The trick to making sure you get a good deal on Amazon: Website tracks prices of your favourite items - and alerts you when they drop
- camelcamelcamel.co.uk shows you how the price of items listed on Amazon have changed over the days and months
- Users can set alerts for when items go below a target price
Amazon is known for its bargains. It often offers prices unbeaten on the high street and sales that get online shoppers in a frenzy.
So it’s easy to assume that by reverting to Amazon you’re getting a good deal.
But Amazon adopts a complicated pricing structure, which a study last week suggested helps give the impression it is the cheapest place to go for online purchases, even if it isn't always the case.
So how can you be sure you're getting the best deal?
Website camelcamelcamel.co.uk is a nifty service that tracks the price of items on Amazon over the weeks, months and even years. We wanted to give it a road test.
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Price tracker: October 18 would have been the best time to buy the Downton Abbey box set, Camelcamelcamel reveals
Camelcamelcamel lets users can look up the price of an item they are thinking about buying and see whether it is cheaper to buy than at other times or whether they’ll be paying a premium by buying it there and then.
Users can also set an alert on their favourite items, so camelcamelcamel will let them know when they fall below a certain price.
The website has been the secret weapon of bargain hunters for some years and is perfect for purchasing items for which you’re happy to wait for the best price.
This Is Money tested the website on a few randomly selected items.
The Downton Abbey box set series 1-4 is on sale at the moment on Amazon for £19.99. This is cheaper than the price on Very, Woolworths, the BBC shop and a pound more expensive than Zavvi.
It looks like a good deal.
Camelcamelcamel: The website is so named because the graphs that it creates of Amazon's price movements often take the form of a series of humps, much like those of camels
But Camelcamelcamel reveals the box set has been listed on Amazon for as low as £13.81. Since it went on sale, the price has fluctuated between £13 and £30, which means buyers will have got a significantly different deal depending on when they went ahead with the purchase.
The historical pricing suggests that it is not out of the question that the price could drop again.
So a Downton fan who wanted the box set in their collection but had no great urgency could put a price alert on it and wait to see if the price dropped again.
Similarly a Canon IXUS 265 HSCompact digital camera is on sale for £109 – down from its retail price of £179.
A search on CamelCamelCamel shows the camera has been on a steady downward trajectory for the past year from its peak of £179 in January 2014.
Bide your time: Camelcamelcamel's price tracker alerts users when prices fall
But it has been on sale for less than £109 twice in the past month – once as low as £89.
Users can apply an 'add-on' to their internet browser to check prices automatically - and there is also an app that can be used on mobile phones.
Anyone can see the pricing information on the website - you needn't register or give any personal information. You can, though, if you wish to set up email alerts on favourite items.
Amazon’s complicated pricing structure helps give the impression it is the cheapest place to go for online purchases, even if this isn’t always the case, a recent study revealed.
Researchers have found that the Seattle-based company encourages users to think they are getting a good deal by tweaking their prices a number of times each hour.
Overall, the study found that the online marketplace harnesses the 'psychology of price perception' in buyers by making millions of individual price changes a day.
Bargain hunting: Website users can request to see historical price data for all products sold on Amazon, including those sold by third parties and those that are used
For instance, when it's offering its biggest discounts on popular products, such as a TV, it will increase the prices of its less popular items to make a profit.
According to a white paper by Boomerang Commerce, the technique means Amazon often appears to be beating its competition on low prices.
'Amazon may not actually be the lowest-priced seller of a particular product in any given season,' the report reads.
'But its consistently low prices on the highest viewed and best-selling items drive a perception among consumers that Amazon has the best prices overall – even better than Walmart.'
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