Amazon price fluctuations - buy now or wait?

martyp

Hi all,
I'm not massively familiar with Amazon, I wondered if some Amazon enthusiasts might be able to give some indication of price changes. I found a type of watch I really like which seemed cheaper than on ebay etc by quite a bit. I remembered the prices and on two of them the prices have gone up once or twice since last weekend already.
I can't decide whether to buy now or take the gamble that the prices may come down...
Has anyone else watched items on Amazon and see the price go up then drop again or is it purely a complete gamble. Possibly a site that shows how the price of something on Amazon has changed (like with exchange rates etc)?
We've all had the pain of buying something only to see it on offer/cheaper shortly afterwards

Irn-Bru-Kid

martyp wrote: »

Hi all,
I'm not massively familiar with Amazon, I wondered if some Amazon enthusiasts might be able to give some indication of price changes. I found a type of watch I really like which seemed cheaper than on ebay etc by quite a bit. I remembered the prices and on two of them the prices have gone up once or twice since last weekend already.
I can't decide whether to buy now or take the gamble that the prices may come down...
Has anyone else watched items on Amazon and see the price go up then drop again or is it purely a complete gamble. Possibly a site that shows how the price of something on Amazon has changed (like with exchange rates etc)?
We've all had the pain of buying something only to see it on offer/cheaper shortly afterwards

If the watches are being sold by marketplace sellers, the prices will go up and down constantly as they try to get their listing to the top of the listing, which means being the cheapest.

It happens across all departments of amazon where third party sellers are trading.

wileycat

Try http://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/

Longer term look at the price of the item to give you a better idea!

jenniewb

IMO it really does seem luck of the draw. In September I used all my Amazon vouchers, carefully saved up over the years, to get a pair of boots for the winter. Javari had a 25% offer on but Amazon still had a better price. I even asked if Amazon would honor the Javari offer but they wouldn't.

So I log on to the site in October only to see they offer a 20% off discount on all clothes and shoes!! Grrrr!!! That is a significant difference to me and I am not happy! It would seem the law of averages states prices only rise on everything apart from electronics but in Amazons case it really does seem like luck rather then anything else.

I prefer the mantra Martin Lewis has: Do I need it? Can I afford it? This works better for me.

santer_2

I wonder if the price increases according to the orders placed for an item, maybe if there is a lot of interest they up the cost until the interest reduces

Lugh_Chronain

You could also try PriceProtectr which is similar to camelcamelcamel and is fairly reliable too, managed to get my TV using PriceProtectr. I do like camelcamelcamel though, have started using this site recently and appears very reliable.

Another one worth trying is Zeezaw. More info can be found here.

Incidentally, don't always assume Amazon is cheapest even when their prices go down. Best to double check somewhere else like MegaShopBot.com.

santer_2

Invisible hand for Firefox and Palemoon is worth a look as you just browse and if it finds better prices, it pops up with them

" InvisibleHand automatically finds the best prices on online shopping, flights & hotels in US, UK & Germany. "

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/invisiblehand/

http://www.getinvisiblehand.com/home

martyp

Many thanks all, that camelcamelcamel site is excellent and I've checked out the other sites and installed invisiblehand and that seems to work nicely (didn't come up with a cheaper price for the watches I was after though).
camelcamelcamel was really interesting as all the watches were around their lowest prices this year so far and within the last month/weeks some had dropped in price by around £150!!! I can imagine how people might feel if they'd paid that much more to see the price drop by around 40%

For example, one of them the prices fluctuated as follows:
July 2010 - £306
Dec 2010 - £170
May 2011 - £280
June 2011 - £170
July-Sept 2011 - £280
Oct 2011 - £150

Only a couple of weeks ago it was £280 and I was miffed about the price increasing in a week by £4...

Do you think the site is 100% honest with it's data? Just wondering if Amazon could fix it so that it looks like a bargain now, have you come across any that were really cheap a week ago but now really expensive?

All the watches seem to have massively dropped in price the last week or so which could be amazing or a little suspicious I'm not sure....

santer_2

Am going to try to note the lowest price for some items on camel, then check them a year later, maybe some items are more seasonal than others.

As to prices in general it could be that a retailer ups a price to a silly figure where nobody buys it, but can then reduce it by 70% even though the reduced figure is around what it should be anyway

Stompa

Irn-Bru-Kid wrote: »

It happens across all departments of amazon where third party sellers are trading.

It happens with Amazon themselves too.

Lugh_Chronain

santer wrote: »

Am going to try to note the lowest price for some items on camel, then check them a year later, maybe some items are more seasonal than others.
As to prices in general it could be that a retailer ups a price to a silly figure where nobody buys it, but can then reduce it by 70% even though the reduced figure is around what it should be anyway

You could be right though have noticed their prices tend to fluctuate fairly frequently through the year.

And as you've already pointed out, if there's a lot of interest they appear to up the price fairly soon after they've lowered it.

However, it does appear that their lowest prices don't actually appear all that often.