Amazon reportedly used a secret algorithm to jack up prices — A new report details Amazon’s Project Nessie pricing algorithm

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 489 points – Amazon reportedly used a secret algorithm to jack up prices
theverge.com

Amazon reportedly used a secret algorithm to jack up prices — A new report details Amazon’s Project Nessie pricing algorithm::Amazon deployed a secret algorithm to gauge how high it could raise prices before its competitors stopped increasing their prices as well.

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Use Keepa or CamelCamelCamel to see the price history of the item you want to buy.

YSK this data is not entirely accurate. It relies entirely on Amazon's API, which has been problematic in the past.

Still a useful tool, nonetheless.

in Slovakia there is an aggregator site where stores can publish the stuff they are selling and the price it automatically keeps track.

well the smartwatch I have despite being in Slovakia shut up to 250 euros a month before Black Friday, then magically was many percentages off for 150.

of course the aggregator site showed that it was 150 for the whole year other than that "random" jump before black Friday

Not sure if it's just me but when looking at that in chrome on my phone the picture looks quite blurry and it's hard to make out much. Doesn't help that there doesn't seem to be a way to full screen it.

Load the page on desktop mode then click on the image. imgr is owned by reddit, so it's been fully enshitified as well.

If you are on android you can try the eternity app for lemmy. It works very well.

Amazon owns camelcamelcamel

Proof?

Ah I am incorrect. I was thinking of woot. Though they did shut down during the pandemic at Amazon's request

Yeah ever since then CCC has felt sort of unreliable to me. If they're willing to let Amazon tell them what data they can show once, they're willing to do it again. Maybe they're even doing it on an ongoing basis.

A "secret" algorithm. Unlike all those other companies that just publish their proprietary algorithms on the net for anyone to try and game.

My poor eyes are exhausted from all the rolling.

I guess "secret" in the sense that not only the internals of the algorithm, but even the existence of the it is not quite public knowledge.

This is news? I know that gas stations specifically have been doing it forever.

Surely every company makes decisions on how best to increase income, that's a pretty significant part of being a business.

Right? Amazon's monopoly is definitely a problem but this part feels pretty par for course. Finding the sweet spot between price/competition/demand is like business fundamentals 101. I can assure you this is something all major retailers consider. There are also many analytics companies with their own "secret" algorithms (this probably just means proprietary?) focused on things things like pricing elasticity and optimization and are targeted to these retailers.

while(amazon_price < GetCompetitorPrice()) {
  amazon_price += 1;
  Sleep(kOneHour);
};
our_price = GetCompetitorPrice() - 1;

”SeCrEt AlGoRiThM!!!!1” - The Verge

There is still massive price manipulation on amazon which is why I don’t have a prime account for home or anything on “subscribe and save” any more.

"Subscribe and save" is a scam.

They advertise that you will save 5% by using subscribe and save, but then the price of the item you are buying just happens to go up by 30% on the day they decide to use as the basis for your order, which is not the day you ordered it or the day they pulled it off the shelf. It will occasionally go back down to a normal-ish price, but there will also be random months where it goes up 50% or 100%. I've seen $15 case of paper towels go up to $45 some months.

Then they keep prodding you to add more items to get 10% off your entire subscribe and save. I added some items a few weeks ago, got the extra discount percentage, but when they priced my order a few weeks later, the cat food I've been getting from them at a pretty stable price suddenly went up in price by the exact amount the extra discount was saving me.

Amazon essentially took the "four square" concept that car dealers use to shift higher costs to an area of the transaction where you are less likely to notice it.

That's why I micromanage my subscriptions way before the last day to edit when further change are impossible:

  • I always leave at least 5 items with delivery 6 months regularly (to max out 15% rebate)
  • I always keep an eye on Camel³ and Keepa, local merchants pricing and my previous orders for best price possible (as long as its not over 15% my best price I keep the subscription otherwise I reschedule it to next month, but not skip)
  • I skip anything I don't actually foresee the household needing the next 5 months
  • I sometime keep items I need if and only if the best price is from Amazon compared to other local merchants (flyers, in store, online) even though its not a historical best price not even my best price
  • "Skip All" if I cannot manage to get a good deal with at least 15% subscribe rebate

Usually I manage to get 7+ different items every month with additional coupons and multibuy rebates (5 for -5%, buy 3 for 6$, etc.).

Last month, surprisingly I somehow managed to combine 60+ items over 14 differents subscription orders all combined and shipped within 5 boxes (3 of them were too heavy to carry alone).

However, this month a can't seem to find and assemble more than 2 subscription order of regular thing I actualy need. Hence, I may entirely skip November's delivery.

On top of that, I don't have/use Prime most of the time. I only pay 2$ for a week of prime whenever a big sale day is upcoming or that there is a exclusive prime only rebates (prime day, black friday, boxing day). Or take the free 30 days trial when available.

Prime is more of a headache for me because Amazon always tries to rush deliver the package with any courrier services they can without ever trying to combine orders. Therefore, we end up having to track multiple different deliveries through multiple different tracking service. Unfortunately, some courriers are regularly terrible at delivering.

In contrast, without Prime, orders tend to take in average over 4+ days before shipping. Enough time to usually combine 3 or more orders in 1 package. And delivered by Amazon's own delivery truck.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The existence of the algorithm, codenamed Project Nessie, was first revealed late last month in a complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission accusing the e-commerce giant of violating US antitrust law.

“We once again call on Amazon to move swiftly to remove the redactions and allow the American public to see the full scope of what we allege are their illegal monopolistic practices,” FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar told the Journal Tuesday.

Project Nessie is just one of many ways the FTC has accused Amazon of illegally maintaining its market dominance in the e-commerce industry.

In the agency’s September complaint, the company is accused of using a variety of methods, like burying listings, to deter sellers from offering products at a lower price on competing platforms.

“The complaint sets forth detailed allegations noting how Amazon is now exploiting its monopoly power to enrich itself while raising prices and degrading service for the tens of millions of American families who shop on its platform and the hundreds of thousands of businesses that rely on Amazon to reach them,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement last month.

Responding to the suit, Amazon said that the FTC was “wrong on the facts and the law and we look forward to making that case in court.”

The original article contains 322 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 34%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Well yeah, did you think your landlords were the first to use such algos?

Breaking news! Company tries to find optimal price point.

I am shocked that business changed prices to meet demand. SHOCKED!

The article doesnt talk about changing prices based on demand, it is about changing prices based on competitors' prices.

And yea, if Target increased their prices when Amazon increased, then they would just all be higher. Then they could do it another round and another round until one of the companies decided they were at the limit.

If the two companies talked to each other about this, it would be illegal collusion. But instead they have code automate it without an explicit conversation, which may not be illegal but certainly makes our lives worse.

This isn't an interconnected two way API/algorithm. There is no collusion here. That requires a two way communication and agreement. Amazon is taking public data and automating what every company out there already does.

At best Amazon will get pegged if they are using internal pricing data, but they likely are using publicly available data from the site to avoid that.

Amazon gets sales data, not just pricing data that can be scraped.

Its the extra data they get by controlling the platform/marketplace that becomes problematic imo.

I agree that could be a sticking point, and maybe end up with a minor fine for that. Amazon (and Google+ Ms) typically are very good at separating that data. I'm not sure what Amazon would use that here.

The details are sparse, but that's not what I read they are doing here.

You have more faith in the ethical behavior of Amazon than i.

I have a feeling that, if they are separating data properly, it's not to be ethical and good. I would imagine they do this for compliance.

Amazon is pretty upfront with customer data and protects it well. You might not agree with their policy, but they've never lied to the b2b and AWS customers.

I have no idea why you are being down voted.

Probably because the pricing changes weren't driven by demand, but rather by competition.

Because demand based prices is manipulative bullshit from corporations.

In Oklahoma during that 2021 winter storm, demand based pricing charged power companies billions for natural gas, this in turn caused rolling blackouts until Oklahoma disconnected from the Texas. The charges were over 100x the normal rate, consumers are still playing for that winter storm with an extra surcharge which I'm guessing will stay there for a long as time.

Mind you this was caused by Texas based energy companies cheaping out when they deployed their infrastructure. And these same companies either get bailed out by the people or get windfall profits for fucking up. There is no justification for this type of pricing model.

Amazon ain't serving you heat and electricity. You can go get your plastic from any number of retailers. Amazon is just automating more competitor analysis and using that data to automate pricing.

There is nothing going on here that doesn't go on in every industry. The only way they get in trouble is if they are using internal pricing data that's only available to them. In which case they can just scrape the public data instead