Why YSK: Online platforms, particularly some very prominent offenders, may artificially spike prices before creating “discounts”. Whether this is intentional or the result of third party sellers fighting amongst themselves, I cannot say. Either way, don’t blindly purchase something because of a deal (camelcamelcamel is great to see price history if you just care about Amazon). Besides, if your sole motivation to purchase something is based on a discount, you might be better off cutting consumption instead.
Source: I run fetchnotifs. While checking the logs this morning, I was scared to death I deployed a bug to production—Nope, it’s just that day of the year.
IIRC in Poland all stores have to show the price from month ago to prevent this kind of abuse.
It’s mandated by the EU: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52021XC1229(06) (see point 6a).
This is good but they should also force to write normal price first because now the biggest font prices isn’t the price which you pay without buying multiple products or have membership account.
I’ve relied on https://isthereanydeal.com to see if sales of games are actually a deal. For electronics I’ve used https://pcpartpicker.com to see price trends. https://camelcamelcamel.com for Amazon.
And now looks you’ve brought another tool to the arsenal with https://fetchnotifs.com.
Awesome.
If you want a FOSS alternative to fetchnotifs, you can try changedetection.io :)
Amazon uses a system where they vary the price to try to see how much you’ll pay, too. Also they raise the price on things you bought before since they know you might want it again. Simply an awful system. For example, hot sauce… one time two bottles is 12, another time, 21, next time, 17. They’ve done the same thing to me on biscuit mix and bandages. One time the bandages are 7, then they’re 10, then they’re 13, then 6. I just want ONE PRICE.
Cutting…consumption? As a North American I feel personally attacked. Buying things is how I express my freedom.
Obligatory mention of https://camelcamelcamel.com/ which is a great tool to track the historical price of an Amazon listing. You can even set up alerts for when it falls to a certain price point.
100% agree, I’ll edit my post. https://keepa.com/ is also nice if you’re just looking on Amazon.
I use Keepa and it has worked great for me. I’ll try out Camel³ next.
It’s definitely worse this year. All I’ve bought is some filament for my 3D printers and it’s really only a few bucks off. Seen a lot of things I was waiting on go on “sale” for the original price or higher
I use www.prisjakt.nu here in Sweden, aren’t there similar sites in the rest of the world?
