Prime Day is just Black Friday in July. Amazon is trying to get rid of old stock.
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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If you have an idea of what you want before the sale starts and know how much the standard price is you can still be lucky and get a good deal. You just have to be careful not to get sucked in to a non deal.
For example, I was looking out for an Apple Watch. There is a good sale on them but they only have a limited set of body and strap combinations. I don’t want any of the straps on offer so it negates almost all of the discount as I’d be paying £50 for a strap that I wouldn’t use.
Aren’t there some website that track this?
I have no idea where the name came from, but there's CamelCamelCamel.
The creator did an AMA on [redacted] and said that the site was initially just a side project, so the name didn't matter. However, it started to get some traction. Then people knew it by that name, so it felt too late to change it. Now it's way too late, so that's the name
I use the Keepa browser extension
This entire comment is the perfect explanation for my issue with people getting excited over Black Friday/Prime Day. I see so many people every year excitedly saying (or at times bragging), oh I got this, I got that, and it was so cheap. But unless you were already looking at that thing you haven't saved money. You've actually spent more than you would have if it wasn't on sale.
In Europe there's a law that forces stores (online but also physical) to post also the lowest minimum price in the last month.
So it would be ~~€199~~ €64 (lowest price in the last 30 days: €39)
Amazon US doesn't do that, but they do show a "lowest price in 30 days" badge that is actually truthful (appears when the item is on sale and the sale price is the lowest in the last 30 days). Of course, there's some sellers that game it by increasing their prices over 30 days before Prime Day.
I dont think it includes procong due to coupons though.
If a product had a minor coupon (e.g <5$) and the product was discounted to that price without coupon, it would still advertise lowest price despite it not really changing.
I don’t know if it’s a law here too in Canada, but Amazon.ca works the same. What sellers do to get around this just make a new listing for products at inflated rates so they can then discount them for “sales”, while simultaneously setting the regular listing to unavailable until the “sale” is over.
Using a browser addon that tracks price history, we found a bunch of "deals" on Amazon US that had raised the price 30 days ago and are now flagged "Lowest price in 30 days!". The "deal" price was almost always the exact same price it was 31 days prior.
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In the U.S. that’s a big “fuck you buddy, Ima get mine,” from congress.
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Not to defend Amazon, but in past years the comments in Reddit on this issue pointed out that Amazon has requirements on markdown percentages to qualify for prime day and lightning sales. As a result, vendors who control their price will artificially increase their price over the days leading to prime day and then apply the “discount”.
I do wish that if that were the case that Amazon actually address it as they should be able to detect that pattern. I unfortunately think they don’t care as they make money regardless. I just wish they care a bit more about earning and keeping trust.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09P8BPPQW
Here's the product page. You can see how it's 46% off $119, but if you want, you can also buy it at $89 regular price. They're now not even increasing the price of the item, they're just claiming it's higher.
The normal price is $89.99, which represents a 15% discount off the MSRP of $119.99 (that they're claiming). The current price of $64.99, is a discount of 42%, which represents an additional 27% off. I don't think this listing necessarily proves the point.
That being said, companies absolutely do engage in this kind of bullshit. This one may have done it itself in order to claim the MSRP at $119.99.
Amazon could use the average price over the last 3 months l, but they don't care.
Exactly. They have all the data in the world, but I'm sure they are doing what's optimal for their profit.
Common Amazon deception. Mark up a product's base cost artificially, then take a "percentage off" to bring it back down to near the base price it always is. Maybe slightly more expensive or cheaper, but usually just a smidge away from the normal cost. It's for the illusion of "being on sale."
Use an Amazon price tracker site (like camel camel camel for example) so that you can always call out Amazon and make sure that you're getting their actual lowest prices when you have to buy from them.
Classic Kohl's strategy, not sure if they did it first, but its the first place I saw it used in early 2000s.
A handful of years back, JC Penney made a huge deal about stopping this practice in their stores, where everything is on “sale” all the time. Sales plummeted even though the actual product prices stayed the same. They immediately reversed course.
Hard to blame them. Human brains are weird.
Penneys also stopped accepting coupons and it turned out that most of the older ladies who made up the lion’s share of the clientele loved coupons (who would have thought?). They also hired a retail exec from Apple (Ron Johnson) and he embarked on disasterous changes to stores and other things that regular customers hated. This is a great article that is titled “The J.C. penney Disaster Timeline” from 2012: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-jcpenney-disaster-timeline-how-ex-apple-guru-ron-johnson-is-destroying-the-company-2012-6
As a marketing guy, I have this story in my back pocket to illustrate how hopelessly self-destructive we are.
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Use camelcamelcamel to check price history, really shows how "good" the sales are!
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my credit union emailed me today about Prime Day deals, wtf?!?
Amazon started in may sending a massive email campaign to all affiliates with referral links reminding prime day, if an user buys something using the link, the affiliate (in this case your credit union) will get a 5% commission
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Even the percentage claimed is just complete garbage. Zero proof of how many are actually sold, the counter could start at 70% sold for all we know. Even if there was proof, it's still clearly just a "other people bought this so you aren't stupid for buying it too".
Really good manipulation there tbh. Someone probably got a raise for that
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Amusingly enough, I bought an small appliance yesterday, amazon had worse deals than a big box store. They had cheaper prices on no name junk that was gonna take a week to get to me. Prime day is total shit.
IME Amazon has worse prices on a lot of stuff lately. It's mostly just convenience at this point.
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Prime Day a scam? What? Impossible!
INCONCEIVABLE!
Fucking AnazonBasics pulled this shit with something I bought. Not quite as bad; it was still technically on sale, but only by $2 instead of the $7 they would have you believe.
Yea, I don't assume anything is on sale until I've looked at camelcamelcamel.com. Even then, it doesn't get lightning deals, and some other random promotions, so it can be difficult to tell what an actual good price is.
Yeah, I use Keepa for the same thing. I checked before I bought the item, but it surprised me to see Amazon's brand pulling that stunt.
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Also they stole the product from a former 3rd party seller
Idk why anyone is surprised Amazon is deceitful lmao
The AMD 5800x3d prime day deal is 9% off at $401 CAD, but two days ago it was $359.
On the other hand, the Zotac RTX 4080 Trinity OC was $1589 CAD, and for prime day is $1229, an actual deal.
Except that the GPU is taking it on the chin on sales anyways. Probably a week from now it'll be $1200 and they are just hoping to grab a few quick sales before the actual price drop
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I called out best buy for this exact same practice years ago. I refuse to participate in mass sales now as a result. It's all just a giant scam. Either blantant lies on pricing, or they use inferior parts for the sale items.
I'm the only one who was very underwhelmed by this year's Prime Day(s)?
I know it's for clearing out their warehouses, but most of the sales were on crap or only minor discounts.
I guess you meant underwhelmed instead of understanding.
And well Idk I didn't need anything so not sure. Personally the only thing I got was the Microsoft 365 Family subscription for 1 year since it was half a price than the usual renewall... Although now that I think about it maybe I should have bought more years.
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The only advice I can give is buy base on what you feel an item is worth to you.
I'm perfectly fine to keep searching for something for months before I finally make a purchase cause its the right price, color and model for me.
We need better tools and ability to track this stuff. Pretty amazing we can have a super powered chatbot that can answer any question but I can't find an excel sheet that tracks historical prices of goods in a meaningful way.
Also I bet it would be illegal to create that excel sheet in some way.
There are many such apps. Search for price trackers.
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Your screen shots don’t show the item being sold in the first one or the price in the second one. I fully believe Amazon is doing Amazon things but did you even look at your own pictures before making your post?
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