This week I was going to burn off an old Xmas Borders gift card at Amazon.com and buy one of the MST3K sets for myself. The sets have always, so far as I know, been $26.95 (or so, change may differ), I know because I’ve bought another one before, but they raised the price to $44.99. I have noticed this fluctuation before, prices changing every time I look at them, but never for something that I wanted to buy, and this is the largest fluctuation I have ever seen. It is usually on DVDs, for instance the same thing happened when I was window-shopping on two separate occasions for a copy of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Then, though, the change was only two or three dollars.
So that makes me wonder, what’s the business strategy here? Why would a company raise the price of an item by $18 overnight? Surely the customers who have been window shopping for them realize that the price has changed, and if it’s too high (as it is now, for me), they’re not going to buy the product. I know that the MST3K set was not on a temporary sale since the sets have been on my Amazon wishlist for years and have always been $26. Why the change in this item, and all the others? Is this some business savvy I’m not missing? And when can I expect them to change back (if I can)?
I can’t answer for Amazon’s buisness policy, but I will mention that as a user you can put items into your ‘shopping cart’ and then move them to the 'save for later ’ section. Having done this, every time you open the shopping cart you will get a message in red at the top if anything in the cart or saved section has changed price since last time you looked. This is a good way to check for items reduced in price allowing you to take some advantage of this Amazon price changing policy.
AFAIK, it’s the same sort of yield management scheme that airlines use to adjust the price of a seat, but on a far slower speed.
I had a sewing machine case - hardly as popular as MST3K - in my cart, and it was originally something like $24.95 - two weeks later the red notice said its price had increased to $29.95. Last week, a red-letter notice shows up saying the price has decreased to $17.95. (Glad I waited so long to buy it!)
You act as though this is unique to Amazon. I can’t think of any major retailer that doesn’t sell items for a sale price from time to time. If you buy when the item is on sale, you pay less. If you buy a week later, you pay more.
Not sure if this is common knowledge, but Amazon will pricematch itself if an item’s price decreases within 30 days from the time you placed your order.
Say you buy a $1000 computer, and a week later it becomes $800. Contact them and tell them that you’d like them to pricematch their current price. And that’s it, you’ll get $200 back.
[QUOTE=davenportavenger]
This week I was going to burn off an old Xmas Borders gift card at Amazon.com and buy one of the MST3K sets for myself. The sets have always, so far as I know, been $26.95 (or so, change may differ), I know because I’ve bought another one before, but they raised the price to $44.99. I have noticed this fluctuation before, prices changing every time I look at them, but never for something that I wanted to buy, and this is the largest fluctuation I have ever seen.
Huh
I just checked my Amazon order history, I purchased 6 box MST3K sets in 2004 and 2005 and paid I $44.99 for all of them.
This bit me in the ass the other day. I was looking at the 17-DVD Emma Peel Megaset of the Avengers. Amazon had it for $89.99, a steal compared to the $189.99 list price. I put it in my cart, but decided to sleep on it overnight. When I got up in the morning, I found that it had been raised to $179.99, so naturally, I canceled the order. The next day, it cane down to $102, where it remains.
