this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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My girl was looking for a dress for Halloween. Yesterday she found one on Amazon for € 35 and put it in the cart, but did not buy it. Today she looked it up again and it was € 50 so she asked me to look it up with my phone with my Amazon account - it turned out to be € 23 for me, less than half of what it’s for her!

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[–] [email protected] 169 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

Sure it's the same seller?? I'm pretty sure Amazon does not show different prices to different people. But the same product is often offered by several sellers, for different prices. And if for example one of you has Prime and fast shipping activated, it'll show the fastest option. Which might be more expensive. I'm pretty sure that's what's happening here. It'll say somewhere: Sold by XY, ships from Amazon.com. Make sure it says the same thing there.

Of if she put it into the cart and now Amazon sticks with the exact option... If the specific seller increased their prices over night, the shopping cart might stick to the seller and it becomes more expensive for her... While Amazon will offer you a different seller that's cheaper today. But everyone can choose which seller to buy from, if there are multiple for a product.

[–] [email protected] 96 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Price tracking systems like Keepa and CamelCamelCamel wouldn't work if they started doing this. I can verify that, when I get alerts, the price on Amazon is the same as the alert price.

[–] acosmichippo 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

yeah and I've done a lot of chatting about amazon products online at reddit, forums, etc over the last 20 years or whatever and never once seen people get different prices on the same amazon link.

[–] lunarul 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There are definitely different prices when I'm logged in vs when I'm not. My wife sends me a links to products, and I usually open any link in incognito windows. Several times I was not seeing the same price as her. Opening the same link on my account would show the same price.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I do get different prices I have noticed from shared links but I also don't have a prime account. The weirder part being that a lot of the time my prices seem lower without the account.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Or they would appear to work and would just be providing very wrong information

[–] IamAnonymous 12 points 2 months ago

This is the answer. I wanted to buy a pole saw and kept seeing different prices just throughout the day and later I noticed that it was from different sellers

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Yeah I've definitely been caught off guard by the different sellers selling identical products before. Check the URL and see if the ID is the same, it probably won't be.

[–] chaospatterns 8 points 2 months ago

Yeah there's a few reasons why the offer that wins the buy box (the term for which merchants offer is shown to the customer prominently) and is complex, but I wouldn't consider it particularly sinister or designed to mislead. If one person has prime and the other doesn't, it might weight more towards a prime offer which may be more expensive, a price from a merchant may have changed, or gone out of stock.

[–] Boozilla 70 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Can OP (or anyone) provide a legitimate source for this?

From what I can find, Amazon and its partners do dynamic pricing (based on various algorithms) but I can find no evidence / source that it does personalized individualized pricing.

IOW, dynamic pricing is not done at the individual shopper level, but can be based on many variables like lightning deals, sudden spikes in demand, inventory issues (over supply / under supply) and various other factors which are not related to the individual shopper.

Anecdotal evidence is interesting, but not persuasive.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

I haven't seen any studies, I seem to remember there was some news reports many years ago.

I do know that I've stood in my living room, on the same wifi, and looked art the same item from Amazon on my phone and my brother in laws phone and seen different prices. But that's just another anecdote.

[–] FenrirIII 4 points 2 months ago

Amazon doesn't track users, but it does have various sellers selling the same items. The search results aren't always in the same order and sometimes the price on the item page is based on whichever seller has that item.

For example, I wanted a faux leather jacket. I found dozens of them in various sizes from different sellers. Changing the size on one page changed the seller entirely.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Amazon countered price tracking by introducing coupons that only apply at checkout. Some products only use coupons for discounting now.

Just be aware that these prices may not be the true lows.

[–] BlackAura 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That explains why I see coupons more and more. Ty.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I’ve never seen a coupon on amazon

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

It's often a checkbox in green near the checkout button if the item and can be the most absurd percentages that shift daily and are often better discounts than sale days.

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[–] barsquid 7 points 2 months ago

Yes, and Prime-only discounts, so they cannot easily be scraped.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I haven't experienced that, but I used to do my amazon purchases at the end of the month until I noticed all the prices get raised around that time. So now I shop without rhythm to not attract the price inflation worm

[–] Agent641 4 points 2 months ago

The price must flow!

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (2 children)

This is an industry wide thing.

Some vendors detect if you are on a Mac, and the assumption is.you have money, and therefore the prices are higher

[–] Agent641 31 points 2 months ago

If they detect that you're using a 19 year old ThinkPad with Arch linux, they aggressively increase the price on thigh-high rainbow socks.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

changing my user agent to Brave so everyone thinks I lost my money to scams

[–] BigTrout75 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Then what about 🐪🐪🐪?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Another comment pointed out that apparently amazon fighting this with coupon system

[–] Squizzy 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Clear her browsing data and try again, this happens with flights too.

This is why fingerprinting is an issue.

Sidenote. I went to by a boxset of books for my partner and it was ~50 for the set, I got back to pay the next day and it is 100. On ye third day it is ~70 with a note that it is down from 110. Scumbaggery.

[–] Psythik 7 points 2 months ago

Use Firefox and max out all of its security settings. When you do this, the fingerprint protection is so good that not even Google can ID my PC anymore. I have to pull out my phone and confirm it's me every time I log in.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Camelcamelcamel is also good for seeing pricing shenanigans like this too. A box set a relative asked for was marked as $100 but on sale for $30 and checking camelcamelcamel I could see it's rarely listed at its list price and basically always marked down to $25-35 with spurts of time at $40-50

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Some products have discounted prices for Prime members.

[–] Nikls94 4 points 2 months ago

Neither of us has prime

[–] satanmat 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yep. Dynamic pricing.

Other people have reported it with travel sites when looking at flights, you get different prices on a Mac vs windows.

Vendors of any ilk would love to be able to adjust prices per customer.

[–] pivot_root 3 points 2 months ago

I need to try with my user agent set to a Chromebook. Maybe I'll even get a discount.

[–] Agent641 8 points 2 months ago

But does it fit you?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Does no one cross ship any more for the best deal? I haven't trusted online pricing in ages

[–] Creeoyfred 4 points 2 months ago

What is cross ship?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] TriflingToad 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

My guess is that it's something like camelcamelcamel which shows the prices over time in a graph? Here's an example of a frog plushie https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B09RN4YCXG?context=search&cpf=new-used

[–] richie510 4 points 2 months ago

People should never trust Amazon or the "% off deal" that Amazon is advertising. Always verify against camelcamelcamel.com to ensure that the price is actually a deal and not artificially inflated due to some demand spike or their algorithm thinking that you really need it right now.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

I only serf Amazon on private without being logging in, if I find something I like, then I copy the link to my regular browser.

If you’re not gonna give a lurker a good price, I’m not interested.

[–] cuuube 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yup, I have this same experience with my personal account vs. the business one I use at work. The business one has a higher price a lot of the time.

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[–] foggy 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Adblock premium cost is wildly different based on location.

Using a VPN I have found everything from $15/yr to $40/yr

[–] Glytch 9 points 2 months ago

You're paying for an ad blocker? uBlock origin is free and fully featured.

[–] Nikls94 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I pay for Mullvad VPN, that’s €60/yr ($65)

I know it’s much but I prefer mailing them a letter with the money to stay anonymous

[–] foggy 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I am using mullvad vpn as well.

I am saying that AdBlock premium has a different cost based on your location, which you can switch with your VPN.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Use uBlock origin instead. Cost is $0 forever, and it has the best adblocking by far.

You can augment that with an NextDNS account to do ad filtering at the DNS level. It is a pay service technically, but their free tier is very generous.

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