New fee at Amazon.com?
 

I happened to stumble across this title, Hideaway, at Amazon.com. What is this sourcing fee their charging, a new way to make more money?

Hideaway (1995)

List Price: $9.95
Price: $9.95 + $12.51 sourcing fee & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.

Weird ... now I get either

List Price: $24.95
Price: $22.46 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.

or

List Price: $9.95
Price: $9.95 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.


Amazon.com must be playing if different pricing schemes.

I've seen that before and it looks to me like maybe some things that are in the middle of a price reduction, or about to have one, will have this anomaly show up.

They used to do that sometime ago. One reason I hardly ever used them in the past until about a year ago. If they start that again, no more orders from me. I remeber the different pricing schemes thing to.

Most of the Dover Thrift edition books (usually a dollar or two a piece) have a 2-3 dollar sourcing fee.

It sucks because these books used to be an awesome bargain.

It looks like the "sourcing fee" was some kind of temporary adjustment to get the price up to $22.46. I kind of remember seeing something like that before, many moons ago.

Also, you'll occasionally see books with a $1.99 handling fee, or somesuch. Usually, they're the kind of things that aren't in stock that have to special order.

If they're tagging fees onto the Dover Thrift books, it's probably because those books are so cheap that it's hardly worth their time to deal with them in their inventory. Mail order companies that have to keep inventory, pull, and package orders can lose money on low-priced items.