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Amazon Jacked Up Prime Day Prices, Misleading Consumers, Says Vendor (foxbusiness.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A Charlotte-based startup says e-commerce king Amazon jacked up their suggested retail price during the company's annual discount event -- Prime Day -- to deceive consumers into thinking that they were getting a deal, when in reality, they weren't. Jason Jacobs, founder of Remodeez, a small company that specializes in non-toxic foot deodorizers and other odor stoppers, says he had an agreement with Amazon since 2015 on a suggested retail price of $9.99 for his products and was shocked after the tech giant almost doubled that on Prime Day to make it look like people were getting a discount, when they were actually paying full price. "They showed the product at $15.42 and then exed it out to put '$9.99 for Amazon Prime Day.' And on the final day, the price was like $18.44. So, we put a support ticket in right away and I rallied some friends through social media to go to their complaint board and complain," Jacobs tells FOX Business.
Are they the new railroad monopoly?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Amazon ran their retail business at a loss for years in order to gain market dominance. We always knew the day would come when they'd use their immense power to start extracting higher profits out of their customer base. That day has arrived. And, don't think for one minute that they won't do the same with AWS if they ever achieve the same level of dominance. (Giving us all a rare reason to root for Microsoft.)
Company that sells stuff engages in shady behavior to maximize profits.
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
See Kohl's and just about any other brick and mortar retailer too...
Diligence folks...
Amazon is no longer reliably cheaper than some brick and mortar options. I have run into this trend more and more in the last couple years.
It's already known that amazon have dynamic pricing - it's not a stretch to assume that mechanism could be used for shady reasons.
At risk of sounding like a cheesy advertisement: That's why I use camel camel camel!
For those who don't know; it tells you the price history of any product on amazon - so you can see if they've hiked the prices before putting it on sale or just in general if the price is lower or higher than normal.
I needed a USB drive yesterday and when I went online to get one I noticed Amazon said that since I had a Prime account it was eligible for free same day delivery. On top of that their price was about $15 less than the local retail. (This was a 5TB Seagate, now in service backing stuff up).
So I ordered, scheduled for delivery in the afternoon, and it came and I thought pretty amazing.
What I didn't notice until later is that although there was no shipping charge there was a $12 tip for the driver ordered by default. Even had I noticed I don't pull tips from working guys/gals so the end result is that the "free" shipping cost me more than had I just gone with Amazon's regular next day free shipping.
Caveat emptor and all that. I am all for regulated free market capitalism and I don't think Bezos/Amazon is evil but it is sort of ironic that real the effect (whether it was the intent or not) of AP delivery was to get me to pay the low-end worker directly for work that Amazon now doesn't have to pay for.
And that's all I have to say about that.
"SALE", "DISCOUNT", "% OFF", "LIMITED OFFER", "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS", "BUY 2 GET ONE", "BOGO", All scream the same to those who are paying attention: Oh you are raising your prices for these products. Have you people ever wondered why it is a sale only on specific items? How are trends set.. by those who have the most money? If you seriously thought you were getting a screaming deal from Amazon during this day.. you are a consumer, don't be afraid, just keep living paycheck to paycheck and You Must Have The Best Stuff and nothing should stop you from that goal. You Must Have what other people have.. because You don't have it... and they do. .. Now on to what I truly want to say: The vendor is butt hurt because they didn't get the payout that Amazon did on this great "sale day".
+1, Interesting
Playing the high-low-middle game is common in sales; it's to provide the perception that you, the consumer, are getting a good deal. The reality, you're getting screwed, and it's your fault for not shopping around. I never said it makes it right, or just, but in a free market, half the onus is on the consumer as well. And no, this isn't the first time Amazon has pulled shenanigans like this. Even before the BitCoin craze, I've often found video cards to be at or exceeding MSRP by a great margin. Sometimes you can get a deal but avoid the hype and know the MSRP before you buy.
Life is not for the lazy.
I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon but I don't keep a running list of prices. Newegg is a different story. Most of their promotional prices are the same prices they charge every day, and the promotional discounts are just enough to reduce the sales tax being charged. A good deal is once in a blue moon.
Don't use either one. There are plenty of great smaller vps cloud providers. My infrastructure is split between digitalocean, linode and vultur for fault tollerance. I can drop one in a second if they have packetloss, downtime or increase prices too high.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
You mean to tell me Amazon follows the same business practices of virtually every single retail business when having big "sales"!? Say it ain't so, lol.
You guys seem to think that this is bad. I was in BestBuy the other day to buy a new keyboard and mouse. I decided to look up reviews while i was standing there and noticed that the price on the BestBuy website beat the one in the store for the keyboard by $30, the mouse by $15, and the mouse pad I was also grabbing by $5. I HAD TO ASK THEM TO PRICE MATCH THEIR OWN DAMN WEBSITE!
Not sure if it sucks more and more every year or what... last year's Prime Day was pretty good, though. This year really didn't have many sales, and they were all on dumb shit.
There are many, many other defects in Amazon management. Every web page, for example, tries to sell you something else before giving full information about a product.
Playing games with prices is EXTREMELY self-destructive. People buy much more from companies they know they can trust. When a company can't be trusted, customers must spend time thinking carefully about every item before buying.
Amazon abuses employees, according to news reports:
Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (Aug. 15, 2015)
Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (Feb. 23, 2014)
Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (February 19, 2013)
Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, owns a spaceflight company, Blue Origin. Would you fly into space with a company whose owner makes abusive web pages?
Any manufacturer of sufficient size should be able to put up a web-based order portal where end consumers can buy their products. All they need is fulfillment. The maker of a product should easily be able to undercut any price offered by a retailer. In the past, they never did that because distribution was extremely difficult. This is no longer the case. Wholesale pricing. Distributor pricing. Retail pricing. Bugger all that! Make your product, accurately determine your costs and sell it directly to consumers for 10% more. Charge for shipping. Don't be fooled, shipping is never free. It may be included in the price so it's somewhat hidden, but it's never free.
Granted, Amazon does fulfillment extremely well. But all you (as a manufacturer) has to do is ship your stuff. Give reasonable delivery times (5 - 7 business days, for example) and people will buy it. Save lots of money or get the product tomorrow? People will almost always choose to save $$.
Cutting out the middle man has never been easier.
You guys seem to think that this is bad. I was in BestBuy the other day to buy a new keyboard and mouse. I decided to look up reviews while i was standing there and noticed that the price on the BestBuy website beat the one in the store for the keyboard by $30, the mouse by $15, and the mouse pad I was also grabbing by $5. I HAD TO ASK THEM TO PRICE MATCH THEIR OWN DAMN WEBSITE!
I want to be clear that my response is not a joke. You actually found a worker to complain to? The last time I was in Best Buy I had to go to the greeter guy at the front of the store and demand that he send a drone to the only cash register they had open so we could actually check out. The 2 guys in front of me apparently had been there for 5+ minutes waiting for somebody to actually work the cash register. I saw maybe 5 or 6 workers in the entire store. One of the big problems of retail now is that they have stuff they want to sell you, but they can't afford to pay people to actually work there any more so you have to wander all over the store to find somebody who can help you if need it or even find somebody willing to check you out.
Just wish they stored a price history for other stores besides Amazon. You can see a spike to $18.94 on Prime day. Now I'm curious if the other spikes correspond to other Amazon "sales".
https://camelcamelcamel.com/remodeez-Footwear-Deodorizer-Charcoal-Moisture/product/B016ZZWL6E
In the UK, it is illegal to advertise a sale price unless you have sold the same item at the pre-discount price for a certain period, so pretty much any shop here is an exception to this.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Raspberry Pis listed as $50 or so "regular price" but marked "down" to $35 their actual price.
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You mean Amazon does the same shit every retailer has always done?
The big story is the people who are fooled by this. About 15% of the population is incredibly stupid. Let us stop fucking up the world trying to drag these fuckers with us.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
The major retailer Amazon is engaging in the underhanded tricks that nearly all major retailers engage in.
Rule #1: Don't believe a retailer when they claim they're giving you a great deal. Comparison shopping often reveals the lie.
Sales are often little more than a price scam. It has been shown time and time again that many stores raise their prices before a sale in order to give the illusion of a discount during the sale. Or they do it to give the impression that their product is more upscale since it originally came with such a high base price.
If you use price tracking websites or comparison apps, you can see in the historical pricing that stores often raise their prices shortly before large sales events. Black Friday and store closure liquidation sales are often the worst. I've been to stores claiming 80% off, yet found cheaper prices down the street.
So do yourself a favor: ignore the signs saying x% off and just look at the final price. Compare it to other stores and historical data. Then figure out the real x% off based off the lowest price you can find. Probably not such a great deal, right?
In all fairness, by now everyone should know that Best Buy is usually the worst possible place to buy anything.
The article even mentions that the "was" price on an item is collected from previous sales on Amazon ***AND OTHER RETAILERS***. I think this means that if *ANYONE* sold this $9.99 item for $20.00, then Amazon can use the $20.00 price as a "was" price.
camelcamelcamel probably won't notice that....
I have experienced this exact thing. Fortunately, Amazon customer service is TOP NOTCH, and was willing to correct the errors to my complete satisfaction.
Disclaimer: Not talking about this particular case.
Many of the comments talk about "shady" practices. What many here are failing to understand is that if it's not illegal, it's legal, and businesses are going to do it in order to maximize profits. It's the rare case when they won't act that way...typically when there's concern about some sort of bad press that could affect the bottom line. But in general, if we don't want businesses doing things we consider shady, they need be made illegal, or regulated...especially when it becomes monopolistic.
And FWIW, I'm saying this as a conservative, small government fan.
Just another day in Paradise
My wife has tried, time and again, to order household goods we use often with Amazon's Subscribe and Save service. The idea is nice.... Just have the system auto re-order what you need on a set schedule so you never run out of toilet paper or shampoo or deodorant or ??
The problem is, when we find a product on it we want at a price we like, the re-orders often stop after the first or MAYBE the second time we get a shipment. The reason? Amazon claims the item was discontinued. That or we purposely cancel the order after the price suddenly shoots way up from what we initially agreed to pay. And on those items they just discontinue? Again, the alternatives always seem to cost a lot more - to the point we do better just shopping locally.
There are a ton more reasons manufacturers dont want to sell directly to the public. Source, I work for a manufacturer.
1. Invoicing - invoices don't reconcile themselves automatically.
2. Logistics - all these one-off deliveries don't package and label themselves.
3. Returns - these things require a ton of manual intervention to process, rectify and account for.
4. Partner Relationships - Many existing distribution contracts have clauses to prevent direct to consumer sales. Even if they dont have such a clause in place you are risking damaging a relationship with your redistributors which could have huge impacts to your business (see reasons 1-3).
5. It takes capitol, resources and focus to run an efficient direct to consumer fulfillment center. Most manufacturers would rather (and smartly so) focus on making quality products and leave all the other business stuff to large distributors and re-sellers.
Have a good day!
Amazon Prime Day is just black Friday on a different day...
Old trick, yes.
But does it work if you have an ounce of common sense? I was quite interested in Prime day - I give Amazon a LOT of business and Prime is worth it just on postage costs alone, let alone the freebies thrown in.
However, everything I looked at on Prime day didn't look... anything near amazing. A bit Meh, if I'm honest. I didn't buy a single thing, even the things already on my wishlist. Because nothing made me say "Oh, that's a good deal" or "That's come down in price" or "I better get that while it's cheap". It was all just... comparable pricing to what I would expect from anywhere else.
Are people really that gullible that just because you say it's 10,000% off they fall for it and pay even normal retail price when they didn't really know they wanted the item anyway? It's a sad state of affairs if people haven't educated themselves by now. I can sort of understand some old granny who's not all there falling for it, but people buying shit from Amazon on a special advertised day, with a Prime account? It doesn't make any sense.
I treat Steam the same way. The first Summer Sales were amazing, I picked up SO MANY games, and bonus things that I was *excited* for the next sale. And then it has been Meh ever since. I look at a game that's 50p off and think "50p extra yesterday or tomorrow, or wait until it really comes down in price" and it's just not worth it. If it was $5 off, maybe, especially if it's a really cheap game. But even there, if I ask "am I going to be annoyed that I didn't get this discount?" pretty much the answer is no. And that's on a site where I spend mostly "fake" money - marketplace money earned from selling off cards that I don't do anything to get except run a game and then Alt-Tab back to my browser.
But spending real money on a deal that, give it a week, and you could probably price-match on anyway? Are people really that stupid?
No one would ever dare defy the law!
Not always top notch.
They have a policy that refunds are only done to the original purchasing card (note: I am not from the US and this was on Amz UK).
I had a warranty return made 1 month before the full warranty ended (details: fitbit dislodged itself from the bracelet, and lucky me, they had no more stock ). Problem: I use virtual prepaid cards, and that card was no longer associated with my account. I am in the process of contacting my bank to get letterhead from it stating the associated refund transfer never reached my account. The bank itself is doing the same thing to the government entity that issues those virtual prepaid cards... Long story short, I am still waiting for the 130 bucks to get to my account, 2 months after the item was returned, and I expect a good 2 more of redtape.
Nice and courteous as they may be, they are completely adamant about changing that policy and refunding me in store credit or to another credit card.
Got a good deal haggling on appliances! But yeah... it is mostly a giant cell phone kiosk now.
Even if Amazon says it's marked down 99%, you should probably do a quick search to see if another vendor has it for less, unless we're talking about something sold exclusively through Amazon.
Jeff Bezos is not as bad as Donald Trump, but Bezos says and does things that show he isn't thinking carefully.
Remote control over drones can ALWAYS be eliminated or hijacked by radio frequency interference.
Technology ALWAYS has failures, like those at Three Mile Island, Fukushima Daiichi, and Chernobyl.
Amazon drone delivery: nine ways it could go horribly wrong (March 26, 2015)
I don't want drones near where I live. Will drones be allowed near where Jeff Bezos lives?
What I couldn't glean from the references was whether it was Amazon selling, or a third-party, where the historic price was jacked up. I looked at products from the company complaining and found third parties selling for much more than the $9.99, from $18 up to $40-something. I've seen that often on Amazon, for small things, with third parties offering at 10x the price.
One explanation I'd heard was someone's dynamic pricing reacting to another's dynamic pricing, causing a price spike.
What I'm not clear on then, is Amazon's comparable price based on an offering price or a price where something was sold? And is it limited to Amazon's offerings or open to third parties? I would not be surprised to learn that a 3rd party sold an identical item to an unsuspecting customer for a higher price in the not too distant past.
I've never understood why these third parties offered those items for such higher prices. My only thought is that they might keep one in stock, ready to be sold to the first person who comes to buy when Amazon happens to be out.
It's true that their prices were pretty bad this time around, which automatically makes me think they jacked up the price and then brought them down as "on sale". I shop Amazon all of the time, so I'm constantly paying attention to prices there. Nothing seemed impressive to me on that day. What I did discover was that they kept trying to sell me LOTS of stuff that I would never buy in a million years. Mostly junk. Every time I thought I saw a large ticket item, it was already sold out, or the item was "out of sale", even though I never saw it on sale to begin with.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
"JCPenney has it's entire business built on this sort of deceptive sale. A CEO came along and tried to end the practice, start having non-gamed sale prices, and the business cratered."
JCPenney is closing 138 stores. (March 17, 2017)
Overall, JCPenney's abuse of customers hasn't been successful, apparently.
(There may be a problem with the conclusion that JCPenney's price abuse caused the company's failures. My understanding is that there were many other areas of poor managemen at JCPenney. So, it would require considerable analysis to discover all the elements of failure.)
No, the 8% sales tax that I pay to Amazon goes back to my state. The state keeps half and distributes the other half to the counties. Amazon adds tax seemingly at random. One time they charge it and the next time they may not, even on the same item. Yeah, it puzzles me, too.
If you are a slashdotter, you are automatically excluded from the Feel Good Effect, because you won't feel it.
The term came out from a video source, but based on psychology. When two human were given a separate price tag with one that is $5 and one that is $10 with a 50% off discount. The one who had the 50% off discount felt happier with the price than the one who had the flat price of $5, even though it is the same in the end.
This is because humans especially uneducated will feel better when they see something there that make them feel smart about their purchase, often time it will be about cost saving.
This is why you will see pricing like:
-$6.25 at 20% discount
-Only for $4.99
-Buy two get one free at $15
When you know exactly they are still the same $5.
This effect has also been shown when a chain store decided not to apply this 'shady' practice, their profit dropped significantly. So it is essential to apply this practice to ensure profit in some store.
In Amazon case, it may be the best for their business as a whole to apply this practice. Nonetheless, Amazon should have at least gotten the consent of vendors prior to doing this practice on the listed items, as the Feel Good Effect doesn't work on educated customers and the product determines the customers base. It could very much backfire when the product is meant for educated customers.
They do sometimes, but the fines get pretty large and if you do it repeatedly then they're significantly more than you're likely to make from the sale.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Isn't this exactly what clothing retailers (and most others) do during the holidays or any other major sale? Isn't this pretty well known by now?
When they have these sales they invariably jack up the prices before hand. even offline shops seem to be following ths trend.
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I'd have to look it up, but I was under the impression that this was changed a couple of years ago and that chain stores were now required to have the item on sale at the full price at at least 50% of their locations.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This is not a new tactic by retailers.
Yet, in light of the proof of a little more than half the American public being idiots - as per the last election (any half-brain would not vote for Trump) - now seems a good time to pull this one off.
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
So, you really believed, that they have too much money so they make up a day to give away products for less than they are worth?
That's marketing and everybody with a rest of a brain cell knew it before.