(SC)AMAZON

Two people told me about the goings-on with their accounts at Amazon.  Each had been a faithful patron of the site, and neither uses it much (or at all?) any more.  Both stories started with the same troubling observation: prices keep going up, and they change unpredictably.

Here's what appears to be happening, at least as my two informants have put it together.  If you're an avid user of Amazon, and especially if you agree to their special registration deal, they watch you carefully.  They especially like it if you make recurring purchases of something you use regularly.  They are like pigs in, um, mud, if you let them take the liberty to charge you like clockwork every month or two for your recurring purchase.

You discover two things, if you happen to be paying attention.  One is that the price begins to creep up.  You might not notice this, unless you monitor your credit card bill, because the increases are subtle.  But you have been profiled, and you have been taken for granted.  These increases that you might have written off as due to inflation or something are nothing of the kind.  You come to realize this because of the other thing you might discover.  If you happen to go to Amazon from someone else's computer, not the one you normally use, and not from the one which Amazon has come to recognize, you will find that the prices charged to others are lower than the price charged to you.  If you think this represents a flash sale, which is what Amazon would like you to think, it isn't.  Go back to your own computer, and check the price again.  It's higher.  Now go back to your friend's computer, and look again.  Lower.

The fact is, after Amazon gets done having its way with you, and if you haven't gotten so lazy that you don't comparison shop any more (your assumption is, quite naturally, that Amazon has wonderful pricing that doesn't need be checked), you will find that Amazon charges more than other vendors for the things you want to buy from them.  They're counting on your laziness not to figure that out.

Here's another version of this problem.  I know someone else who has gotten himself into the business of selling stuff on Amazon.  He gets new stuff, and he lists it and sells it there, for more, or sometimes much more, than he paid for it retail.  Sometimes, he lists stuff he doesn't even have yet.  He finds things on sale, and he lists them for whatever price he wants.  If someone buys it from him on Amazon, he then goes and buys it from Target, or wherever he found it on sale, and he sends it to his customer.  My first thought was to wonder why anyone would pay him more than they could pay a store for the same item.  Now I know.  They assume Amazon pricing is good, and they don't ask any questions, or bother to comparison shop.  They've been had by Amazon, and the guy I know becomes a beneficiary of this system.  He himself can't explain why his customers overpay him.  But he doesn't know what I now know.

Online shopping is a tricky business.  Registering yourself, and giving credit card information, is only the least subtle risk you take.  Watch out for Amazon.  They didn't become as big and as rich as they are by accident or simple good fortune.