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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

#61

Post by chaostheory »

dominotw wrote: post #15

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

Agreed. Maybe if this article was written 5 years ago I can understand, but unless you're live somewhere where you don't have access to Amazon; everyone knows it's not just the prices that Amazon has that keeps customers coming back. People trust it. Amazon has the best customer service I've ever experienced. It is amazing. imo it's because unlike most stores, Amazon keeps your full shopping history so they know your worth to the company (as well as your habits and so on).

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

#62

Post by jrockway »

freehunter wrote: post #47
thirdsun wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not my main worry. I had my credit card compromised in the Home Depot thing. The bank sent me a new card and auto-canceled my old one. Someone used the number, but they automatically reverted the charge. It cost me approximately zero seconds of time (but seems to have cost the bank quite a bit of money). Credit card fraud is the bank's problem, not the consumer's problem, at least in the US. (God help you if you use a debit card, though.)

My main worry is time wasted from ordering something and having it not show up. You have to email them. You have to listen to how sorry they are. Then they send it again. Maybe it shows up. At some point you cut your losses and just order it from Amazon for $2.13 more. Admittedly I've gone through the order anti-loop with Amazon and got four bicycle tires for free (never getting the ones I actually ordered), but that was one case out of hundreds, and it didn't cost me much money or time. Amazon is predictable: that's why I buy from them.

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

#63

Post by emcrazyone »

ecaron wrote: post #42
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... Bu…

I don't, yet, trust you. What are you doing to provide some confidence that my name & amazon wish list won't be sold...

I use a similar site for building computers.

www.pcpartpicker.com and I love these guys. I use to go straight to NewEgg but after finding pcpartpicker, I now go there first. I'm not sure how they monetize the site but they won me over by not requiring me to sign up.

I'm too lazy to create a one off email address just to see if the site is worth it or not.

Also, I couldn't tell from your site if it's possible to enter a SKU and have the site notify me of where I could purchase it and what price history there was on it which I think would be awfully cool.

As an example, I really want to purchase a festool router but these are considered the best-of-the-best and their price reflects this and so in a manual way, I've been watching their prices on a couple web sites for sales.

Love the concept and everything else about the idea!

Another idea is if you can find users who all want to buy the same thing and see if you can leverage this to get volume discounts. I recently been playing with a site called massdrop that attempts to pull this off.

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

#64

Post by cldellow »

emcrazyone wrote: post #63
ecaron wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... Bu…

I don't, yet, trust you. What are you doing to provide some confidence that my name & amazon wish list won't be sold... I use a similar site for building computers. www.pcpartpicker.com and I love these guys. I use to go straight to NewEgg but after finding pcpartpicker, I now go there first. I'm not sure how they monetize the site but they won me over by not requiring me to sign up. I'm too lazy to create a one off…

pcpartpicker monetizes via affiliate links, i.e. they get 2-8% of the sale depending on the merchant you use.

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

#65

Post by marincounty »

ctdonath wrote: post #35
dominotw wrote: post #15

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

I find that mitigates the not always lowest prices. Come for the savings, stay for the service.

I used to feel that way about Costco, until they changed their "Customer satisfaction warranty"! Change return policy on electronics--fine I get it. Change the return policy on a $2500 grey market watch--underhanded. I was promised verbally if it ever broke, because it's not sold by "an authorized seller"; just bring it back. No so anymore.

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

#66

Post by driverdan »

eropple wrote: post #31
sparkman55 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For cables, Monoprice is also a good alternative (and, generally, price-competitive with Amazon). Another commenter mentioned that Monoprice's HDMI quality has declined; I haven't noticed any problem with their Ethernet and USB cables. For HDMI, Monoprice goes all the way down to $2: http://www.monoprice.com/Search/Index?keyword=hdmi Best Buy preys on the 'I need this cable in 30 minutes for the big presentation' cus…

The main reason I buy cables from Amazon instead of Monoprice is Prime. Monoprice's shipping is always slow for me. (Last gig I was at, we bought a truckload of their monitors, though, on my recommendation. Love those guys, just wish they could ship faster without ruining my wallet.)

You can buy a lot of Monoprice cables through Amazon at the same price but with Prime shipping.

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

#67

Post by driverdan »

WizzleKake wrote: post #3

Amazon jacks the price around on a lot of the household items that I buy. There one item that I last purchased for $11.94. I have seen it as high as $29 and some change. Right now it is $23.94. I've wised up to this tactic and will buy extra when the price is low enough to make it a better deal than buying at the grocery store.

Their pricing of household items is not very good. Almost everything I'd buy is cheaper at retail stores and I don't need to buy a pallet load.

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

#68

Post by SixSigma »

justincormack wrote: post #48
corysama wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What I have noticed recently in UK TV adverts is that £xxx off special offer and then put an on-screen rider "discount on 'after offer' price".

So they pitch it like a sale but really they will just offer whatever is left of their product at a higher price for a while in some store or maybe just online.

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

#69

Post by listic »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #11

I dont get why they use HDMI cables as their first example: we keep buying HDMI cables because they get busted, not because we need more. AmazonBasics is currently the best cheap cable (replacing Monoprice's now that they aren't nearly as good as they used to be). Also, why does the article call them HD cables. Whats an HD cable? None of my ports say HD, they say HDMI. And it doesn't even get into how Prime games S&H…

How does Prime game S&H?

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

#70

Post by MicroBerto »

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.…

Nice site.

In running PricePlow (https://www.priceplow.com), I can say that our products (vitamins / supplements / protein) are complete and total chaos on Amazon. They clearly don't care about this corner of the market and let the marketplace stores run wild.

Despite some of the monumental volume that some of these products have, their listings are nothing short of unorganized disaster. There are definitely places where Amazon could (and should) have better pricing, but is actively neglecting it - and so are the marketplace stores for various reasons.

But that said, over the past half dozen plus years of doing this, there's been a huge, distinct shift towards deeper trust in Amazon.

In some of our smaller PricePlow-driven sites, when in doubt with where to send traffic (like if a product is out of stock or the price is a tie), I used to send them to Bodybuilding. Now, that's no more - the demographic is still cautious, but far more friendly to buying on Amazon... mostly for the reasons stated here in this discussion.

A lot of the industry hasn't figured that out yet, so it's been an interesting transition.

End of the day, from what I've seen, Amazon is a mess and could be doing a lot better with certain segments, but still does well despite their worst efforts. They're heading towards unstoppable status.

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