Amazon Prime Days ran on July 16th and 17th (at least here, in Canada).
This price jump happened a day before and ended two days later, but this item was “on sale” during those two Prime Days.
I’ve been seeing this scam far too often, especially with food items. Why isn’t this illegal yet?
What a surprise, Amazon has been doing shady shit for years and continues to do so.
For anyone with the kneejerk reaction “AMERICA BAD!” because of this, it’s against FTC regulations here in the USA, but hasn’t been enforced in 50 years.
We are allowed to sue over it, but no one does. Caveat Emptor indeed.
We are allowed to sue over it, but no one does.
SCOTUS has drastically reduced the standing allowed for class action lawsuits. The ROI on these suits is very small. So you are talking about possibly weeks or months of your life to get the nuisance value of a very small claim. And that’s assuming the court doesn’t dismiss your claim on standing or misfiling or whatever other legal hoop you need to jump through.
For anyone with the kneejerk reaction “AMERICA BAD!”
This is precisely why “AMERICA BAD!” The legal system is intentionally inaccessible to large pools of small claimants and only exists to facilitate disputes between large business interests or between wealthy private parties and the state.
And if you think the civil system is bad, wait till you find out the ratfvckery that goes on in the criminal system.
Put a few items on your wishlist, and watch the fluctuations, even without prime days.
Overall, you save a buck or two on prime days, that’s all.
They do this on Black Friday and Boxing Day sales too, it’s nothing new.
A tale as old as time.
And it’s very well known, yet somehow people continue to fall for it.
Yeah… But everybody got to FAFO to learn their lesson it seems.
Ie this tacric has a steady supply of people every year
We have a local gas station that’ll do this sort of shit too. Like, on the 20th or 21st of every month, they’ll give a 30 cent discount on gasoline, but somehow most people don’t even notice that they conveniently raised the price by 30 cents the day before…
So the universe remains stable, and the people are getting fucked, as usual. ☹️
Some people want it. I worked in retail at a place that advertised “every day low prices.” This meant that if an item was marked as such, it was never going to go on sale. Very often it was the cheapest you could find the item anywhere.
I had people put the item in their cart, ask me if it was on sale, I told them the above, and they put it back. Nearly every time.
Hell JC Penny almost went bankrupt when they stopped deceptive pricing.
People are stupid.
You’re a dipshit sucker dumbass if you bought anything, at any point, on the existence of advertising, of Hallmark holidays, Easter, Christmas, any given holiday, pseudo holiday, religious holiday, non-religious holiday, your mother’s, and/or anyone in your family’s special event… And on and on. How fucking naive does one have to be, in today’s world, to think prices wouldn’t be jacked up prior to a sales event?
Also, I am a dumbass.
This is a tale as old as time. We did this in the late 90s at an office supply store. Every Sunday night changing price tags “ooh guess there will be a sale on resume paper in the next few weeks”. 1-4 weeks out we would increase prices on some items just to lower them back when the ad came out.
Some brands do this continually. That’s how Eddie Bauer or The Gap is constantly having a 30% off sale on one thing or another.
And it works. It’s called “price anchoring.”
I think many companies will put sales on overpriced items to make it seem like a deal, but it’s hard to catch the ones who inflate the prices just before a sale happens (which brings the sale price down to the regular price). The latter is a bigger problem, IMO.
Why isn’t this illegal yet?
It is illegal in some countries such as Australia but the fines for doing this is nothing compared to the money gained for doing it.
It’s the same story in US and Canada. Illegal, but not really enforced. And when it is enforced the the penalties aren’t strong enough to be a deterrent.
Also illegal in the EU, when posting a “sale” the price compared to must be the lowest price the outlet had for the product in the previous 30 days. So unless they want to increase the price for over 30 days, this trick isn’t going to fly.
They get around it by having a sale on a special version of the product that had a higher price in the past 30 to 90 days. The version is the same as normal, but with a different serial number.
Only that version goes on “sale” for Black Friday or whatever, so they are technically following the law. They do it in the US too. Literally look it up on Camel Camel Camel during a sale.
Amazon isn’t an outlet though, is that the wording in the law? Because that implies it’s for brick and mortar only.
In the exact wording they speak of a “Trader”. It’s for both webshops and brick and mortar. And I think it applies to the entity and not the specific shop. So if a company has more than one shop, the lowest price on any of those shops would apply.
Now this is new law and hasn’t been fully tested, I’m sure shops will try things to evade this new regulation, but in the past the EU has not taken kindly to shit like that.
Interesting.
In Canada for Black Friday and boxing day they just have new SKUs (models made specifically for sale that day), but these are also usually cheaper than the normal ones. I think they’re actually made from the bottom tier of acceptable parts. So the quality is marginally lower on these models.
I could be wrong on the latter part.
Some companies will make special versions for Black Friday that do indeed have cheaper parts or missing features, but for many it’s the exact same product as the normal SKU. They do the special SKU at the request of the retailer, to guarantee that no one can use a “price match guarantee” to make them sell more than the planned quantity of door busters.
What SKUmmy behavior.
Illegal in California under the false advertising law unless something was the prevailing market price for 3 months prior.
For this context with Amazon though, prime is totally different in the EU than the US.
There are few countries with Amazon (eg Germany) and thus for most the benefit is that prime only gets free shipping on smaller orders that wouldn’t qualify normally, and faster processing in the warehouse. Maybe you get your shit a day or two earlier.
In the US it’s next day vs a week.
Point being there are far fewer prime accounts in EU so Amazon likely doesn’t care if they can’t discount as “deeply” as in the US.
So it’s some sort of tax 🤣😞
Lol yep. Literally Amazon 101, there’s a very good reason you shouldn’t buy from them unless you HAVE to.
I do score some very good deals on Amazon, but I also use a browser plug-in that lets me get a notification once my desired price has been reached. I always look at the historical charts, though. Some items are constantly going up and down in price. At least we have that option with Amazon, and not so much with our local grocery stores :(
Fuck Amazon. I never use them and my life hasn’t materially changed one iota since I stopped like 5 years ago.
In the last 5 years, Amazon (for me) has had lower food prices than nearly all local grocery stores for certain items. The "trick’ is to park those items in a wishlist and set a notification for when the price drops to a level you are willing to pay (via browser add-on), then you can really save a lot.
But for most items, it’s a gamble to assume you are getting the lowest price, even when they are on sale. But then again, I think most stores play the same games, so consumers are always on the losing end no matter where they shop.
One of the many reasons I dropped Prime in January when my annual subscription ran out. I now avoid amazon where possible, or for certain things I’ll group them up until I have enough items to get free shipping and order that way.
No prime day garbage No more “oh, let me order this thing I don’t really need that will get here in a few hours”
The only deal I find on prime day is storage. Usually pick up a SSD or few SD cards and save a few bucks.
once they drive most other retailers out of business, they’ll be able to jack the prices up. has been the plan the whole time
I started shopping at Walmart because of this, completely gave up on Amazon.
Realized what I was missing out on after buying some new strings for my guitar. Sat and talked to the people working for probably 30 minutes, then they told me to just bring it in and they will put the strings on really quick since they have better tools.
Ended up being cheaper than Amazon and got us out of the house.
uh, doesn’t Walmart do the exact same thing?
They probably do, but it’s a lesser of two evils where I live. People can shit on me and downvote away, but there is no choice where I live except driving an hour.
understandable, I judged too quickly.
It’s fine, and I honestly hate Walmart for what they have done to the landscape. I also understand the immediate reaction to hating them very well.
Fuck that noise. Walmart is infinitely worse for communities than Amazon.
Right, except in my little nook that has already happened. I can either by trash at Dollar General, drive to Walmart where things are meh, or get Amazon.
People seem to forget not everyone commenting here live in a major city.
Yeah, used to live in bumfuck PA and can definitely understand this. It’s either Walmart or some obscenely overpriced “local” place that gets half of their stuff from the same place and then upcharges $2 on everything.
Another reminder why shouldn’t be using Amazon
I think most stores do this. But with Amazon, you can at least use a browser plugin to actually know when you’re getting a good deal.
That said, if I could avoid Amazon, I likely would.
Never purchase without Keepa check. I even google image search temu to find the Amazon link and check history
I don’t understand. Are you reverse image searching and if so what image? One from Temu or Amazon?
Android temu app See Chinese trash I want in my home Screenshot Share image to Google search app Open Amazon link that matches product See keepa pricing history Decide whether to purchase Chinese trash based on cost and knowing increased shipping time over Prime
Just use canelcamelcamel imo
