Amazon Prime Day

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

When logged in and a Prime member



When not logged in or not a Prime member



The discount in the first screenshot is against the RRP rather than the usual, non-deal price, when an item doesn't have an RRP Amazon displays this instead:



and that seems fine to me as it shows how much the saving is against the non-deal price, but given the varying ways of displaying the % saving and the lack of any comparison pricing to the "non-deal" or regular price in the first screenshot it comes across as somewhat misleading to me and could be taken to imply the Prime Big Deal is saving you 26%, particularly as they use the world "big" and the actual saving over the regular price is only 5%.

Any thoughts? 

Mark_d

I use a browser extension called "The Camelizer" that shows a graph of how the price of any Amazon item changes.  Sales are often misleading.  A lot of retailers bump up prices before announcing sales and quoting huge discounts.

molerat

^^This^^  I always use Three Camels to check the price before I buy anything on Amazon at any time, not only during their dubious sales.

Arunmor

And I generally check other retailers, the 3camels etc.  OK the discount may catch my eye but then I just check everywhere else before buying.

Have just checked looks like a special deal for Prime Days, bundle has only been listed since 5 October

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

3camels is handy but doesn't seem to capture everything, a certain Bluetooth speaker the other day was £24.99 with a 20% seller voucher to use making it £19.99 (one of those vouchers on the product page that anyone can use), today it's a Big Prime Deal at £19.99, so the exact same price..... 

DullGreyGuy

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:
Any thoughts? 

It's relatively small issue compared to either the likes of TK Maxx or Outlet/Discount centres who do worse all year round. 

It's a little disingenuous but they are ultimately showing the discount against a real and recognisable number. The others either 1) have their own brands not sold anywhere else so the RRP is fake and no one anywhere has ever used it or 2) compare the "for discount only" model sale price to the RRP of the standard product. 


Ultimately its online shopping, takes seconds to check the price against other sellers which will tell you both how much most are selling it for and what the real saving will be. 

Only recently came across CamelCamelCamel... been very disappointed with it so far. The charts are interesting but of the circa 10 items tracking 4 of them show wrong prices in their website

forgotmyname

Cancelled prime and for some odd reason my deliveries seem to be faster than with prime.

Ordered some items on Saturday and chose the free delivery Tuesday option, if offered the usual 99p or subscribe to get next

day delivery but it arrived the next day after choosing the free option.

DullGreyGuy

forgotmyname said:

Cancelled prime and for some odd reason my deliveries seem to be faster than with prime.

Ordered some items on Saturday and chose the free delivery Tuesday option, if offered the usual 99p or subscribe to get next

day delivery but it arrived the next day after choosing the free option.

That would be the same as prime assuming you mean it was delivered on Sunday?

Prime, in principle, gives the promise of an early delivery, that doesn't mean someone who isn't prime won't get the same speed without the promise. Living within short delivery range of a couple of Amazon Warehouses Prime will often get Same Day delivery for us, never had that with a non-prime order. 

Unfortunately recently seems most the things we want are sold by Amazon EU rather than UK so takes a couple of days either way. 

Grumpy_chap

I never have Amazon Prime other than when there is a free trial period.
Other than the fast and free delivery, I have not seen that Prime actually offers anything anyway.
The proof this week is that "Prime Day Deals" are often available anyway to non-Prime customers, just labelled differently.
The delivery has steadily reduced.  When Prime first launched, we had delivery within 1 hour through Prime.  I placed an order yesterday and the fastest "Prime" delivery is next Monday so hardly any better than just taking the standard free delivery option that there nearly always is.
I have no idea what Prime actually costs as I always cancel before the end of the free trial period, but I am surprised anyone continues to pay for Prime.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Grumpy_chap said:

 I placed an order yesterday and the fastest "Prime" delivery is next Monday 

To be fair to Amazon I placed 3 orders on Tuesday (two in the morning and one in the evening) and all 3 arrived on Wednesday, I'd imagine the longer times are from people coming home from work on Tuesday night and ordering the "deals" meaning Amazon can't get the stuff out the door as fast. 

I saved £2.20 on some paint rollers (seems a genuine discount), around £6 on a Lego set (it will probably drop again in the future but it's a new set from this year and based on similar sets won't be discounted as often as other Lego) and a few other bits for Christmas including something in June that cost me £19.99 and was £12 yesterday. 

I rarely shop on Amazon, mainly because it's so expensive, but occasionally my wife wants something on Amazon and will spend the £35 to get free shipping where as if I see something on there I fancy I usually just get annoyed about paying £4.99 delivery and so don't spend any money at all. 

DullGreyGuy said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:
Any thoughts? 

It's relatively small issue compared to either the likes of TK Maxx or Outlet/Discount centres who do worse all year round. 

Don't they have a few items in store at full price and use that to match against? I agree it's all misleading nonsense, same as the sofa, carpet and furniture stores who have never ending sales.

There used to be a pricing practices policy from the OFT which prohibited comparison to the RRP if it wasn't a price the goods were typically sold at, since the CCRs have came in a lot of companies seem to be willing to push their luck as enforcement is lacking and if someone does get a clip round the ear they'll have made enough from the practice and will then stop doing that particular thing. 

There is this document detailing a whole host of scenarios:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1146747/OCA_business_open_letter_FINAL.pdf

but no mention of RRP.

The ASA CAP code does suggest not comparing to an RRP unless commonly sold at such but I don't think that covers physical stores (but I think it does cover websites). 

Sellers on the Etsy forum were complaining about Etsy pushing an ad of 40% off from their sellers and how it isn't achievable, sure a few items might have a very high mark up but again I'm sure most of it is artificially inflate the price then claim a high discount. 

20 years ago you could get some genuinely good deals online, now it seems competition has pushed everyone to the same minimal margin and the majority of "offers" are just the normal price. 

DullGreyGuy

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

DullGreyGuy said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:
Any thoughts? 

It's relatively small issue compared to either the likes of TK Maxx or Outlet/Discount centres who do worse all year round. 

Don't they have a few items in store at full price and use that to match against? I agree it's all misleading nonsense, same as the sofa, carpet and furniture stores who have never ending sales.

Outlet stores certainly dont and they are effectively passing off... looking at a suit jacket the original in store was model was 50% cashmere, 50% wool with a floating canvas construction, hand made button holes and working cuff. The Outlet version was 35% cashmere, 35% wool and 30% nylon, fused canvas, machined button holes and non-working cuff but the tag gave the model name and RRP as the in store version despite being materially cheaper to make.  

TK Maxx and their own brand items? I'd be highly surprised if they did as dont ever remember seeing anything in store that wasnt marked down. They also do the above, CK etc make budget versions of their products to be sold in store but TK Maxx list their price against the standard version's RRP. 

Some may be very happy to have budget features, an online India based tailor I've used occasionally charges $100 to have them hand make the button holes and in most cases I dont choose it but its the dishonesty of it that I've issue with. 

Grumpy_chap said:

I never have Amazon Prime other than when there is a free trial period.
Other than the fast and free delivery, I have not seen that Prime actually offers anything anyway.
The proof this week is that "Prime Day Deals" are often available anyway to non-Prime customers, just labelled differently.
The delivery has steadily reduced.  When Prime first launched, we had delivery within 1 hour through Prime.  I placed an order yesterday and the fastest "Prime" delivery is next Monday so hardly any better than just taking the standard free delivery option that there nearly always is.
I have no idea what Prime actually costs as I always cancel before the end of the free trial period, but I am surprised anyone continues to pay for Prime.

Personally the fast free delivery is what most will be paying the charge for. They still have a 2hr window delivery option but what's available has moved more food orientated and the chances of the next window not being fully booked up these days is slim, esp Thurs-Sun evening. 

For us the majority of things are available either same day or next day delivery, there are exceptions and recently the brands we've been buying are from the EU but for other products there are plenty of things. 

Is the £95 value for money? Clearly depends on how much you order. Do you really need same day delivery on everything? No but we are ever more impatient so suspect people like it. 

Prime does include several things beyond just free fast delivery, Prime Video we do watch and there have been some good series exclusively there, Odeon ticket promo, unlimited photo storage, free e-books, music etc. Dont use all myself and see them more as a sweetener rather than the core reason for subscribing.