More Amazonian sneakery
September 6, 2000 2:08 PM Subscribe
Amazon is just too big for it's own good. Is BN.com taking notes?
posted by Brilliantcrank at 2:56 PM on September 6, 2000
posted by silusGROK at 3:14 PM on September 6, 2000
Analogy or not, it's my personal opinion that the amazon price changing is misleading only because they aren't admitting it. If they were to come out and say, "Yeah, we're testing prices here and there" somewhere prominent, it'd change things. I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't be hot on the idea, but it'd encourage competition, I think.
In addition, I think amazon is just too big for its britches.
posted by hijinx at 3:55 PM on September 6, 2000
I haven't bought something from Amazon in months, except for gift certificate redemptions. Reading this article, it seems like that habit has served me well.
posted by mikewas at 5:06 PM on September 6, 2000
posted by dhartung at 5:15 PM on September 6, 2000
The funny thing is, this might work in the offline world, but this is the internet. The interconnected, communications enabling internet. People can tell everyone about the special treatment they're getting or the current prices being offered to them. Heck maybe people will start buying things for others and splitting the savings?
posted by mathowie at 5:19 PM on September 6, 2000
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\
posted by greyscale at 6:04 PM on September 6, 2000
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:14 PM on September 6, 2000
posted by Dr. Jazz at 8:43 PM on September 6, 2000
Victoria's Secret does this, or at least they used to. Not because of a stamp, of course; they simply print up three different versions of their catalogs, all identical except for the item numbers and the prices next to them. They've been nailed by newsmagazine programs a number of times for this, and their claim is the same as Amazon's, that's it's a "test" (that never seemed to end) to see what prices the market would bear. Of course, if you called their order line and simply asked for the best price, they'd inevitably claim they're doing no such thing.
posted by aaron at 10:44 PM on September 6, 2000
Very dubious if you ask me. Very dubious indeed...
posted by barbelith at 6:00 AM on September 7, 2000
Concur with Hartung.
Wrote politely pissy letter to writer.
posted by baylink at 7:38 AM on September 7, 2000
I do still think this is a non-issue. As an Amazon regular I get discounts and special features that enhance my customer experience yadda yadda yadda. I also know that they're charging lower prices already in order to offset shipping costs, and that this shaving is hitting their bottom line. Gosh, everybody knows that.
Honest pricing laws are intended to control the situation where the retailer offers an item at a price, then acts on the knowledge that the customer desires the item, so tacks on charges or fees (used-car tactics). Here the price is offered, and the price is honored.
Those laws aren't intended to make all prices "fair" although that's another aspect (e.g. discrimination against a certain class). We all know that there are employee discounts, that salesmen will offer incentives, and there's always a bit of a how-low-can-you-go aspect to any of this.
Airline fares and other travel deals are notorious for being sensitive to not only time purchased, but also based on social groupings, e.g. businessman vs. tourist. There are all kinds of airline discounts you can get if you know the right code to tell the ticket agent, though the advent of the internet has diminished this somewhat (i.e. people can share the codes).
We already know that some deals happen based on when you log on.
I see the Register trick of throwing something into your shopping cart on a new cookie could be translated into running a user agent to wait for a discount that you won't be around for (e.g. something to boost sales between 4am and 5am).
The risk to Amazon isn't that their brand will be hurt; it's that people will figure out, as the Register has, how to use the technology against them and always get the discount.
posted by dhartung at 9:55 AM on September 7, 2000
The Criterion Collection version of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, listed for about US$60, suddenly plummeted to US$20 this morning. I quickly snapped it up, along with two other movies (Henry V and Buena Vista Social Club) that had also dropped in price.
This afternoon, prices are back up. WTF?
posted by RakDaddy at 5:00 PM on September 7, 2000
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I personally think this is a non-issue.
posted by hijinx at 2:44 PM on September 6, 2000