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Amazon Stops Giving Refunds When an Item's Price Drops After You Purchase It (recode.net)
Amazon has for years issued refunds to users when the price of an item drops after they've purchased it. But lately the e-commerce giant hasn't been doing that on a number of products, except for televisions, according to price-tracking companies. Recode reports: The move may have something to do with the rise of startups that track prices for Amazon customers and automatically request refunds when appropriate. One of them, a Santa Monica-based startup called Earny that is backed by the startup incubator Science, first pointed out the change. Earny scours a customer's email inbox for digital receipts, and then continuously checks the price on a retailer's website to see if it drops.
Yeah.... no.
to ask for the refund, however, when a larger number of customers started asking for the refund, then it was no longer cost-effective.
I agree. Once of those things we lost due to other companies leaching off of them.
If that happened for every sell, then there would never be price drops.
My price doesn't go up if the cost is raised. Why should it go down if lowered?
I haven't used Newegg in years. Their return policy is terrible.
If I get a defective product from Amazon, they send me a new one before asking for the return. Newegg wanted their product first, charge me return fees since it's not their fault it's defective, and charged me shipping for the replacement.
Only had to have that happen a few times to say to hell with them. Plus, their prices are not very competitive anymore.
to ask for the refund, however, when a larger number of customers started asking for the refund, then it was no longer cost-effective.
I agree. Once of those things we lost due to other companies leaching off of them.
If that happened for every sell, then there would never be price drops.
My price doesn't go up if the cost is raised. Why should it go down if lowered?
In general, I agree with you, but Amazon has set up a system where it is easy to play games with pricing. I've seen differences depending on if I am logged in or not, which account I am logged in under, whether I am logged in on a "prime" account or not, and other shenanigans. Prices seem to sometimes be higher or lower depending on how long something has been in a wish list or cart. Amazon and their vendors are certainly gaming the system (which they created for their own benefit) and showing no mercy, fairness, or common courtesy in the pursuit of separating me from my hard-earned money. You can be assured that these pricing games are not for your benefit. In that kind of environment, why wouldn't a person use every means available to try to get a the best possible deal?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I buy a TON of things from Amazon, I'm a heavy Prime customer...
That being said, my last three price adjustment requests in the past two weeks have all been denied, which is very odd.
I do it manually, just when I notice things... I buy at least a half a dozen items a week from Amazon.
This change will make me think twice before buying as much.
I haven't used Newegg in years. Their return policy is terrible.
Amen. I bought a board from them a few years back. Got the PC all built and running, but something was causing lock ups. Turns out several individual pins were bent in the CPU socket. There's no way I'm good enough to just bend a single pin in several different places, so it had to have come like that. I didn't want to wait a week+ without a PC while I shipped it back and they shipped me another one, so I purchased the same one overnight from Amazon and had it up and running the next day. Newegg's return policy for mobos is "No". Just "No". Even if they shipped it to you in three pieces, you cannot return for a refund under any circumstance. It took several days for them to at least agree to give me store credit. After spending thousands with them over the years, I found this to be an exceptionally poor way to handle a $150 purchase. I haven't been back to their site since, and I spend every opportunity I can advising people not to shop with them.
If Fuck You is why, then why did the previous policy exist?
Either Amazon suddenly got a little eviller, or some other condition changed.
I think the "this is costing us more than it used to" explanation fits the facts pretty well. It used to be segmented marketing, where they charge people depending on how much they care/complain. If you're a squeaky wheel, you get oil. If you're a silent wheel, no oil for you. Then robots came in to automate squeaking, independent of how much the user cares. You can't do segmented marketing when the segments all merge.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
It took several days for them to at least agree to give me store credit... I found this to be an exceptionally poor way to handle a $150 purchase. I haven't been back to their site since..
So can I have your store credit?
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
None of that applies to today's race to the absolute bottom in wages and working conditions.
Working in a modern warehouse is nowhere near the "absolute bottom", and claiming that it is worse than 19th century plantation slavery is idiotic.
It seems like abuse of the system to me. Amazon had that policy so that people could feel confident shopping there, knowing that if the price dropped then they could go back and get the difference. Instead, a cottage industry formed specifically to get people all of the price drop refunds any time they happen. That wasn't why Amazon had the policy to start with. If that was what Amazon wanted to do then they would have automatically credited every account every time a price was lowered. That was not their sales plan, the policy was there so that you don't need to wait for a sale. If you buy something that goes on sale next week then instead of feeling burned Amazon can generate a little customer goodwill and loyalty by giving you the difference if you ask. It wasn't supposed to be an automated process.
Personally, if I was in the place of whoever was making those decisions at Amazon I would enjoy changing our policy to put out of business a bunch of companies that I see as freeloading off my customers.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black