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.
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.
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.
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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.
It is fair… Companies paid $X lobbying our gov’t and in return they get to do shit and profit
Fair!
I suspect there’s more to it then that.
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.
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
It’s Canada, friend. It’s illegal here too.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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’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.
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.
Train system is not exactly viable here compared to using a car (Belgium)
Edit: but yeah the rest is about right
It’s against FTC regulations in the US too. The trick is getting them to enforce it.
The ICO in the UK is pretty good… I used to work on their CRM system and it was an eye opener how little, and also how big the things they investigated were.
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.
