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Amazon hides cheaper items with faster delivery, lawsuit alleges
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Fun thing, if you don't sort by "Prime" you'll often find that there's another one of the exact item you're looking for - without Prime - but actually for a lower price. The Prime isn't actually free shipping, it's just baked into the price
Yeah I learned that a long time ago. Was looking for a new knife...
Amazon - $14.99 with Free Prime Shipping.
Sellers A & B - $9.99 with $5.00 shipping
Seller C - $4.99 with $10 shipping
But be careful that the other option has "free return shipping" included.
do you know if they're they taxed differently? so one might theoretically be slightly cheaper? /genc
I'm not sure about Amazon, but in the one eBay days stuffing the price of shipping versus the price of the item was a way sellers avoided percentage-based fees based on the item price.
What knife did you go with?
Large
Plus the delivery dates are a joke anyway. Prime or not my orders all show up in the same amount of time. Sure they promise it's always 1-2 days but that doesn't seem to matter.
I mean YMMV based on location, but I'm in a semi major city in canada and I ordered some stuff off Prime on Monday evening and it was here by yesterday afternoon. I've had non prime stuff come quickly too but not that quickly and the longest I think I've waited for something prime was 3 days.
In amazons defense it's 1-2 days shipping not processing or handling but they are definitely still deceiving
The details for Prime explicitly refer to it as Two Day Delivery, not shipping.
Better still, don't buy on Amazon. If you've seen their selling fees, you'll know why.
Is there a better amazon competitor?
I use Amazon to find stuff I want or need. Then I look to see if I can buy direct and more often than not it’s close or close enough in price and shipping. Or I look for a specialty retailer like B&H if it’s electronic, Jenson USA for bike parts etc. As a side bonus they usually know how to pack items properly too.
Most companies selling on Amazon are contractually prohibited to sell for less elsewhere, even from their own website.
This is true. I also noticed certain vendors will sometimes have their own SKU of the “same” product - they’re just a different spec. Asus and MSI laptops are one example.
Sadly not
I always price compare regardless of the search results. Mindlessly clicking isn't a good idea.
That's becoming increasingly more difficult though. Search engines (especially Google) have their top results polluted with links back to Amazon or sketchy sites, reviews etc
The actual products in Amazon - and now pretty much everyone with an online store - heavily mixed with 3rd-party Chinesium products with names generated by room full of cats and keyboards, and then further obfuscated by what their algorithm actually wants you to see, often to the point where it completely disregards your actual search terms.
It's not mindlessly clicking. Your could literally spend hours trying to find the thing you need but only seeing the thing they want to sell you.