Warning - Amazon gives different people different prices on the same items! Warm deal: Orinoco gold card $70.99 shipped

[sanvara]

Warm deal: Buy.com sells the Orinoco gold pc card for $99. You can get it for $70.99 shipped (after $5 off $35 coupon) at amazon if you play around with cookies and accounts as described in this thread. Lowest price on pricewatch.com is $73 shipped.

Heads up because if you aren't careful you could be paying more than you should at Amazon. This is so screwed up. I had heard rumors that Amazon gives different people different prices based on buying history and it slapped me in the face today. A $28 difference in price on the same damn item!

On one account I got this price:

Orinoco Gold 802.11b Wireless PC Card
Our Price: $75.99 ASIN: B00006BA7X

On a second account I got this price:

Orinoco Gold 802.11b Wireless PC Card
Our Price: $103.99 ASIN: B00006BA7X

On the first account I had not made a purchase yet. The second account I had made lots of purchases with coupons. I tested in on a few more accounts and the accounts I have with a buying history of using coupons got the $103 price and when I opened a new account just now to see what would happen I got the $75 price again just like I had on the account without a buying history.

So do your homework before you buy anything at Amazon again.

 

[RadioactiveMagpies]

Are you referring to the gold box? I think the gold box discounts might vary.
Amazon is trying alot of gimmicks lately. Shopping with them is becoming more like a shopping for a lottery ticket.
However, alot of people have had good duplicable deals, so the odds are nice.

 

[sanvara]

No! This is not a gold box thing. Amazon changes the regular everyday prices on items for different people based on their buying history. And they don't tell you. It's one thing if amazon says "here's a special price" like they do with goldbox but this is not the case. You have no idea what is going on unless you can catch it by logging into different accounts. I think this is outrageous.

 

[OrlandoTiger]

This sounds like an interesting way for them to recover money people saved using coupons and promotions,I cant say Im too suprised

 

[orangebang]

I know they used to use cookies all the time to charge what prices they feel are right.

There was a news article on this about 2 years ago...about how the writer of the article himself would order one thing, then he'd delete all the cookies, sign on as another user, and get a different price.

I guess it wasn't deemed very controversial, as Amazon is still doing it.

 

[ChiPHeaD32]

Actually, IIRC, they apologized to everyone who bought things at higher prices and refunded the difference. Maybe they thought it was time for this to make a comeback?

Not the greatest thing for consumers, IMO (unless you can always get the lowest price somehow... maybe by manipulating cookies? Hmmmmmmm...)

 

[AsukaStrikes]

that shady amazon place is still in business?!

 

[sanvara]

I forgot to mention I had to delete my cookies to get the $75 price. The way I caught it is the $75 price came up first. I then logged into another account and it was $103. I went back into the original account and the price had jumped to $103 so they must have put something in my cookies. I deleted my cookies and went back into the original account and it was back down to $75.

Also, it's not just your cookies that determine the price because after I deleted cookies and went into the account that had the $103 price, the price was still in effect and did not drop to $75 like on the original account.

Finally, after I bought it at $75 ( minus $5/$35 coupon of course) the price jumped to $103 on that account and deleting cookies will not bring the price back. So there is either a trigger with your order history or use of a coupon that gives you higher prices.

 

[Oakenfold]

Wow, some people still don't know about this?
Yes it is true. This was an interesting topic in a strategic E-commerce course that I took last semester, I'm not familiar with any other sites that do use this practice other than Amazon. Always use a PC with no cookies on it when you are shopping around for prices(on amazon anyhow), you will sometimes get different pricing.
YMMV

Please PM me if you know of any other sites that do this, I find it very interesting.

 

[msh111]

Ok, so let's say theoretically you buy a new computer which has never even been online. You set it up, open your browser and go to Amazon. You browse with no ID or cookies on your computer innocently and stumble across the Orinoco Gold 802.11b Wireless PC Card
Our Price: $75.99 ASIN: B00006BA7X and decide it's what you want to buy for that price. You then place it in your cart and then sign in with your account. You mean they will actually change the price right in your cart from the $75.99 to $103.99 since it's YOU? Or even cancel your order after the fact?

 

[sanvara]

"Always use a PC with no cookies on it when you are shopping around for prices(on amazon anyhow), you will sometimes get different pricing."

Oakenfold: Good idea to clear cookies of course, but it's not just cookies that give you a higher price though. It's order history as well. You could have no cookies and still get the higher price if you have ordered certain items (or maybe also if you have used coupons in the past). So the only way to ensure lowest price seems to be to clear cookies and use a virgin account that has never made a purchase.

msh111: They won't cancel the order, but yes, the price changed when I went from one account to another.

 

[kewl]

09/29/00 SEATTLE (AP) In the space of two weeks, online retailer Amazon
has been forced to apologize, issue refunds and appease angry customers after
being found to have charged some people higher prices than others for the same
items.


Link

 

[sanvara]

Originally posted by: kewl
09/29/00 SEATTLE (AP) In the space of two weeks, online retailer Amazon
has been forced to apologize, issue refunds and appease angry customers after
being found to have charged some people higher prices than others for the same
items.

Link

They apologize and yet they are still doing it!

"Amazon has no immediate plans for more random testing, but Curry wouldn't rule it out in the future."

The future is now here.

 

[Pothead]

this is old news and the wrong forum

 

[sanvara]

Ok here's an interesting twist to this whole thing. On some of my accounts if I refresh the page repeatedly it will switch back and forth between the two prices periodically but on the account which I actually bought the item at $75 no matter how many times I refresh the page it won't change off of the $103 price. So amazon must have something in the pricing code that will not give you the lower price if you already bought it once at the lower price.

 

[koumei]

isn't it illegal to have price discrimination?

 

[SP33Demon]

Thanks for the heads up... buy.com has the lowest prices anyway, and there have good coupons too.

 

[DeafeningSilence]

Originally posted by: koumei
isn't it illegal to have price discrimination?

Of course not! No law forces a company to sell you items at the same price as they sell to someone else. Nearly every company in nearly every industry takes the opportunity to establish different contracts/prices with different customers.

 

[buddry]

Originally posted by: koumei
isn't it illegal to have price discrimination?

Then car dealers would have to post thier actual selling price. You know that they don't give everybody the same price.

 

[Yobbo]

I think its only illegal if its marked for a price, say $1, and they try and charge you more for it because of who you are.

 

[Nutzo]

Guess that's why I rarely find anything worth buying at Amazon, since I always use coupons and/or gift certificates

 

[rugger29]

I definitely don't think what they're doing is in any way illegal. I do this it is unethical, and it will bite them in the ass as a Customer Service/PR nightmare.

I also have a suggestion for people, instead of having to mess with your internet settings constantly and deleting cookies. Goto http://www.anonymizer.com and download the free browser plug-in. Then you just click a button to turn it on or off.

I found this worked for issues with the Gold Box. I hadn't seen the gold box in about 2 weeks, but then it magically appeared when I was surfing anonymously. Now, with the free service you can't visit secure pages, so once you put it in your shopping cart, you'll have to click back to regular mode. I'm actually considering buying a subscription to this place... $10 for 3 months isn't bad at all.

Let me know if it works for you guys!

 

[RSG2]

Didn't I walk into a time warp? I could swear I remember Amazon getting hammered for this once before a long time ago. You would think places would learn that you just aren't going to get much by people these days in terms of pricing on the internet. With all of the hot deals forums alone you bound to get caught at it.

 

[Harvey]

I remembered that Amazon got caught doing this, before, so I did a searched Google for amazon.com and "different prices". Using quotes tells the system to search for the text string. If found a lot of articles. Here are just a few:

Sept. 5, 2000 -- "Amazon charging different prices on some DVDs" by LINDA ROSENCRANCE (ComputerWorld)

Sept. 7, 2000 -- "Online Prices Not Created Equal" by Craig Bicknell (Wired News)

September 29, 2000 -- "Amazon may spell end for 'dynamic' pricing" (USA Today) -- This one is especially interesting. It says:

SEATTLE (AP) -- In the space of two weeks, online retailer Amazon.com has been forced to apologize, issue refunds and appease angry customers after being found to have charged some people higher prices than others for the same items.
Amazon and 'dynamic pricing'

With the virulent reaction of Internet-savvy customers and Amazon's rapid decision to drop what it called ''random-pricing tests,'' other online retailers will now think twice before offering different prices to different customers.

Amazon has faced allegations ? which it denies ? that the varying prices were based on customer data it obtained via software interactions with shoppers as they visited its site.

Such data could include a person's address and how much he or she might have previously bought at Amazon.com.

''We've never tested and we never will test prices based on customer demographics,'' founder Jeff Bezos said in a news release late Wednesday.

This is the same company that, after initially promising to keep all customer data confidential, unilaterally changed its policy and decided that all the information they had accumulated was now considered a corporate asset subject to sale.

Obviously, these lying SOB's have not learned anything in two years. For me, the answer is simple. I will NOT do any business Amazon.com, EVER! :|

 

[Mangos]

Maybe sometimes their prices are higher...just buy from someone else with a lower price, then.

Amazon has created a LOT of really great prices for a lot of people...

chill...