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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is illegal in Canada. Enforcement is the issue.
Of course. And since enforcement is basically non-existent, it doesn't matter how illegal it is!
It's semi-amazing how feckless our government is when it comes to anything related to market fairness.
It is fair... Companies paid $X lobbying our gov't and in return they get to do shit and profit
Fair!
And it's more than mildly infuriating when people say Poilievre will be any better.
Yes, I don't know when it started exactly, but it predates Trudeau.
Years ago, I wanted to buy a new TV, in the middle of October. My wife said that we should wait to black Friday but I told her that black Friday was a scam so I bought it right there. I keep following the price of the TV and how is slowly but surely rise price every other day, until black Friday when it got a 40% discount and was still more than I paid a month before.
Plus, many manufacturers make black Friday specific runs with cheaper parts, so it's possibly as expensive for a worse product.
It's illegal in Norway. Items must not have been at the discounted rate at least 30 days prior
Don't Norwegians miss out on having the freedom to get conned? And sure, this sounds good for the citizens, but what about the magic line we all worship? I think it might harm the line.
We get scammed in a lot of different new ways :)
Same for the whole of the European union.
This post must be a Freedom©®™ thing we're too unfree to understand
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.
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.
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.
I took a screenshot of my wishlist a few weeks before Prime Day. During Prime Day, about half of the items had Prime Day discounts but only three of them where actually cheaper. The best discounts I found were on other smaller web stores trying to compete with Amazon on Prime Day.
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.
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.
This is illegal in UK and Europe...
Stop bragging about your sensible consumer laws, and legal vacation requirements, great train system and generally universal health care.
I'm in the UK. I'll never brag about our train system, not after Twatcher privatised them, and further back the horrific Beeching cuts.
The rest - yeah, worth it.
It's against FTC regulations in the US too. The trick is getting them to enforce it.
Camelcamelcamel.com kind of sucks in terms of their search, but they will find you the best price for things on Amazon.
I never liked CCC for some reason, not sure if it was the UI or what. Been rocking Keepa for many years without any trouble. I set price notifications for items that I can wait for, but usually check price history for everything else.
I'm actually glad that the Amazon wishlist also tells you that an item is now priced lower than when it was added to the wishlist. It makes it a little easier to identify price drops.
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 :(
I noticed a vevor mixer that usually goes for a bit under $500 was on "sale" but the price hasn't changed, and the regular price went up to $650. Now that prime is over, it's sale price increased to $550.
Pretty lame.
Having said that, though, I did find some things I wanted for cheaper than usual, that I needed.
People keep clutching their pearls at all the capitalist things happening, but in November, you all are going to vote for capitalists.
What a surprise, Amazon has been doing shady shit for years and continues to do so.
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?
it’s feature of retail/capitalism. You just have better tools like Keepa to showcase this scam, now.
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"
Fuck Amazon. I never use them and my life hasn't materially changed one iota since I stopped like 5 years ago.
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