I have noticed some terrible patterns on Amazon.com while shopping this holiday season lately and that is they allow their “affiliates” to greatly mark up product prices for sale when inventory is low and the products can’t be found elsewhere. For many products and this is especially true of Children’s toys you can find the Amazon.com price listed as 2-5x higher than the products retail value from the manufacturer or a competing site. Though the product is out of stock at the other stores, an Amazon.com store or subsidiary will have it in stock and sell it for these outrageous rates and prey upon people who are desperate to buy the product.
I expect to see this from eBay where people action and sell times for whatever they want, but this means that Amazon.com is no longer reliable for looking for the best prices on items and this only means that you have to check other sources first. It used to be that Amazon.com almost always carried the best prices on items and they still do on many items, but you just can’t trust their item prices anymore as a result of these recent trends. Amazon.com should deny partner companies from listing product prices higher than say 20% of the retail value of the product, they should do this to help cut down on price gauging.
-Justin Germino
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Tags: amazon price gouging, inflated product prices, item prices, out of stock items, outrageous prices, price gouging, product prices overinflated, store price gouging, vendor price gouging
7 responses to Nothing Like Holiday Price Gauging
There aren’t very many companies that could keep their prices within 20% of Amazon’s. Most companies would just disappear at that point.
As far as I can remember, Amazon Marketplace has always been billed as Amazon’s version of eBay/half.com, so it’s hard for me to get *too* outraged about it.
And is it really “preying” on somebody when you’re talking about a Zhu Zhu hamster or something? It’s not like they’re charging $50 for a loaf of bread after a flood or something.
Yeah, it is like an Ebay, but they should separate out the prices more, it is misleading.
You know you’re right. When I first started reading you’re post, I thought “That’s the nature of supply and demand and capitalism, if demand is high and supply is low, prices will be higher”, but you make a good point about the difference between Amazon and Ebay.
As you say, Ebay, since it’s about auctions, should reflect faster changes in prices based on supply and demand. Amazon should be much less so.
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Isn’t it a bad practice misleading consumers? Hmmm… But I think Amazon is still the best there is.
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This is a really interesting question. Will customers distinguish between the retailer Amazon and the Amazon partners when scarcity pricing is put in play.
This could actually be just the opening Walmart can slip through.
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Justin, I have to say I agree with you to an extent. Amazon is still a trusted source for finding just about anything online in my eyes because they provide more than one option in most cases for whatever it is you’re looking for. If some of the more popular items are hard to find, you’re going to pay more for them, but at least you can still get them. If people are willing to pay more for those items then it’s their decision to be made. I would rather pay more for something that’s going to keep me from going crazy trying to find it by having to wait in lines at the crack of dawn because a new shipment has come in, i.e., Zhu Zhu Pets. This way I know I have what I need and save myself time, too. If you add up all the time you’ve spent calling and searching and driving and waiting, etc., you’ll probably end up paying more if you figure in what you’d be paid for that same amount of time working at your job. My “free” time means more to me than what I might pay for a stupid hamster. Maybe it’s just me.
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One more quick thought that I failed to mention previously: What I agree about with you that I started off saying before is the practice of people selling these hard-to-find items on ebay. Talk about price gouging! True – people are going to pay higher for items they’re bidding on to get whatever they want at any price, but for these people selling them going to stores like Walmart that advertised a new stock of Zhu Zhu Pets would be available the week of Christmas, and since sales were limited to one per customer, they would bring everyone and their uncle to hoard as many of them as they could is just about as low as it gets! So once again, I would much rather pay a set price that may be inflated somewhat at Amazon than to fill the pockets of some individual that’s blatantly praying on desperate people and selling them on ebay. Merry Christmas!
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