adwords account manager. Even google has such a thing. They can ok stuff for you that virtually nobody else gets and, in the event it's later jud…

When you and a Google account manager go out to dinner, who picks up the tab?

us

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#119

Post by DanBlake »

Im guessing the reason you were canned was less to do with historical pricing and entirely about the fact you let them compare with other sites.

I am fairly certain amazon hates that with a passion and is in fact why you dont see that feature on CCC.

Also, Its my understanding that all of these price comparison sites get a severely discounted affiliate rate from amazon- Something like 1%

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#120

Post by pcarmichael »

johnward wrote: post #97
djsumdog wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that would have mattered here. They were generating revenue from the Affiliate API. Even if they made a scraper and used that for price data instead, they're still violating the TOS for the Affiliate program. It wouldn't matter how they go the data.

I don't remember, nor can I find, any reference to not using historical pricing data with amazon associates: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement... The specific section on pricing in the api doc ( https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/advertising/api/deta... ) seems to indicate historical pricing is allowed if you display the date with it: "(o) You will include a date/time stamp adjacent to…

It's in the section (n) just before that, regarding not storing API content longer than 24 hours.
Post reply on HN