Amazon is price gouging big time HUGE!

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

It's possible they charge different prices to different people. I read once that online retailers charge lower prices to people that shop with their phones as opposed to pcs. Maybe they crawl the wish lists to gauge demand and raise prices accordingly. If something is on a lot of different wish lists, they know you intend to buy it. Not using this might result in lower prices.

a reply to: toms54


Will stop using wishlist and shop elsewhere in search of lowest prices.

But this was never about ME, but about the billions and billions that they're racking in based on trying to take advantage of the gullible and it is called price gouging and it's not legal as far as i know.

Everything seems to be operating like it's ok, or just to give me advice on how to shop better.

I'm talking about criminal algorithms bilking the American people of a fortune!

originally posted by: Willtell
a reply to: AnkhMorpork

But they're ruthless

There it is. That's the impression I'm given. They'd take advantage of your grandmother, and do, all the time.

If Trump hates them, he could sink them with this intel fully verified or if not sink, them bring them into line for the sake of the American consumer, and the global consumer for that matter.

I think it's very serious, but maybe that's just me?

Update. I all but emptied my wish list and then logged out. By buy Amazon (for now).

I'll make their pricing algorithms serve my interests and not the other way around thank you very much.

But the number of people they're ripping off must be absolutely astounding.

a reply to: notsure1


Well then don't get mad at amazon if you have no common sense or self control to comparison shop. If you buy on impulse or "drunk buy" that is on you. Again, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY FROM AMAZON. I seriously don't understand the class warfare, when someone hates someone because they came up with a great idea and got wealthy off of it. I think most class warfare is born out of envy and jealousy.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork


It isn't price gouging, price gouging is when you have no choice but to buy a product and they jack the price up on you. With Amazon you don't need to buy from them, shop elsewhere it is that simple. I can't believe people can't grasp this.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork


How do you figure they are ripping people off? Do some comparison shopping and if you don't like Amazon you don't have to buy from them. Ripping you off would be if they were the only game in town and jacked up their prices. If you don't like them don't buy . Astounding the lack of common sense in this world. People feel like if they got "ripped off" it is not their own fault.

a reply to: norhoc


They're taking advantage of people, is my point.

Why don't people care?

WTF has happened to this generation, who would rather get irate defending something that's just rude.

Fair enough it's not price gouging by the usual definition. What I don't get is taking the position of devil's advocate.

They try to sneakily see if they can get away with ripping people off, yes.

It would seem that they are ruthless and that their greed knows no bounds and I and other see it first hand.

I don't like you. You don't get it, not even a little bit.

For the record, I didn't get ripped off or have any problem, but needed to stay on my toes or I would have.

Just reporting on what I see as crooked and corrupt activity that's victimizing stupid people with too much money who make impulse buys.

To see that applauded, while suggesting that people deserve it if they get duped and pay like 500 bucks too much for something - blows my stack!

Heartless goofs in this world who do not care about their fellow man being victimized by corporate greed. Losers!

Anyway, it's wrong and someone needed to speak up about it, so I've done my part here on ATS.

For people not to see how corrupt the activity is, and to put the responsibility on the consumer alone not to get taken in is just pathetic imho!

Consumers may need to be warned about Amazon's pricing strategies designed to alleviate them of their hard earned money.

Why would they need to try to skim like that, and on such a massive scale?!!!

I think it's disgusting!

Zero integrity, and honesty.

It's not the way that business should be done.

Just wait til they get AI that can do circles around us..

Can't be trusted. That's the point.

Actually, I'm thrilled with the purchases and the prices I paid on everything so far, and the delivery service is first rate, the Post Office even made an effort to handle my delivery with care.

Impressed all around - with the exception of the three or four times that I've had very negative interactions with some sort of shyster criminal algorithm who figured it had it's mark when I bought up everything on my wish list. No more discounts and price drops for him - until he serfs every alternative, collects cookies or whatever, then returns, reluctantly to Amazon, who will then be forced to line up and do my bidding.

But how often does it go the other way for so many people - who are being ruthlessly taken by a heartless and excessively greedy algorithm in pursuit of ignorant people and impulse and drunk buyers.

To suggest that the pricing is completely arbitrary and in accordance with nothing other than demand, as if it can be set anywhere by some predictive algorithm on a "whim", well that just screams abuse, vitcimization and theivery, to me.

If I were them I'd offer a lowest price guarantee to get everyone buy there with the prime delivery and win an even larger market, instead of trying to bilk them for whatever you can get away with.

Integrity shopping.

Would be interesting to see it blow back on them as people start buying elsewhere and more directly on the web.

Brand and customer loyalty, honesty and integrity has to count for something, or you're just some sort of crook no matter how wealthy, even the richest man on earth.

It IS a great idea. Hate to see it abused like that.

That's it that's all.

/rant over

a reply to: Creep Thumper

He isn't personally doing it... There's a board and shareholders to please. And the whole point of a business is to make money, after all.

the price = " an invitation to make an offer " -simples

Its not just Amazon. It happens all over the net.
I know for a fact it happens on Travel Republic and Expedia. I was looking through various hotels last year for a trip to Hungary and I kept going back and forth between the 2 sites and double or triple checking various choice hotels. Then I noticed that each time I actually clicked on a hotel or apartment, the price went up so I thought I'd see what happened if I continually clicked on the same hotel. Eventually the price went from £800 pw to £55,000!!! Now I'm not sure if that happens individually i.e. if someone else looking at the same hotel gets that ludicrous price or if they see the original £800pw price until they too start clicking.

Thing is, with Travel Republic doing that, the hotel/apartment owner lost a sale a I got really annoyed and went with Booking.com These companies really do rely on people being stupid, not researching and impulse buying which I think is well insulting

Yea, it bothers me as well. I used to trust Amazon for showing quickly what the best price was....
Ebay has always had this attribute. A bunch of idiot sellers would start selling the same things for 100% more, just to cover the other idiots, or those that can stuff money in their ears and light it on fire.

Betting it's already been mentioned but I'm not reading the entire thread to this point.

You do realize that VERY little actually comes from Amazon, correct? They've become a glorified eBay Buy It Now price site. It's been that way for a while. "Sold by Amazon" and "Sold by 'x' Fulfilled by Amazon" are two totally different things.

Actual Amazon sales aren't bad, either. I just got a $750 phone from Amazon Warehouse Deals for $375 because the packaging was "damaged." When I received it the only damage I saw was a 0.5" gouge out of the top of the box and a dented corner. Phone was brand new, the original factory seal on the box was intact.

So yeah. Look at sellers. You'll find a much better price on just about everything.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

It’s always cheaper on EBay.

Keep consuming that useless # people, don’t buy second hand or up cycle, China and the globalists depend on you.

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork
a reply to: toms54


Will stop using wishlist and shop elsewhere in search of lowest prices.

But this was never about ME, but about the billions and billions that they're racking in based on trying to take advantage of the gullible and it is called price gouging and it's not legal as far as i know.

Everything seems to be operating like it's ok, or just to give me advice on how to shop better.

I'm talking about criminal algorithms bilking the American people of a fortune!

Small shops always charged a markup on expensive items. There was the wholesale price and the retail price. Sometimes it was as much as 25%. I once went shopping for a 32-bit graphics board back in the 1990's. Those were specialist items back then, and cost £650 minimum. Retailers would charge anything from £750 to £1200 for the same item. When I tried to compare prices by getting a "quote", one supplier was so angry, he shouted down the phone "I'm not in business here to participate in Dutch auctions."

The same thing happened with hotel rooms during busy periods. That one hotel which still had a spare room free though they could charge what they liked. When online geo-location price scanners became available, suddenly all those spare rooms were immediately obvious and prices dropped back to normal.

originally posted by: norhoc
Well you don't have to buy from amazon

Hit the nail on the head.

Soon, Amazon will have killed off all opposition - especially high street retail - and with such a commanding market position we will all be shafted. Not just the public being shafted, but also the government.

Consider this. Amazon paid £1.7M in tax in the UK last year, off a turnover of billions. They probably paid less in tax than a single high street department store, the kind of business that is on the brink of collapse because of uncompetitive practices.

Oh, I know it's a changing world, but it's being done on an uneven playing field and where the cards will be stacked against the consumer in the long run. We'll rue the day when all we do is put money the pockets of Amazon's top executives and choice is poor.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

I've actually noticed some of my items in cart holding went down in price.

The other weird thing, I canceled Prime, and now receive items FASTER, much faster without it.

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork
Does anyone shop on Amazon, especially for consumer electronics like PC's and peripherals and gadgets?

If so, have you noticed the way that Amazon, in the most cunning way imaginable, suddenly alter prices, sometimes by hundreds of dollars (upward)?, and how they have these resellers (could even be Amazon sock puppets), selling the same product for hundreds, even 1000's of dollars over the lowest price, to play on the stupidity of people with too much money to spend and who lack the good sense to do some checking before they click through their shopping cart.

They know that people get certain ideas in their heads about having a certain thing (attachment), and that there are a lot of ignorant rich folks who impulse shop at the click of a button.. say forgetting what the price was when they placed in on their wishlist.

I've seen this happen in my wish list, basically the shopping list I make as I await more work pay etc to get the nice things I really want or have always wanted (in this case a gaming PC and super ultra wide 49 inch Samsung gaming monitor). Previously I waited for prices to drop, then suddenly and decisively blew about 5500.00, and I got really good price points by checking and rechecking.

I hadn't become a big spender yet ie: it could have been just a "wish" list without intent to purchase.

So as I built my wish list, the prices began to drop, with Amazon honestly reporting drops in price, which happened both on the monitor (dropped 300 from 1500 to 1200) and the gaming rig (dropped a few hundred on what was once a 2800 machine).

However, once or twice, they gave me a changed price that was much higher than what it was when on my wishlist, in the case of headset, by about 60 bucks and now on a TrackIR device, like 100 bucks more.

But once I made my purchases, and struck, things got worse in this regard..

There seems to be another level of trickiness to this price game and back and forth struggle with Amazon, soon to be the most successful company and the most influencial (CIA, Washington Post, etc) in the world today.

It's like I'm wrestling with a pricing algorithm that hopes to trip me up if I were to let my guard down.

Others are not so discriminating, which brings me to my point.

If Amazon are running price gouging algorithms against their customers, particularly on larger ticket items like consumer electronics, then just think about this for a moment, running across the board...

I'm just one person, and if I wasn't smart about things, I could have ended up getting screwed by 100's of dollars, easily!

And they're SNEAKY about it, they will try to dupe you into buying the thing you wanted before, based on a perceived value and impulse, at a much higher price, as if they can determine the price based on nothing but a whim or a well educated guess say on the part of the AI algorithm.

An AI crook and criminal at the heart of the interaction. "Oh, we really took that guy, let's try it again, but up the price by 500 or 1000.00, or 1000's and see if they might still buy it some of them and if so who and how many" - can the human behavior towards buying stuff be anticipated by the algorithm?

If they can get away with it, they'll put one past you and price gouge you.

When considered in the largest context of their entire inventory, my God, that's the crime of the century. It's criminal!

Very easy to detect and prove as well.

But nobody even bothers, because it's just Amazon selling stuff and if you're dumb enough to throw away your money to their tricky algorithm, well that's your own fault - but it's just not right to prey upon people and unwittingly dupe them into giving you way more money than the value of the product - and if this is distributed across the board..?!

Shopping on Amazon, can make you feel like you're stocking a criminal who's stalking you as potential financial prey, if you'll let them get away with it.

This is like big time criminal, if true, and it is true.

I can't be the only one to feel like getting a reasonable deal at amazon is like trying to avoid falling into a den of thieves and a pit of snakes.


Best regards,

Ankh

I do...seen no issues...also would never post or note a "wish list"...just leaves a giant door open.

I search when I need, order, pay, get it. And don't create "shopping cart-searching-log ins" for any buying/selling sites.

Ever..