How to avoid amazon price "manipulations" (Black Friday)

[mikeywith]

I am not sure if this fits best in here, if not please move it to the appropriate section.

Since Black Friday is around the corner, many people are waiting to get themselves some decent deals specially from Amazon, the sad part that they don't tell you is that the prices Amazon shows are misleading to say the least.


This Article on Forbes.com talks about the "The first deals of Black Friday 2019".


The first deal in that article states:

Apple iPhone XS, 256GB, Space Gray - Fully Unlocked (Renewed) - $749.92 (save $550 on original price) - shop deal now

That sounds like a great deal to be honest, however,the only truthful piece of information in this (as far the numbers are concerned) is that it does sell for $749.92, while everything else is B.S.


But how do you know how much are you actually saving?


Using a proper price tracker ( a piece of software that keeps track of history prices ) allows you to see the price history and compare it to current prices, I personally use Keepa ( DYOR and use at your own risk of course) but you can pretty much use any price tracker you feel comfortable with, and this is an example of the same item that allegedly has a 43% discount.




You can clearly see that for instance that the price back in July was only 899.99$ ,  last month it was only 846.99$ , which means if you buy it now you are only actually getting  846.99 - 749.92 = 97.07$ discount as opposed to the alleged 550$ savings , and that's less than 12% discount which is no way near the fake 43% listed on Amazon.

During black Friday discounts you will notice many similar examples , where they show you a 50% discount when it's really just 5% or no discount at all, of course they don't randomly put these numbers, that iPhone was probably sold for $1299 sometime around it's announcement or a bit later, but using it as a reference of today with that whooping 43% fake discount is both deceiving and misleading IMO.

[yazher]

This is the same case on the printer I was about to buy on some online store, the price is ₱7,399.00 w/o shipping fee about $145.80 and it says they selling it for 25% off as you can see in the picture, I was ready to buy it though. Thankfully I decided to go to the Mall and look for its price and I was shocked the price is only ₱7,499.00. So from that day on, I won't believe what I see on the online price anymore, Just like you, I don't believe that they actually give us some high percentage off. If I bought that online I will pay ₱7,399.00 + shipping fee about ₱300 which will make me pay more than buying it in the Mall.

[Bttzed03]

Some people are still fooled by this marketing strategy. Businesses/sellers do this kind of stuff on every holiday or some special occasion both online stores and physical stores. They would price an item usually sold at $100 to $150 then put it up for sale at 33.33% discount.


Thank for the price tracker.

[Wexnident]

Most of the discounts on various online stores can be seen as manipulated. You just need a little bit of common sense to get that. Heck, even physical stores don't slash the price by around 2-3k (At least, I haven't seen one yet) yet online stores do? I was actually wondering at one point why the hell are online stores selling stuff for so low, much so that the slashed prices are around 2k, 3k, or even more. You can just actually look up the general price of most stuff and you could already see the lies of stores. Sad story.

[joniboini]

Looks like this strategy is happening on every online store. Just a few days ago I want to buy a docking that is priced around $50 with a '50%' discount. Turns out the real market price is way lower than $50. Just a step away from getting soft scammed.

[hacker1001101001]

It is pure logic behind judging this deals, why would a company take losses on products by given 50% discounts ? Do they have profit margins of the discount they are offering when they sell it at original price regularly ?

In reality this are just pure marketing strategies build up to show a value of the product to be most discounted, more than it is actually. You could find hell lot of info about how to do this online with your own business too if you want. I have even seen online stores selling some products at less than 1rs ( 0.014$ ), and still earning hell lot of profits and promotion.

Just saw this today on Flipkart here.



The best way of dealing with this as a costumer IMO is, comparing the products prices on multiple online stores ( 2 - 3 legitimate websites atleast ). This would give you a good in site of how much money you are saving with your purchases and what a deal has to offer you. That's what I do btw.

[Suslived]

It's basic marketing that has been used to trick people into buying items that they would never had not it been for the "SALE" sign. Companies, especially RETAIL ones, regularly hold sales and it's surprising that many people still get excited when they see the big red letters that say SALE, X% OFF!

Hopefully, as markets mature and cryptocurrencies take off, more people will also become more aware and educated about marketing stunts like these.

[UserU]

This is the same case on the printer I was about to buy on some online store, the price is ₱7,399.00 w/o shipping fee about $145.80 and it says they selling it for 25% off as you can see in the picture, I was ready to buy it though. Thankfully I decided to go to the Mall and look for its price and I was shocked the price is only ₱7,499.00. So from that day on, I won't believe what I see on the online price anymore, Just like you, I don't believe that they actually give us some high percentage off. If I bought that online I will pay ₱7,399.00 + shipping fee about ₱300 which will make me pay more than buying it in the Mall.

Speaking of LZD, there was one time (on the 10.10) whereby a fridge/ refrigerator was only sold for a buck. One unit though.

[Kakmakr]

This is actually a very good idea. I know some of the ladies in our community are running their own "Price Watch" WhatsApp group in my local community, where they go around recording prices and then comparing it to "Sale" prices on offer. So they quickly spot if these retailers are trying to fool people.

A very common thing that these companies are doing is to advertise something at a ridiculously low price, but when you get to the shop, they tell you that it already sold out.    < I have stood in queues for 8 hours before the Black Friday started and when I was first in the door, the items that I was looking for was supposedly already sold out.>

The employees working at the shop also set aside some of these very cheap items for their friends and family, so when you get there, it is sold out. 

[unsoindovo]

Hi all.
For Amazon, usually I use camecamelcam.
With camelcamecamel you can install the browser extension (Chrome and Firefox) to get access to the site’s features without leaving Amazon, or you can just copy and paste an Amazon link or product name at the web site. CamelCamelCamel shows you how the price of the item has gone up or down over time, how prices have changed through Amazon directly and the fluctuations from third-party sellers who list new and used items on Amazon

[GSpgh]

Most of the time when planning to buy something bigger than groceries I check slickdeals.net which has a pretty active community and they figure out fake and real deals very quickly. It's also good for checking if the product is worth it. People will tell you right away that this $300 TV is not good for gaming and you should spend $100 more. That's hard to figure out from Amazon reviews which I think are not moderated at all. Often you seen a brand new seller with 100s of fake bought reviews.