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?
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.
It’s against FTC regulations in the US too. The trick is getting them to enforce it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I noticed this literally on the first Prime Day. Items on my list were ‘on sale’ and I was lucky enough I’d just looked through my list 2 days prior. Nothing had a deeper discount. It’s literally all fabricated to push the trash out they’re trying to get rid of, and push you to buy items you’ve been looking at. There’s not even a thin veil over it. Honestly been thinking of cancelling Prime because even the shipping has been bullshit lately.
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.
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’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 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.
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?
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!
You’re a dipshit sucker dumbass if you bought anything, at any point, on the existence of advertising, of Hallmark holidays, Easter, Christmas, any given holiday, pseudo holiday, religious holiday, non-religious holiday, your mother’s, and/or anyone in your family’s special event… And on and on. How fucking naive does one have to be, in today’s world, to think prices wouldn’t be jacked up prior to a sales event?
