How Amazon Tricks You into Thinking It Always Has the Lowest Prices • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by talmand » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 3:11 PM UTC

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…

That's why if I ever started a store of certain types I would name it "Going Out of Business" or "Under New Management"

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

#92

Post by talmand » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 3:13 PM UTC

exhilaration wrote: post #89

TheLoneWolfling wrote: post #6

http://camelcamelcamel.com/ (Amazon price tracking.) Very useful if/when you want to buy something and want to check historical prices. (You can also set email alerts when something drops to below a certain price.) Edit: linkified. (Thanks, canvia!)

If anyone is curious about whether's it's worth checking CamelCamelCamel before making an Amazon purchase, look at the price history for this tea in the past year: http://camelcamelcamel.com/Stash-Tea-Green-Chai-Count/produc... The price rapidly fluctuates between $18.99 and $14.24 on a nearly monthly basis. In this case it's worth it to create an alert and wait a week or two for the price to drop again.

But wouldn't something like tea fluctuate in pricing anyway because of the type of product it is and not necessarily because of price gaming?

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

#93

Post by cafard » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 3:19 PM UTC

talmand wrote: post #91

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…

That's why if I ever started a store of certain types I would name it "Going Out of Business" or "Under New Management"

Some street vendors in downtown Washington, DC, used to have a sign over their table "Going Out For Business Sale". Whether they were hoping to lure the inattentive, amuse the alert, or both, I don't know.

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

#94

Post by cafard » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 3:23 PM UTC

indymike wrote: post #18

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.…

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…

Thirty years ago the atterney general for Maryland, Steve Sachs, hassled a couple of the big local department stores into agreements restricting this sort of behavior.

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

#95

Post by exhilaration » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 3:24 PM UTC

talmand wrote: post #92

exhilaration wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone is curious about whether's it's worth checking CamelCamelCamel before making an Amazon purchase, look at the price history for this tea in the past year: http://camelcamelcamel.com/Stash-Tea-Green-Chai-Count/produc... The price rapidly fluctuates between $18.99 and $14.24 on a nearly monthly basis. In this case it's worth it to create an alert and wait a week or two for the price to drop again.

But wouldn't something like tea fluctuate in pricing anyway because of the type of product it is and not necessarily because of price gaming?

You're suggesting that the worldwide price of tea or market conditions are causing these nearly monthly fluctuations, between two set prices? I'm skeptical, the graph doesn't suggest that to my untrained eye.

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

#96

Post by logfromblammo » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 3:52 PM UTC

GabrielF00 wrote: post #32

returnofthejedi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is Walmart's digital stratergy?

I think WalMart is pretty focused on free ship-to-store. This doesn't appeal to me at all since I live in a big city and going to a suburban Walmart would be a big production. It makes a certain amount of sense for my parents since there's a Walmart neighborhood market five minutes from their house. It eliminates one risk of online purchases (package sitting on your doorstep) but introduces the inconvenience of parki…

Every time that I have used Ship-to-Store from WalMart, I have had to spend at minimum 30 minutes between entering and exiting the store parking lot. Most of the time, I have to hunt down a store employee myself, because unlike the customer service desk, the Ship-to-Store/Layaway desk is not continuously staffed.

WalMart is great when the value of your own time is not very high, but at some point, it is glaringly obvious that they keep prices lower by making all their customers spend just a little bit more time in the store than absolutely necessary.

So the inconvenience is very inconvenient. It is only made worse by the fact that I didn't shop for the items, and didn't buy them, but I'm simply the one who drives past a Wal*Mart every day. For the shopper, it really is free at-home delivery. For me, it is, "Hey, guess what? You get to flush half an hour of your life down the toilet today--what a deal!"

Ship-to-Store is precisely the reason why I fear Amazon Locker and other "ship it the last mile yourself" services.

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

#97

Post by theandrewbailey » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 3:55 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #84

branchless wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HDMI cables are IMHO the worst example. These are add-on to core purchases and when they break or are required you just want to get one. Physical stores like BestBuy know this and price accordingly. This just makes me dislike these stores even more!

It's pretty ridiculous that device manufacturers don't include them.

Anecdata: many people I know have more HDMI cables than they can use.

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

#98

Post by guiambros » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 4:17 PM UTC

talmand wrote: post #92

exhilaration wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone is curious about whether's it's worth checking CamelCamelCamel before making an Amazon purchase, look at the price history for this tea in the past year: http://camelcamelcamel.com/Stash-Tea-Green-Chai-Count/produc... The price rapidly fluctuates between $18.99 and $14.24 on a nearly monthly basis. In this case it's worth it to create an alert and wait a week or two for the price to drop again.

But wouldn't something like tea fluctuate in pricing anyway because of the type of product it is and not necessarily because of price gaming?

It has nothing to do with market fluctuations. I've been using CamelCamelCamel for years now, and you can see wild fluctuations on an hourly basis, sometimes by more than 50%.

Amazon and its sellers do A/B testing of price points all day long, and if you're just a casual shopper that happens to want the product at that time specific time, you may end up being unlucky, and paying a few bucks (or sometimes dozens) more.

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

#99

Post by deeviant » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

rprospero wrote: post #88

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…

I do remember being confused when a local furniture store advertised their "third annual going out of business sale"

There is a furniture store near where I live that was going out of business for 10 years. My wife and I always joked that they should have a "Proudly going out of business for 10 years" sign.

They finally went out of business last year. The business that replaced them was another furniture store which happened to be owned by the same people the owned the first. What gives with that anyways, is that some sort of tax gaming?

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

#100

Post by talmand » Mon, Jan 19, 2015, 7:53 PM UTC

exhilaration wrote: post #95

talmand wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But wouldn't something like tea fluctuate in pricing anyway because of the type of product it is and not necessarily because of price gaming?

You're suggesting that the worldwide price of tea or market conditions are causing these nearly monthly fluctuations, between two set prices? I'm skeptical, the graph doesn't suggest that to my untrained eye.

I wasn't suggesting anything, I was asking a question.