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.
What SKUmmy behavior.
Illegal in California under the false advertising law unless something was the prevailing market price for 3 months prior.
Many places are totally fine with only putting an item on “sale” less than every month. If you keep 1/4 of you items on sale, you’re covered, even if you only keep something on sale for a single week.
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.
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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.
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.
And it’s more than mildly infuriating when people say Poilievre will be any better.
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 :)
I think this applies to the EU too.
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.
Walmart, Amazon & Bestbuy are all extremely guilty of this. Always check the SKUs!
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.
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.
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.
I’ll advocate for the CCC Firefox extension, but email alerts are the big ticket item. If I know there’s something I want to buy, I’ll set myself a price that I think is reasonable and just wait until I receive an email saying it’s hit that range.
I’ll check it out. Thanks.
I love Keepa, and the Firefox addon. However, they seemed to nerf their wishlist features (auto sync problems, 10 items max, etc). Noticed after missing deals, due to not receiving alerts of price drops. Still very useful, but CCC now has more reliable auto tracking lists (just add to wishlist, it will auto sync and email any drops).
but CCC now has more reliable auto tracking lists (just add to wishlist, it will auto sync and email any drops).
Well, I may give CCC another try. That feature would be HUGE for me.
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.
They do this on Black Friday and Boxing Day sales too, it’s nothing new.
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.
Lul I was talking about jcpenny with my fiancee a couple weeks back. It’s sorta sad and hilarious to see people just willing to spend extra overall because of these tactics.
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
A tale as old as time.
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 bought something at lowest price ever on prime day according to camel camel, but now it’s way up with a coupon to bring it down to the same amount. So may not be getting a good deal as much as you think.
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.
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.
Another reminder why you 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.
80% of the items I considered had either jacked up the price prior to prime days, or advertised a large discount when the actual discount was tiny - a few percent. I ended up buying nothing. Amazon sucks.
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.
It’s against FTC regulations in the US too. The trick is getting them to enforce it.
