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How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

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Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#41

Post by ecaron »

nkurz wrote: post #28
ecaron wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're welcome to email me at eric@trackif.com and I'd love to chat about it, but I'm not going to hijack this thread with my marketing schpeels ;-)

I have the same question as DiabloD3, and I presume others do as well. Your desire not to hijack is honorable, but private email doesn't scale that well. I fear I'd be wasting your time to engage you directly. Perhaps you could write a short blog post and post it to HN for discussion? Or a Show HN? Or you could just answer here, toning done the marketing as much as possible.

You're right, a Show HN is probably overdue. I'll post one in the next couple days. Thanks for the idea!

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#42

Post by ecaron »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #10
ecaron wrote: post #5

When I started working on https://trackif.com , I thought the premise was thin because prices couldn't fluctuate that much. I assumed everything gradually declined in price, and that it'd primarily be driven by store-A vs store-B price dropping. Nope. Retailers are just gaming us 24/7. I've become very aware of all the different timeframes retailers offer post-purchase price-matches (published at http://blog.trackif.…

https://trackif.com/domains/amazon.com/53a901bb72d6d0fc3d3d0... Interested if you get more profit from demanding sign-in before you'll let people follow your Amazon links. Have you tried just using referrer links - presumably you do it this way on the basis that long term association gains enough to let one-time users abandon and skip direct to the site for purchase?? Interesting site, would definitely try it if ther…

Lots of good questions here:

* The "sign-in before you'll let people follow" is just a straight forward result of A/B testing. It was like a 9-to-1 difference for single site returns. And despite the developer in me saying "gross", it was just a stat from our metrics guy that we couldn't refute.

* We're in Minnesota and Amazon's been playing games with our affiliate revenue to encourage some legislative changes... But even if the affiliate revenue was working perfect, it wouldn't be enough to keep the lights on. TrackIf is really just a platform to demonstrate our business solution (like how Home Depot does back-in-stock notifications)

* What's a UK based site you want tracked? I could wire it up for you.

* Amazon does all sorts of price games, geography/time-on-site /Prime-status/etc.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#43

Post by dazc »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #22
peteretep wrote: post #14

I am willing to pay a significant premium to Amazin for the no-bullshit customer support. If my transaction doesn't delight me, I know they will make good on it.

I have a similar mindset. I don't know anyone who thinks Amazon has the best prices, I'm happy to pay a little extra for the convenience and quality of service. Case in point, I bought a new router from Amazon last week. When I got it I realised I'd made a mistake (I'd chosen one without an ADSL modem). I fill in a simple online form to get the return label, return it via Collect+ (it's a service in the UK for collec…

Similar experience, with a full refund before the item was returned. I don't know about the US but you don't get anywhere near this kind of service with any other UK retailer.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#44

Post by cdcarter »

peteretep wrote: post #14

I am willing to pay a significant premium to Amazin for the no-bullshit customer support. If my transaction doesn't delight me, I know they will make good on it.

That said, their constant changing of shipping policies, add-on only items, etc... IS terrible customer experience and there's no support about it.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#45

Post by thirdsun »

dominotw wrote: post #15

I buy from amazon for their predictable shipping and insanely awesome customer service.

Same here, of course amazon doesn't always have the lowest price, but I'd be insane to always buy from (and register at) the store that currently does. For me there's much more value in knowing that the item will arrive tomorrow.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#46

Post by thirdsun »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #22
peteretep wrote: post #14

I am willing to pay a significant premium to Amazin for the no-bullshit customer support. If my transaction doesn't delight me, I know they will make good on it.

I have a similar mindset. I don't know anyone who thinks Amazon has the best prices, I'm happy to pay a little extra for the convenience and quality of service. Case in point, I bought a new router from Amazon last week. When I got it I realised I'd made a mistake (I'd chosen one without an ADSL modem). I fill in a simple online form to get the return label, return it via Collect+ (it's a service in the UK for collec…

Apart from the refund before the item was returned, this is pretty much standard procedure in europe, as in a consumer right by law - you always have 14 day return period at any online store. Sure, amazon extends their grace period (30 days, right?) - other than that it's really nothing special.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#47

Post by freehunter »

thirdsun wrote: post #45
dominotw wrote: post #15

I buy from amazon for their predictable shipping and insanely awesome customer service.

Same here, of course amazon doesn't always have the lowest price, but I'd be insane to always buy from (and register at) the store that currently does. For me there's much more value in knowing that the item will arrive tomorrow.

And the money you save by buying from randomstore247.com is offset by how much you stand to lose (in either money or time) when randomstore247.com has a breech and your card number had been stored in the clear. It's easier to trust Amazon than to trust 100 other stores.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#48

Post by justincormack »

corysama wrote: post #39
indymike wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can speak to 25 years ago: the answer is yes. Here are some of the things I saw: * Marking items up 30-45 days ahead of a big sale. This allowed our price to be 25% off instead of 10%. Or sometimes, our sale price probably should have been the regular price. This happened all the time, and people fell for it hard. Usually this would happen before a 10% off everything sale. * Price adjustments from competitive shops…

In the furniture biz, lots of places have laws restricting how many days/year a given shop can do "going out of business"/"total clearance" sales. Otherwise, they tend to run them non-stop for decades because they are so effective at bringing in customers. According to my friends that have worked furniture retail, it was common practice to mark everything up 300% for a week then have a "40-60% Off!!!" sale. Customers…

In Europe, there are rules about sale pricing for all items, they have to be at the original price for a certain period. They still manage to game it a bit, but slightly less so, eg some items are normally overpriced etc.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#49

Post by DougWebb »

I'm sure Amazon is constantly adjusting their prices in order to maximize their sales and revenue; they even have some price automation tools as part of their inventory management system for people who sell their stuff through Amazon.

However I'm not sure these adjustments are meant to make people perceive that Amazon has the lowest prices. Instead it seems like they're meant to ensure that Amazon actually has the lowest prices on the most popular and high volume items. On those items they are pricing for high volume, while on the lower volume items they need a higher price to get an equivalent margin. That's what this looks like to me: maximizing margins across products with different sales volumes.

Re: How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices

#50

Post by smackfu »

kenjackson wrote: post #34

Lego pricing on Amazon is generally bad. Often much worse than what Lego sells the sets for. That is one area I'd love to see Amazon change.

Disagree. I've never seen Amazon itself sell LEGO above retail price. They just tend to run out of stock, so they don't actually sell many sets. Third party sellers often do up charge, but that's basicaly like buying on eBay.

OTOH Toys R Us will definitely sell above retail. Set 60057 is $17 at Amazon, $20 from Lego, and $25 at TRU.

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