TimeandTide

My "big" gift to my son this year is this Star Wars: Clone Wars Turbo Tank. I added it to my Amazon Wish List mostly as a reminder to myself to pick it up from Target where it's $99.99. Since putting it on my Wish List just last Thursday, the price has fluxuated from $75.99 (on Black Friday...didn't pull the trigger because end of the month = short on funds), to $112.99, to it's current price of $144.99.

I understand that Amazon (and its affiliated vendors) can change the price as often -- and as wildly -- as they want, but WHY do they do this? This item is readily available at Target and Wal-Mart at the steady price of $99.99. I get that consumers are sometimes grossly uninformed (like the guy buying Halo: ODST at Best Buy for $60 when it was $44 at Target NEXT DOOR...or a friend of mine who bought The Notebook at Boders for $29.99, when it was on sale that same week at BB for $10), but why change the price daily?

It's gotten so that buying on Amazon is like playing the stock market.

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Clone-Turbo-Vehicle/dp/B00244X7VY/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I2ST5VZFVZYD30&colid=2R98GMQTENZJD

Deftones

Maybe has to do with inventory levels. If they get low and have to reorder, the price could have changed. I've noticed it too, and it didn't use to be such an issue b/c Amazon would price adjust to a lower price after a certain amount of time. I think they stopped that policy so you do really have to pay attention to prices.

The other thing I see with that is that it's not being sold directly by Amazon. Sold by Brian's Toys fulfilled by Amazon. So basically Amazon is acting like the middleman and the price is set by the person who is actually selling the item.

dx23

There are a couple of theories about this.

1- Amazon is price matching almost every retailer online or B&M. With this goes the reasoning that the prices would go down on certain items.

2- Amazon's system keeps track of people who adds stuff to the cart. If they noticed people have added an item to the cart instead of the wish list and left it there for several days, they'll hike the price, because they feel the customer would buy it no matter what the price is.

3- When the price changes, you get a notice on your cart. These warnings keeps the items in the customers mind. You see that what usually happens is that you add the item to the cart.

Trevor

I wonder what the item # limit is for the shopping cart. I keep 100 or so items in my 'saved for later' just to monitor prices changes.

TimeandTide

Never thought to keep my wish list items in the cart instead to better monitor price changes. Good tip.

jjcool

Keep in mind that if you cant use the wishlist as an actual wishlist if you do this. IE no one else can see what is in your cart but you.

fujishig

Right, in this case the higher price is due to the vendor, which is not amazon, who probably exhausted their stock with the Black Friday sale.

I do see countless minor price changes, unrelated to price matching (usually less than a buck to a few dollars difference), and I think it's due to some algorithm their using that gauge people's buying habits against their inventory.

Jedi Master 33

I know that the Star Trek TNG Complete Series boxset randomly goes from aound $300 to over $400 and back sometimes.

amd555

old school econ, supply and demand

^MuYa^

It is now $159.95

DonnachaOne

Amazon simply charges higher prices to people who can't spell.

JCWBobC

I bought 2 Creative Vado video cameras for $49.95 each about 2 months ago. Within 2 hours the price went up to $85 and then down to $74.95 over the next week. Right now it's at $99.95 & sold by Amazon so it's not an outside vendor raising the price.

cpgator

When Amazon is out of stock, third party sellers jack up the prices to crazy amounts.

Drexl

Once I was going to buy this video card. Newegg's price was the same as Amazon's, but had free shipping (and of course Amazon always has their free shipping option), so the price was the same either way. I decided to buy it, and was going to get it from Newegg since they ship much faster to me. However, when I went back to the site (about an hour or two since the last time I looked), I noticed that Newegg removed its free shipping. So, then I decided I would get it from Amazon to get the free shipping, but when I checked, they had raised their price to the exact amount of Newegg's price plus their cheapest shipping option.

So, I bought it from Newegg.

rich-y

That's exactly what is going on in this case. Amazon does not have this in stock at the moment but some individual sellers do.

That's what meant by the link: "Available from these sellers".

As an Amazon Prime member, I can also see a warning at the top of the page that says, "Note: This item is only available from third-party sellers".

If you keep watching this item it may be restocked by Amazon. If so, you should see the Amazon price drop back down to normal. Often the individual sellers also drop their asking prices as soon as they see Amazon is selling it cheaper.

TimeandTide

Makes sense. Amazon had it for $75.99 during BF which probably wiped out their inventory. Wish I had the funds then to jump on that deal. Will pick it from Target B&M this week

Blows me away that anyone would pay $100+ when the item is readily available at Target and TRU (and WM, I'm assuming).

statcat

yes I've had times when I was going to order something from amazon and noticed a huge price increase which made me not want to of course. Comparing it to the stock market is pretty funny and kind of true.

Numanoid

I added an item to my cart the other day, then immediately clicked on the cart to checkout. Once in the cart I got a notice that in the three second interval the price had dropped by one cent. Thanks!