YSK: Many price drops aren't what they seem...

subutai@lemmy.ml to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 392 points –
Score a discount on Amazon? You might’ve unwittingly paid more.
news.ufl.edu

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.

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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 use Keepa and it has worked great for me. I'll try out Camel³ next.