In this case, it’s 39.95 retail price. but I bet a lot of these things aren’t priced right
Comment on Amazon Artificially Discounting Items $0.01 Below the Free Shipping Limit
DaddleDew@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You think they’ve brought the price down from $35?
I bet this thing is actually worth only $25 and they’ve increased the price to that instead. With shipping and handling you end up paying almost double.
rumba@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 4 weeks ago
The amount of small items that should only be a couple of bucks selling for $10 or more on Amazon is insane
Pulptastic@midwest.social 4 weeks ago
They inflate price to offset shipping costs for prime members. This hits cheaper items harder. They used to have add-on items to get around this but I haven’t seen that in a while.
dan@upvote.au 4 weeks ago
I still sometimes find cheap things that are reasonably priced. These keystone wall plates for Ethernet/HDMI/etc are 99 cents for example: a.co/d/hAYsejh
baltakatei@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
For an academic text on this subject with footnotes, I recommend Chokepoint Capitalism (2022) by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow. It calls what you describe “moat buulding” and an “anti-competitive flywheel”.
dan@upvote.au 4 weeks ago
now it’s almost all overpriced junk items sold by shady sellers now.
It’s not too bad if you avoid all third-party sellers and only buy items sold by Amazon directly.
Unfortunately, other stores are going in the same direction. Walmart’s and Target’s sites both have third-party sellers on them now too, and you need to remember to filter them out.
Kitathalla@lemy.lol 4 weeks ago
I remember when Amazon first started there were good deals on good quality items
I remember when the primary use of amazon was buying secondhand items. The deals on used discs for PS2 or gamecube were amazing. It was ebay without bidding.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
I remember when you pretty much only used Amazon to buy books
turmacar@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
IFixit is generally good quality/value in my experience if it’s actually them and not some knockoff/drop shipper. Granted haven’t had a need to buy anything of theirs for years because the one I have keeps being great.
That kit is $40 on their site. Weird that it’s cheaper on Amazon in the first place.
booly@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
No, Amazon does this on purpose. If you want to sell on Amazon, the search and recommendation algorithms will make your product hard to find unless you have Amazon fulfillment. But if you sign up for Amazon fulfillment, not only do you have to give Amazon a bigger cut of the price, you have to agree to never sell your product for less than Amazon does, even on your own website with your own fulfillment.
The FTC sued Amazon for this practice, and that case is progressing. But who knows if the Trump administration is going to maintain the lawsuit, or if the court will rule against Amazon.
turmacar@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
They do, but I’ve also seen it the other way around, where the price on Amazon is the price on the manufacturers site plus shipping. Usually for more reputable/niche products. IFixit I would’ve thought would be big/popular enough to do that but I guess not.