On Fri, 7 Jan 2011 13:50:25 -0800, "Edward Hennessey"
wrote:



"Spehro Pefhany" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 7 Jan 2011 12:25:12 -0800, "DGDevin"

wrote:



"Edward Hennessey" wrote in message
news:l_udnV3bweGb9brQnZ2dnUVZ_rqdnZ2d@earthlink .com...

In general, Amazon offers some good deals.

But there is a "however" documented by recent
observations that deserves elaboration:

I've bought quite a few tools from Amazon, and often they've had the
lowest
price as well as free shipping. *But* you need to do your homework,
as
sometimes you can find better deals elsewhere at a given moment. I
also
dislike their use of "list" prices which are so ridiculously high
that their
claimed discount is meaningless. Their prices really do go up and
down too,
leave a few items in your shopping cart for awhile and note how the
prices
change over the weeks and months.

I suspect they are doing that deliberately to grab your attention
and
maybe get you to order the stuff.


Thanks to DGD for the comment. If you go to camelcamelcamel.com, you
can
plug in an Amazon URL and chart price movement among 3 classes of
resellers,
Amazon included. Price alerts can also be dispatched to you if you
register on
the site, AFAIK. Any report on the site would be worthwhile.

The correlations in price development among retailer groups
are interesting. As to price upswings, on the big A , part of
that may involve a calculation by Amazon that if they jump a
price notches higher a formulaic number of times,
a person who has placed it in their cart--along with other waiting
"wannabuys"--may be triggered to buy at some point on the apprehension
that the bill for a desired product is spiraling beyond reach.

Acsquisition and operating costs and
competition are other obvious drivers in this flux but what some may
say is shifty manipulation or gaming by Amazon is not apart from the
picture.

Hey, Sphero, for some reason your name is tolling the bell of
association with

More Spehro than Sphero.. now that I've lost ~50lb... ;-)

one John Woodgate, either correctly or no. If rightly, do you know
what
became of him?

True enough. John Woodgate (a Brit)... well, I suspect he got fed up
with all the US political BS on s.e.d. (not to mention rudeness and
low signal to noise ratio) and left some years ago. He's quite active
on one electronic simulation group that I subscribe to (posted within
the last 30 minutes- about 9:35 pm London time).

Here's John's website if you should wish to contact him- he is very
knowledgeable on matters of pro audio standards and such, and I think
Spanish translation.

http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk/