Does anyone understand Amazon price changes?

[Saracen999]

I've been hitting the old Amazon shopping habit recently, After years of absence. There are several things I'm considering, so have stuck them in my basket, and then a few days go past.

And prices change.

Example 1) MS Surface at about £1000. Over a few days it went :-

- down by about £80
- up by £100
- down by £60
- up by £80

These are rough estimates. Point is, it's boinging about in price by fairly significant amounts. I can only think it's designed to keep people constantly checking the site.

Example 2. Adobe Lightroom 1yr subscription

Saw it at £80.
Then it was £36. Like a twit, I didn't grab it, for good but irrelevant reasons.
Then it was £109. Arghhh.
Now it's gone up again. From £109.44 to £109.51.

That's. Right. It's varied from £36 (bargain, and probably an offer) to £109.

Then it changes, having gone up by some £75, a nearly 200% rise,followed by 7 flipping pence. I mean, £75, then 7p?

WTF? That's "what the flip" for those that don't know.

There's plenty of other examples but I'll stick with just those two. And the rationale behind that 7p change has me totally confusticated and bemuserised. It almost smells of computer-generated variations, though the big ones are no doubt manual.

Anyone able to enlighten me on hat they're up to?

[kalniel]

Yes, almost completely computer driven. Mostly competitor analysis with a bit of stock forecasting. Use ukcamelcamelcamel to track prices and always check how a current price compares. I also save items in a basket for later to get an indication of pricing trend.

[Unique]

they use tech to check prices of competitors and automatically adjust their prices so they are the same or very slightly lower so people buy from amazon instead of elsewhere. when the competitor price goes back to normal or they are out of stock, the price will go back to what it was before, or so it's the cheapest price of the next available stock. you sometimes get misprices because of this. if you had a store they checked and changed the price way down, amazons would reflect it and you could buy from amazon but then cancel the sales of the item you reduced the price of, to mess with the algorithm

i have a list of books and cds in my cart and they go up and down by a few pence or a couple of pounds every few hours. i'll just buy when i'm ready and price is low. if i was so desperate or wanted it i would have bought it already

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Amazon checks prices on competitor websites,so the price is changed in realtime to be competitive by what I believe to be an automated system. Sometimes I also think,they also factor in warehousing space and general stock levels EU wide,as sometimes for brief periods you can get very good deals,and I have had quite a few of them from the German fulfilment centres(Germany and Poland have the biggest ones). I have had deals such as a £450 lens for £180. I had to wait over a month for it,but I never saw it such a low price ever again.

[Saracen999]

But then it becomes almost a Dutch auction ... do you grab now and miss out on a better price later, or wait for a better price (which may not come) and miss out on the current one.

I guess you, quite literally, 'pays yer money and takes yer chance'.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

But then it becomes almost a Dutch auction ... do you grab now and miss out on a better price later, or wait for a better price (which may not come) and miss out on the current one.

I guess you, quite literally, 'pays yer money and takes yer chance'.

Its why you need to use camelcamelcamel:
https://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/

Put in the url or the name of the listing,and see what historic pricing looks like!

[Saracen999]

I noticed Kal mentioned Camelx3, but have now had a look. Useful tool. Thanks, both.

Good price on the lens, Cat. Really good.

[Jonj1611]

I praise the gods above for Amazon price matching, so many times have seen something that I like at a competing retailer but with delivery charges on top or delivery take x amount of times, just to find it price matched on Amazon with next day delivery

[spacein_vader]

Also if amazon drop the price between you ordering and the product arriving if you contact support they'll match the new price and credit you the difference. Saves them the return fees.

The 7p change for Adobe might be because it's a digital product likely priced in dollars. 7p might be a change in exchange rate from one day to the next.

[jim]

There have been rumours for a while - not sure if ever confirmed - that they use marketplace data for their own pricing models.

So if someone on marketplace offers a product for £12, they'll do it for £11.99 and so on.

Certainly it has to be algorithm based given how frequently it changes.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I noticed Kal mentioned Camelx3, but have now had a look. Useful tool. Thanks, both.

Good price on the lens, Cat. Really good.

I was half expecting it to never arrive,as it was stuck in the "awaiting stock" phase for a month,but they only billed me when they despatched it. I tend to prefer using a UK company for camera gear if I can,but this was too much of a deal to pass by.

[Saracen999]

I was half expecting it to never arrive,as it was stuck in the "awaiting stock" phase for a month,but they only billed me when they despatched it. I tend to prefer using a UK company for camera gear if I can,but this was too much of a deal to pass by.

Agree on the UK company. I do that for anything of significant value. I mean, I've bought the odd £2 filter direct from China (and sometimes had them simply not arrive) but I will not do that for sums I can't afford to simply write off. I'd rather pay more and buy from a reputable UK supplier, not to mention being covered by UK consumer law. Why? Because I put a high value on avoiding even the risk of the hassle of having the fight if something goes wrong.

Even with Amazon, I'm very careful about who the actual seller reall is.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Agree on the UK company. I do that for anything of significant value. I mean, I've bought the odd £2 filter direct from China (and sometimes had them simply not arrive) but I will not do that for sums I can't afford to simply write off. I'd rather pay more and buy from a reputable UK supplier, not to mention being covered by UK consumer law. Why? Because I put a high value on avoiding even the risk of the hassle of having the fight if something goes wrong.

Even with Amazon, I'm very careful about who the actual seller reall is.

Well for me,it's partly supporting the specialist retailers,so I try to use them when I can. If Amazon have a very big discount,I will probably consider them then. But for some reason Amazon decided to wait until they got new stock,so I got lucky,ie,they could have just cancelled it. I always check that an item it is sold by Amazon. Some Chinese sellers do "fulfilled by Amazon",so they send the stock to Amazon who deal with the warehousing and sales part,and you can see these will have the "Amazon Prime" option. I got my Godox flashgun by doing that,but now Godox have a UK based distributor so that now makes things easier.

[cheesemp]

Just an alternative to CamelCamelCamel - I use a browser extension called Keepa. It inserts a chart below the item in the Amazon website showing the historic prices for an item. I can then quickly make a decision when buying to see if Amazon have temporaily bumped up a price or when a item might drop. It helps buy stategically and is a lot easier than loading camelx3 each time. Its also useful so you know if its an item that appears in Amazon warehouse regularly - I can't resist an open box bargain!

[Output]

Also if amazon drop the price between you ordering and the product arriving if you contact support they'll match the new price and credit you the difference.

I thought they stopped doing that years ago?

They certainly wouldn't credit the difference when they dropped the price of the 3950X between the ordering time and the price it was by the time of despatch less than 12 hours later.

[DanceswithUnix]

One note, if something is from an Amazon marketplace seller rather than Amazon, then I can often get a better deal going direct to the seller's website.

Amazon take a massive cut of the sale if it is from a third party, which on a low margin item has to be at least partly added to the cost on Amazon.