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.
For stuff on Amazon, I use https://camelcamelcamel.com/
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 :)
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 disagree.
While I have seen prices rise right before a sale, the discounted prices are almost always slightly less than what they usually go for.(In the case of Amazon, dunno about other sites)
IIRC in Poland all stores have to show the price from month ago to prevent this kind of abuse.
Yeah it’s a new EU rule. I can’t find that info on amazon though, maybe they still have time to implement it?
I think it’s similar in Germany. At the very least, it’s illegal to falsely claim price reduction by raising prices beforehand (I think they still do it, but over longer periods).
Actually, you don’t even need to change the price to get customers to buy something “on sale”. The supermarket I’ve worked in for a couple of years regularily advertised a certain brand of soft ice cream this way (not going to say any names here). “Only 2,99€ this week” (without comparing that price to anything in particular) and people bought that stuff en masse, even tho that was the exact same price as the week before, and the same price again after the “sale”. The only thing that changed during the “sale” week was the color of the price tag.
Laws regarding these types of advertising only work if customers actually compare prices, and most just don’t do that.
Yeah, I’ve noticed such offers as well. Idk, is it just me or does it feel quite close to Täuschung?
It’s mandated by the EU: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52021XC1229(06) (see point 6a).
There is a small, but growing, number of retailers that have decided to apply this worldwide. Perhaps GOG is the most noteworthy. Look at anything that’s discounted there and you’ll see their “usual” price, as well as the lowest price they sold it for in the last 30 days before the current discount started. It’s a good rule, makes me more inclined to feel I’m actually getting a good deal, wish more places would do it
