Amazon Price-Tracker with Alerts • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Price-Tracker with Alerts

#71

Post by subhro » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:11 AM UTC

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #45

L1quid wrote: post #21

Thank you to everyone who uses our website. We are fortunate to have been able to run it for so long. Edit: Camel+YC fact: we pitched to YC early on, but weren't ready to give up our day jobs at the time. A few months later, we had left our jobs anyway. Not necessarily because the site was doing so well...

Please consider adding other retailers. Often times, the better deal isn't on Amazon, and there tons of online retailers out there. Price checking historically on N platforms is a much more appealing value proposition.

pricegrabber.com ?

Re: Amazon Price-Tracker with Alerts

#72

Post by crispyporkbites » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:11 AM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #66

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please consider adding other retailers. Often times, the better deal isn't on Amazon, and there tons of online retailers out there. Price checking historically on N platforms is a much more appealing value proposition.

It is against the amazon shopping api terms of service to offer price comparison. So they haven't probably for that reason.

But I do price comparisons in my head, so am I breaking their terms just by being human?

Re: Amazon Price-Tracker with Alerts

#73

Post by antupis » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:12 AM UTC

L1quid wrote: post #21

Thank you to everyone who uses our website. We are fortunate to have been able to run it for so long. Edit: Camel+YC fact: we pitched to YC early on, but weren't ready to give up our day jobs at the time. A few months later, we had left our jobs anyway. Not necessarily because the site was doing so well...

Idea try filter out those products that bump first their price and then drop it to get those gigantic percentage drops eg this https://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0816S8DM7?active=pri...

Re: Amazon Price-Tracker with Alerts

#74

Post by shostack » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:15 AM UTC

thunderbong wrote: post #57

I get this error. Is this expected? consent.cmp.oath.com's server IP address could not be found.

Looks like something related to Verizon's/oaths consent management platform which is used to capture consent to track and use data for advertising.

Re: Amazon Price-Tracker with Alerts

#75

Post by jjeaff » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:21 AM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #43

10+ years ago I wrote one of the first browser addons in this space. It was powered by a backend that crawled data for hundreds of merchants, and Amazon was easily one of the most difficult merchants to parse (and I ended up writing a lot of the parsing code). We had entire sections of our codebase dedicated to piercing Amazon's "add to cart to see the price" tactics and other countermeasures they would throw our way…

CCC isn't scraping their pricing data. They are using the mws shopping api.

Re: Amazon Price-Tracker with Alerts

#76

Post by jjeaff » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:25 AM UTC

gdulli wrote: post #10

VectorLock wrote: post #5

I've always wondered how CCC interfaced with Amazon. Are they using bots to scrape the site? Are they just coasting along until Amazon tries to shut them down, or is there some kind of agreement in place?

Since they send traffic to Amazon from people who want to buy things, I don't think Amazon minds. And I don't think they care if they pay out to any one affiliate vs. another.

It is against Amazon's api terms of service to do price comparison.

And they will cut you off, no questions asked, for violating that.

Re: Amazon Price-Tracker with Alerts

#77

Post by Kosirich » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:27 AM UTC

L1quid wrote: post #21

Thank you to everyone who uses our website. We are fortunate to have been able to run it for so long. Edit: Camel+YC fact: we pitched to YC early on, but weren't ready to give up our day jobs at the time. A few months later, we had left our jobs anyway. Not necessarily because the site was doing so well...

Thanks to your website, I got my Sage coffee machine for 250 euros less than what is sold in local stores and at least 100 euros less that the average price. Thank you for your work.

Re: Amazon Price-Tracker with Alerts

#78

Post by pottertheotter » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:27 AM UTC

zxienin wrote: post #28

I find Amazon’s acceptance of CCC interesting. If they see value in CCC, why not natively add the feature themselves? If price history is made transparent, consumers also don’t have trust issues.

I just noticed today that an item on Amazon had a little notice that said something like, "This is the lowest price in the past month." Not the same as CCC, and the statement could be true even if the price didn't change all month, but I found it interesting.

Re: Amazon Price-Tracker with Alerts

#79

Post by pkulak » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:30 AM UTC

pchristensen wrote: post #29

L1quid wrote: post #21

Thank you to everyone who uses our website. We are fortunate to have been able to run it for so long. Edit: Camel+YC fact: we pitched to YC early on, but weren't ready to give up our day jobs at the time. A few months later, we had left our jobs anyway. Not necessarily because the site was doing so well...

Thank you! CCC is great, and a guaranteed way to turn patience into savings.

Or right now, patience into just getting the damn thing. I just got a new power supply after a couple months of waiting by setting the Amazon price to under $500 and making sure the CCC emails trigger alerts on my phone.

Re: Amazon Price-Tracker with Alerts

#80

Post by mcbits » Thu, Oct 15, 2020, 6:32 AM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #66

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please consider adding other retailers. Often times, the better deal isn't on Amazon, and there tons of online retailers out there. Price checking historically on N platforms is a much more appealing value proposition.

It is against the amazon shopping api terms of service to offer price comparison. So they haven't probably for that reason.

Not sure what you mean by shopping API, but here is all that their affiliate program policies[0] say about price comparisons with other sites:

> if you choose to display prices for any Product on your Site in any “comparison” format (including through the use of any price-comparison tool or engine) together with prices for the same or similar products offered through any web site or other means other than an Amazon Site, you must display both the lowest “new” price and, if we provide it to you, the lowest “used” price at which the Product is available on the Amazon Site.

[0] https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/policies