It happens everywhere in life - from hugely discounted online prices to suspiciously cheap used cars for sale by the side of the road – we're bombarded with supposed unmissable offers. There's a reason why the common expression 'trust your instincts' holds true – there's no such thing as a free lunch or a genuine bargain without a catch.
But some people lose all sense of perspective when shopping online. Their 'rip off radar' shuts down when they are shopping online. Perhaps, because they want the deal so much, they miss the fact that the deal is too good to be true.
Once the mouse is clicked and the courier arrives a couple of days later, it's somewhat unsurprising when the online bargain fails to live up to expectations. You knew it all along, but your inner online bargain hunter temporarily overrode your brain's facility for common sense.
Sometimes you feel so stupid you can't even admit your mistake by sending your online purchase back for a refund. It joins the other bits of tat in the shed, eventually being sold to cover the cost of the stall at your next car-boot sale.
How can we tell when a discount is real?
There must be times when companies genuinely need to shift a surplus of stock online. If you could check whether the supposed bargain is actually a rip off - something so badly made it's not fit for purpose - that would enable you to make a sensible purchasing decision.
Leave aside 'user reviews' - they simply aren't reliable enough on most websites. The only true way to assess whether a discount really is genuine is to have rapid access to the Amazon product history of the item you're thinking of buying. Imagine you need a new mower. If the price fluctuated from, say, £99 in the autumn to £125 in the spring, year on year, perhaps for three consistent seasons, a sudden drop to £30 might imply that the retailer is in urgent need of some warehouse space, or a product is being discontinued by a manufacturer. In that case, £30 is probably well worth a punt to grab a great bargain.
Conversely, if the price of the mower has always hovered (sorry!) between £30 and £50, then the chances are that the advertised “reduced by 75% for spring lawn event” is a simple untruth. It would be best to 'cut' your losses and look elsewhere.
An Amazon product history graph shows with instant clarity the selling price of any item on Amazon over a time period that you specify. You can either install a product history facility as a browser extension, or visit a product history website, then check the price of that product. Product history websites will have rapid access to databases of stock levels and price comparisons for multiple products over time.
You can use more than one browser window to compare the price history of competing products to see which has the most consistently competitive prices. You can also check dynamic pricing using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) where prices might fluctuate depending on your geographical location. For example, choose a VPN server located elsewhere, then search again to see if the price of an item is geographically dependent. If so, it's obvious which server to use before you make a purchase.
Pricing isn't straightforward anymore.
The more data that's flying around, and the more the practice of time-sensitive and geographically-dynamic pricing is enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, the more difficult it becomes to assess the true price of something.
After all, if an electric bicycle costs £500 when viewing a retailer's website from Lincolnshire, but costs £550 when the same product is searched from Yorkshire, you might be tempted to think that e-bikes are less popular where there are fewer hills. And you could be right. In that case, what is the 'real' price of any item in this new world of ecommerce?
Your response might be "who cares", especially if you're already using the tools at your disposal, from a VPN to an Amazon price history checker and searches on different devices while using 'incognito' mode. All these factors can influence the price you are offered for a product or service.
It is no longer straightforward to go shopping for the best prices thanks to all the technology at our disposal. You could become a tech-refusenik and purchase only second-hand goods from brick-and-mortar charity shops or from local Facebook marketplace listings.
But if you do want the latest products at the keenest prices, an Amazon price history checking facility is just one of the plethora of techniques you can use to find the best prices out there. Happy bargain hunting, everyone!
Copyright 2023. Article made possible by Soprano.