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Amazon? Evil? Never! (ok, maybe a little)
At crookedtimber there is much anger over Amazon’s pricing system. Looking to verify this I found that while amazon is being evil, it’s not in the way expected. Instead of setting prices per person, they are playing games with shipping costs so that all of their vendors end up costing the same.
Responding to the directions for checking in the original blog post:
I noticed on the top of the page a line that said “This item is not eligible for Amazon Prime when purchased from DigitalEtc. See more buying choices” where the last four words are a link that goes to a page of vendors for this card. At the top there is your $17 card from the only vendor that is eligible for Prime, where as the $10 one is marked as ‘item low price’. That page also notes that the $10.45 card isn’t eligible for either the Prime or Supersaver shipping, and will always cost you $6.68 in shipping.
This is amazon playing games with multiple vendors, not playing games with pricing per person. More interestingly, on the ‘featured vendor’ list all 4 of them are listed as ‘price’ in large letters, and ’shipping’ in small letters, and all 4 are exactly $17.13 when totaled.
I have attached a screen shot
22. December 2008 at 10:52
Hi, thanks for looking into this. I see your and others’ point. I’d just like to note one more time that if I’m being charged $17.13 when I’ve already paid for shipping at a Prime member then I’m actually being charged more than anybody else for this product. It may be sunk cost, but it is still a cost.
22. December 2008 at 19:20
As the independent vendors set the prices and the shipping charges, whatever game is being played is being played by the vendors, not Amazon. It is obvious that Eszter doesn’t understand the Amazon Prime program and no one can get through to her that only products sold and/or stocked by Amazon are ever eligible for it. Of course, they do list other vendors offering the same product, new or used. Those prices are no secret and are often less than Amazon’s own price. Those products are not shipped by Amazon but direct from the vendors themselves at their expense. Eszter is complaining because she wants the best of both worlds without paying for either: any cheaper price offered by an outside vendor and shipping via Amazon Prime despite the fact that Amazon itself is not the vendor, the warehouser nor the shipper. Strange that someone with a PhD in communications has failed to understand the simply stated program, the obvious outside vendors, nor the repeated attempts by various commenters to educate her.