Amazon's strange pricing?

BigBouncyBall

Have people ever noticed amazons prices vary from hour to hour?

I placed an order at about 6pm for an item costing £5.96, I look back this evening at about 8pm and it had gone down to £5.44. Now i look again and it's back at £5.96!

What's going on here. I've noticed similar things happen in the past?

I can see what's happening - if you don't buy it the first time, lower the price by 10% and you think you're getting a bargain.

dmg24

Is this relating to marketplace items or Amazon's own products?

BigBouncyBall

I think it's a marketplace item but it has free super saver shipping so i think it's their Jersey outfit (indigo starfish)

Xbigman

For imported items its the exchange rate that fluctuates. Because of the way Amazon converts prices to pounds added to their pricing items at the current rate, rather than the price thay paid for their stock, the fluctuations can be up to 10%.
UK marketplace variations are down to the seller. I cleared out some DVD's recently by selling them on Amazon and I watched to make sure I was the low price seller. I did change one price about 6 times in one day.
Regards


X

Pollycat

BigBouncyBall wrote: »

Have people ever noticed amazons prices vary from hour to hour?

I placed an order at about 6pm for an item costing £5.96, I look back this evening at about 8pm and it had gone down to £5.44. Now i look again and it's back at £5.96!

What's going on here. I've noticed similar things happen in the past?

I can see what's happening - if you don't buy it the first time, lower the price by 10% and you think you're getting a bargain.

Even the prices for items direct from Amazon (not Marketplace items) fluctate wildly.

If I'm interested in a CD or DVD, either for me or as a gift, I'll put it in my basket (I sometimes have up to 30 items in there) and every time I log on to my Amazon account it gives me notification of prices that have increased or decreased.

I've seen some CDs at £2.99 which have increased to £5.98 over a period of time.

Fella

I was waiting to buy a laptop from Amazon last year. The price fluctuated wildly almost on a daily basis, between about £640 & £720 IIRC. I just made sure to finally buy it when it was at it's cheapest!

(& this was always from Amazon, not one of their other sellers).

Pollycat

I've just logged onto my Amazon account and 10 out of the 35 items in my basket or 'saved for later' have had a price change.

OK, some are just a few pence higher or lower but as Fella says, on more expensive items it could be quite a lot of money.

I think it's called supply and demand.