Amazon price manipulation

[optimistikcolouristik]

Today, I put one item in the basket which had a very good price. Later I came back to it and the price was nearly twice higher. Another seller in my wish list with the same product became unavailable. I have heard they use some price manipulation software but this is so annoying as you have no time to make a decision. Or is it cookies? Eventually I went to another website and bought the same product for a very good price.

[AMumInScotland]

This happened to me the other day, with the item going up nearly a tenner in the few days I thought about it. But they've shot themselves in the foot because I went to eBay and got one at the same price as it started.

I think they may find they start losing more than they gain with that strategy!

[Phantomquartz]

I find that it usually works in my favour. I tend to leave things in my basket for a couple of days and see if the price comes down.

[optimistikcolouristik]

Very interesting thread here:
"I've been listing a new book which retails at £39.00 and which I obtain 10 copies of a time at £18.88 each post free direct from the wholesaler. Recently a competitor who is a respected book seller, one of the Amazon companies , started undercutting me by 1p, no matter what price I put down within about 15 minutes they were 1p cheaper. When I put my price up, similarly they raised their price to 1p under mine.
Last Thursday I had some spare time on my hands and decided to play a silly and dangerous game. I reduced my price in stages by £5.00 each time and sure enough they reduced theirs. When my price was down to £6.00, theirs was £5.99 ! It appeared that they had not set any bottom limit on how low they would go as we were by now both listing at far lower than the very best trade price. Luckily for me nobody had tried to buy my stock so last I thought I would have one last go and at 14.50 put my price down to 2p. All of this price reducing had taken place over a 5 hour period and I had temporarily disabled the expedited delivery and overseas delivery options. At 15.10 their price was 1p. I immediately raised my price to the normal £36.20 each and at 15.17 I placed an order for the 8 copies they had listed at a total cost to me of £22.48. The funds were taken out of my account within about an hour and I received the despatched e mail from Amazon.
I then waited for the inevitable cancelled order by the seller but nothing happened.
Within the last 20 minutes I've had a delivery from My Hermes of the eight books that I ordered, impeccably wrapped, all in perfect condition at a saving to me of £128.56 plus postage of what I would normally pay. Inside the package there is no delivery note but a handwritten note on a sheet of headed paper saying ''Thank you for pointing out our pricing error''.
Now I feel guilty about what I've done and am considering offering them their books back so long as they pay for the postage ! Thoughts please."
sellercentral.amazon.co.uk/forums/message.jspa?messageID=1194821&tag=mumsnet&ascsubtag=mnforum-21

Dirty games!

[MeganChips]

It's usually cookies, exactly the same thing happens with flights and hotels.

Try using a different browser or clearing your cookies before going back to the site and see if it makes a difference.

[optimistikcolouristik]

Thank you MeganChips. I apologise for not answering sooner.
I have got a chromebook which makes things a bit more difficult as there is only one browser. The other day I added cookies cleaner and could not see pictures on my Pinterest. As a result I had to remove it.

[FantasticMrsFoxx]

I appreciate I'm reactivating an old thread but I use camelcamelcamel to monitor Amazon's prices. You can set up alerts to email you if a price rises or falls.
I'm looking to buy a new buggy and I'll be darned if I'm buying it at full price when the price tracker shows it drops by £150 fairly regularly (although only for a day or so, hence the need for the email alert).