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PriceZombie is shutting down

pricezombie.com

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Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#161

Post by enjo »

xbryanx wrote: post #160

I'd pay (once) for software that periodically ran on my computer, pinging a URL for a price, tracking it locally, and giving me an alert at a change threshold.

https://keepa.com/ basically does that, not locally and only for Amazon tho. It has saved my wife thousands of dollars on the various things she buys. Particularly the kind of seasonal stuff. We go to alot of music festivals and the fun costumes and fuzzy stuff she loves to wear fluctuates in price like crazy throughout the year. Keepa allows her to figure out when those fluctuations generally happen. They also remind her to set a price threshold based on historical data and then forget about it until it goes back down in price.

Works great.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#162

Post by chipperyman573 »

xbryanx wrote: post #160

I'd pay (once) for software that periodically ran on my computer, pinging a URL for a price, tracking it locally, and giving me an alert at a change threshold.

You could probably make that overnight. Just send a cURL to the page and look for the text of the span with the ID "priceblock_ourprice". Then log that to a comma delimited text file or something.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#163

Post by api_or_ipa »

donkeyd wrote: post #56
patio11 wrote: post #23

Our appeals to Amazon affiliate program administrators (associates@amazon.com) and even Jeff Bezos (jeff@amazon.com) were either ignored or answered incompletely, leaving us wondering if anyone was listening I was once in a room with Dave McClure and a ~50ish companies he had funded. He announced that he was taking a tour of partnership teams at two members of AppAmaGooBookSoft and asked for who wanted to come with.…

For a while I worked for a company that had a direct line to engineers at all of their suppliers (which they often earned by only calling with the right questions). This caused them to get issues fixed quickly and competently, sometimes with them supplying parts of the fix. I've since returned to working for companies that rely on first line support, and it's much harder to get the support you need, so I totally agre…

A relevant xkcd as always https://xkcd.com/806/

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#164

Post by thearn4 »

ValentineC wrote: post #52
mattlutze wrote: post #22

The issue here wasn't that they were just using Amazon's API and then lost access. The Amazon TOS says don't store and display our old prices and, per the post, that's what PriceZombie was doing. The lesson is that if you're doing something in violation of a partner's TOS and start to negatively effect their business, the partner is well within their rights to cut off access. Whether other businesses have or haven't…

The Amazon TOS says don't store and display our old prices How is Amazon fine with CamelCamelCamel [1] then? It seems like they make money off Amazon affiliate links too. [1] http://camelcamelcamel.com/blog/how-our-price-checking-syste...

Oh man, I remember a few years ago I wrote a Python script that used CCC data to help flip seasonal items on Amazon's own marketplace. The idea being that I would buy low from a third party seller and sell high later using FBA. Kind of a fun experiment but kind of a time sink.

Generally speaking, graduate-level textbooks (which release new editions at a far slower pace) had the largest and most predictable margin. That said, I hated that fact, since I think textbooks are also the biggest racket in the education universe, and its one of the other reasons that I stopped.

Amazon collected their fees in both directions, so I always assumed that if they realized what I was doing, they had little incentive to care.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#165

Post by kuschku »

InsideTrack wrote: post #75
mattlutze wrote: post #22

The issue here wasn't that they were just using Amazon's API and then lost access. The Amazon TOS says don't store and display our old prices and, per the post, that's what PriceZombie was doing. The lesson is that if you're doing something in violation of a partner's TOS and start to negatively effect their business, the partner is well within their rights to cut off access. Whether other businesses have or haven't…

You miss the point. PriceZombie was above board with what they were doing at all times. Amazon TOLD THEM that as long as their latest price was within 24 hours they could display price history like dozens of other price trackers were doing. PZ was reviewed three times, not just by low level people but higher up in the chain, and each time there was no question they were within the TOS so long as they displayed the cu…

And there are many similar sites – including ones sponsored by the German government – that still do the same.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#166

Post by omginternets »

CaptSpify wrote: post #101
pavel_lishin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a bit like complaining to the police officer who pulled you over that other people were speeding, too?

As far as I understand it, this is different because they were "previously told we were in 100% compliance with the rules" So, it's more like a cop pulling you over even though you weren't speeding.

I think you guys are stretching the analogy way too far. As I see things: it's a private matter and doesn't map well onto a public analogy.

The bottom line is that Amazon can deem it acceptable to allow behavior one day, and change it's mind the next. If you systematically rely on your partner's humor, you're doing something wrong.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#167

Post by ChuckMcM »

I find such actions puzzling, in a world where (charge per click) CPC advertising no longer works due to click fraud, (charge per action) CPA advertising offers a sane alternative. Only pay for the actions of customers, if someone buys, you pay, if they don't, you owe nothing. And yet CPA is treated like a really off color way to feed a few pennies to bloggers.

In this case Amazon doesn't like past prices being stored and shown. Ok, I get it that doing so exposes sellers who price high during "rush" seasons and low during "off" seasons, or the difference in price quoted to a Dallas IP address versus one from San Francisco, but shouldn't those sorts of shenanigans be exposed?

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#168

Post by stevekemp »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #162
xbryanx wrote: post #160

I'd pay (once) for software that periodically ran on my computer, pinging a URL for a price, tracking it locally, and giving me an alert at a change threshold.

You could probably make that overnight. Just send a cURL to the page and look for the text of the span with the ID "priceblock_ourprice". Then log that to a comma delimited text file or something.

But the real problem would be updating your code every time the appropriate website(s) changed their markup.

In a hosted service that's easy; if you're selling something people download you'll have to ensure timely updates.

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#169

Post by vanilla-almond »

specialp wrote: post #43

It is against Amazon's interests to have price comparison these days. Early on in my computer shopping days I'd hit pricewatch and buy from random vendors based on price. Eventually this company called Newegg often had the near the lowest price always and had great service. I soon went to shopping at Newegg consistently without bothering to go to pricewatch. Newegg could have raised prices slightly but I did not want…

"It is against Amazon's interests to have price comparison these days"

I have noticed that many books on Amazon UK (outside of the popular categories or bestseller lists) often have little or no discount.*

My recollection is purely anecdotal, but this is a change from when discounts were common across titles in all categories. Having said that, many marketplace sellers offer titles at much steeper discounts than Amazon (even with the additional shipping costs). Of course, Amazon still benefits from those listings.

A few years ago, Amazon aquired bookdepository.co.uk, their biggest online rival in the UK market. They also own Abebooks that specialises in used books. Their domination of online book sales in the UK seems (almost) complete.

So with fewer discounts on books (at least in the UK), it seems logical that Amazon would want to discourage price comparison. And yet the irony is that Amazon dominates online book buying to such a degree that there are few online rivals left to compare prices with. The only major online rivals I can think of in the UK now is wordery.co.uk, or whsmith.co.uk (both of which are often cheaper than Amazon outside the bestseller lists).

*curious to know if anyone else has noticed a drop in price discounts on books on Amazon (from any of their sites)

Re: PriceZombie is shutting down

#170

Post by BorisMelnik »

ryao wrote: post #90
InsideTrack wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You miss the point. PriceZombie was above board with what they were doing at all times. Amazon TOLD THEM that as long as their latest price was within 24 hours they could display price history like dozens of other price trackers were doing. PZ was reviewed three times, not just by low level people but higher up in the chain, and each time there was no question they were within the TOS so long as they displayed the cu…

Many of the shoppers using Price Zombie likely relied on Price Zombie's historical pricing data and notifications of price drops to delay purchases until prices for items were relatively low. The affiliate link gave Amazon data on which shoppers were using Price Zombie. Maybe someone at Amazon used their data to estimate the decrease in margins from that, causing Amazon's leadership to change its mind.

yes it is true, one of the main reasons I used PZ was for historical data mainly PC parts and such
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